FarewellFire
IMG_6764
A soldier of the Korean People´s Army and myself, sporting the colors of the mightiest littlest football team in the world - Hammarby IF - on the north side of the border between North and South Korea.
This was a very funny moment. I always try to take a picture of myself in a Hammarby-jersey wherever I travel and then post it to the club who then posts it on their site. It´s just a stupid but pretty funny thing to do. So I brought the shirt to North Korea, thinking that we would play football (according to the itinerary we were going to play a game at a stadium in Pyongyang).
While hanging out in front of the South Korean side of the border in the Joint Security Area t just struck me that I should try to get a picture of myself with a soldier of the KPA and myself in the jersey. This was of course to be quite a feat since you´re not allowed to snap photos of anything even remotely associated to the military.
So I started to put on the shirt and noticed the guide and the people present staring at me, obviously a bit confused about what the Swede was up to and then just headed over to a female guide and asked her to take a picture. The guide refused but I told her the story about how I always take pictures of myself in this particular jersey wherever I travel and... she still refused. The soldier looked like he didn´t know what to make of the situation so I made some attempts to kick an imaginative ball in the air, point at my shirt and going "football, football".
And guess what? It worked. He started smiling, I grabbed his hand and the picture was snapped. He then started to talk to the female guide who told me that he was very interested in the shirt, telling me that he didn´t recognise the team but still wasn´t sure if this was some North Korean team that he hadn´t heard about (believe me, the local league setup is a bit... complicated) or something foreign. Had I bought it in Pyongyang perhaps?
So I told him that it was a Swedish team, sort of the "team of the workers" in Stockholm (which at least used to be true) and he smiled again, obviously amused by the situation.
To me this just says it all. Here we were, by the most miltarised border in the world, a meeting between a soldier of one of the most reclusive states in the world and a pr-manager from capitalist Sweden. And still at that very moment all of our differences in belief and place in the world was set aside and we met as equals. The mediator being the simple game of football.
Priceless.
I wish that all conflicts in the world could be solves like this. Or to quote my idol, swedish diplomat Hans Blix:
"The noble art of losing face will someday save the human race"
Amen.
Published in Offside Magazine (Sweden) #2 - 2010.
IMG_6764
A soldier of the Korean People´s Army and myself, sporting the colors of the mightiest littlest football team in the world - Hammarby IF - on the north side of the border between North and South Korea.
This was a very funny moment. I always try to take a picture of myself in a Hammarby-jersey wherever I travel and then post it to the club who then posts it on their site. It´s just a stupid but pretty funny thing to do. So I brought the shirt to North Korea, thinking that we would play football (according to the itinerary we were going to play a game at a stadium in Pyongyang).
While hanging out in front of the South Korean side of the border in the Joint Security Area t just struck me that I should try to get a picture of myself with a soldier of the KPA and myself in the jersey. This was of course to be quite a feat since you´re not allowed to snap photos of anything even remotely associated to the military.
So I started to put on the shirt and noticed the guide and the people present staring at me, obviously a bit confused about what the Swede was up to and then just headed over to a female guide and asked her to take a picture. The guide refused but I told her the story about how I always take pictures of myself in this particular jersey wherever I travel and... she still refused. The soldier looked like he didn´t know what to make of the situation so I made some attempts to kick an imaginative ball in the air, point at my shirt and going "football, football".
And guess what? It worked. He started smiling, I grabbed his hand and the picture was snapped. He then started to talk to the female guide who told me that he was very interested in the shirt, telling me that he didn´t recognise the team but still wasn´t sure if this was some North Korean team that he hadn´t heard about (believe me, the local league setup is a bit... complicated) or something foreign. Had I bought it in Pyongyang perhaps?
So I told him that it was a Swedish team, sort of the "team of the workers" in Stockholm (which at least used to be true) and he smiled again, obviously amused by the situation.
To me this just says it all. Here we were, by the most miltarised border in the world, a meeting between a soldier of one of the most reclusive states in the world and a pr-manager from capitalist Sweden. And still at that very moment all of our differences in belief and place in the world was set aside and we met as equals. The mediator being the simple game of football.
Priceless.
I wish that all conflicts in the world could be solves like this. Or to quote my idol, swedish diplomat Hans Blix:
"The noble art of losing face will someday save the human race"
Amen.
Published in Offside Magazine (Sweden) #2 - 2010.