The day before Kim Jong Il's funeral last month, George Hadjipateras, 36, put on a black suit and tie and drove to the North Korean embassy in west London. Beneath a portrait of the Dear Leader, the office clerk laid a floral tribute, red carnations arranged in the shape of a star. He shook the hand of the first secretary lengthily as he pressed upon him that Kim was "a shining light, not just for his people, but for revolutionaries worldwide."
"I mentioned to him I had lost my own father in September, and so this was doubly tragic for me," Hadjipateras says. "My voice broke a bit then." He had been closely monitoring Kim's health since his 2008 stroke, and was blindsided by the death. "It's tragic; he should have been getting better," he told TIME. "I was as upset as the English were when the Queen Mother died." (PHOTOS: The State Funeral of Kim Jong Il)
Kim's passing did not exactly move Hadjipateras' fellow Britons to similar displays of grief. Viewed outside his homeland as a crackpot dictator, his death was taken mostly as an opportunity to snicker at his excesses. But despite a scarcity of flowers at the embassy, Kim did not go unmourned in the West. For a decade, Hadjipateras has belonged to the Korean Friendship Association (KFA), an international fan club for the isolated, nuclear-armed neo-Stalinist regime. Its founder is Alejandro Cao de Benos, 37, a Spaniard sometimes known by his adopted Korean name Zo Sun Il ("Korea is one").
Cao de Benos was an idealistic, revolutionary-minded teenager when he first struck up a relationship with North Korean delegates at an international tourism fair in Madrid. On subsequent trips to Pyongyang, he cultivated sufficiently influential connections that by 2000, he was able to convince the regime to allow him to set up the country's first webpage, the only fixed, widely accessible line of communication between the hermit kingdom and the wider world. Site traffic from foreigners curious to know more about the mysterious country prompted him to set up the KFA the same year, and he claims it now has 15,000 members in 120 countries.
Cao de Benos, who spends about six months of every year in Pyongyang, has since been recognized with "honorary" citizenship and a government position as a "special delegate" to its Committee for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries. (The latter position is unpaid, although Cao de Benos profits by brokering transactions between North Korea and foreign film-makers, tourists, corporations and other interested parties.) (PHOTOS: The Busy Life of Kim Jong Il)
North Korea, Cao de Benos says, was surprised to learn it had friends abroad, and part of his work had been to encourage the regime to show a more open face to its sympathizers. "The country has been under attack, which has made the DPRK [Democratic Peoples' Republic of Korea, the north's official name] so wary," he says. "I tell them: if you close the doors completely, nothing bad will enter, but nothing good will enter, either. We can't shut out our friends."
Those friends are typically drawn to North Korea by a sense of ideological solidarity with one of the last keepers of the Communist flame, but even more so by a powerful curiosity about the enigmatic society. Through the KFA, members can study juche, the state ideology of self-reliance, or buy obscure recordings of military parades or songs. Those seeking more active engagement can travel to North Korea on solidarity tours, or participate in pickets of the U.S. embassy. Frank Martin, a Parisian banker and KFA member, wrote to French newspaper editors in the days after Kim's death, chastising them for their mocking tone. "I read some [headlines] like: 'A buffoon who composed operas while his people were starving,'" he told TIME in an email.
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Last November, about 20 of North Korea's friends gathered in a London community center for the KFA's annual international meeting. During a question and answer session, a man in a Chairman Mao cap and dark glasses complained of his experiences with local council housing, and probed how someone in his situation might fare in Pyongyang. Cao de Benos told him he didn't know how good he had it, given the substandard shelter faced by millions. Besides, while moving to the DPRK was theoretically an option on the table for long-serving, senior KFA members, it was wisest to visit first. Even the staunchest friends of the North, Cao de Benos said, could find the rhythms of life there difficult to adjust to. "Every day I receive emails requesting to live in the DPRK," Cao de Benos said afterwards. "Some because they lost their jobs, but many of them are tired of this Westernized life of artifice, criminality, consumerism."
The appeal of a country known for its food shortages, prison camps and repressive personality cult may be difficult to grasp, but for KFA members it exerts an undeniable pull. Its mystique centers on the impression it belongs to a simpler, more innocent time; members marvel at the way that it cannot be seen from the air at night, because its lights are off. In a globalized world, it remains the only country truly off the grid. (PHOTOS: Mourning the Death of North Korea's Dear Leader)
Hadjipateras put it this way. "People in the DPRK aren't wandering around with iPhones listening to Jay-Z. They can't stand in the middle of the street abusing their leaders. But where in the world can you avoid being constantly bombarded by Coca-Cola, McDonalds, the sexualization of children on TV, the Big Brother reality shows?" To those who suggest North Korea is a Big Brother reality show with 24 million unwitting participants, Hadjipateras is dismissive, although he's never been there to judge for himself. He would "be there in an instant," he said, but travel does not agree with him.
Cao de Benos also chooses to spend only half the year in the "workers' paradise," claiming he can better serve the republic by spending the rest of his time in the West, where he frequently acts as an unofficial regime spokesman in international media. His critics point to this as an indication that Cao de Benos is motivated by the rewards of his role as gatekeeper to the regime, rather than by genuine ideological conviction.
Dr Leonid Petrov, a Korea specialist at the University of Sydney, has had dealings with Cao de Benos for more than a decade. He understands North Korea's unlikely charm, and feels a warm sense of nostalgia for the Soviet Union of his youth whenever he visits. But, essentially, that appeal is contingent on being able to leave. "Crossing the border is the exciting thing," he says. "But you don't want to stay there -- the place is horrible. Alejandro enjoys acting as a guide who links the two worlds. He's obviously not a defector." (READ: North Korea to Preserve and Display Kim Jong Il's Body)
While Hadjipateras mourned an icon he had never met, Cao de Benos had personally encountered Kim Jong Il on numerous occasions in ceremonial capacities. None of the KFA knows any more about his mysterious son and successor Kim Jong Un than the general public: that he has a military background, is Swiss-educated, resembles his grandfather, the state founder Kim Il Sung, and is young and inexperienced. Despite the latter, they hold no concerns about the stability of the regime. "Nothing will change," said Martin, via email. "The DPRK has the bomb."
As far as Hadjipateras was concerned, life in the "workers' paradise" would continue as usual, despite dark days in recent months for his fellow revolutionaries. First Gaddafi, he lamented, then the Dear Leader. "I don't know how I'll react when Fidel Castro dies," he said. "I don't even want to imagine."
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