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Editor's note: Ian's report from Korea for tonight's broadcast will not air tonight as previously noted here. We will re-post this blog when his piece is rescheduled.
It must be the world’s strangest industrial zone - a zone where cell phones and western newspapers aren’t allowed, but described by its supporters as a blueprint for a unified Korea.
Reaching the Kaesong Industrial Complex isn’t easy, since it sits just the other side of the world’s most fortified border, the rather inappropriately named demilitarized zone (DMZ), separating the two Koreas. A dedicated road has been laid across the DMZ, passing through four fences - two on the southern side, two on the north, the gates manned by soldiers from the opposing armies. The road itself is fenced in, the land on either side littered with mines, watchtowers and bunkers. Yet everyday around 300 vehicles make the journey, servicing the rapidly expanding complex beyond.
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Link to thisNBC News Correspondent Ian Williams writes in our sister blog "World Blog" about his experiences in Tehran: "Tens of thousands of fists punched the air as the chant reverberated around the vast tent-like mosque at Tehran University..."
Discuss (5 comments) Email this | Link to thisAn elderly lady, wrapped in her black chador, knelt in front of the grave, flowers in hand, while her husband washed the gravestone with a hosepipe. Behind the stone, a glass-fronted cabinet carried a picture of a young man – their son. He’d been killed, age 19, during the Iran-Iraq war.
“Something has to be done for Iraq,” said the mother, “so that all these people didn’t die in vain.”
The Behesht-e-Zahra cemetery spreads from the main highway southeast of Tehran -- seemingly endless rows of graves as far as the eye can see. The glass-fronted cabinets contain personal effects as well as photographs of the chillingly young men who died in the tens-of-thousands during the war.
Family members visit soldier's graves during an Islamic holiday in Tehran, Iran.
Discuss (2 comments) Email this | Link to thisThe front page of Wednesday’s "Iran News" carries a picture of a smiling President Ahmadinejad with two young children, while an article alongside claims Iran is close to industrial-scale enrichment of uranium, and there’ll be no going back. The "Tehran Times" has Iran ready to strike the U.S. "anywhere" if attacked. Pretty ominous stuff.
But turn a few pages and there’s a rather different take on the Great Satan - a rundown on the Oscars with a large photograph of a smiling Al Gore, Oscar in hand. There’s also a piece about David Beckham’s likely impact on U.S. soccer, together with an interview with the former captain of the Iranian national team, who is now coaching a team in Los Angeles, and paints a glowing picture of his time in the States. "I see the potential and talent here," he says.
Editor's note: Read the rest of Ian's post in World Blog. He's on assignment in Iran for a couple of weeks and will report occasionally on the broadcast.
Discuss (0 comments) Email this | Link to thisEditor's note: Ian reported on a Chinese boot camp for kids addicted to the Internet on Saturday's NBC Nightly News. He also filed this blog from Beijing.
The piercing blast of a whistle cuts through the freezing pre-dawn air at a military hospital on the outskirts of Beijing. It’s followed by barked orders to wake up, get out of bed, get dressed and line up - “Now!”
The bleary-eyed youngsters, half asleep, stumble from their bunks, pulling on baggy military fatigues and sneakers, and march awkwardly towards a parade ground for their first work-out of the day.
They’re a disheveled bunch, without an inkling of military bearing, more used to exercising their fingers on a keyboard than their legs in a field. And that, says the clinic, is the problem. The 50 mostly teenage boys (and a handful of girls) are hooked on online computer games, and have been sent by their parents to China’s first Internet addiction clinic to help them kick a habit the director says is every bit as damaging as drugs.
Discuss (3 comments) Email this | Link to thisEditor's note: NBC's Ian Williams will report from Beijing on the Sunday edition of NBC Nightly News.
BEIJING -- Compared with their usual bustle, the streets here are largely deserted. The city is quiet, except for the occasional explosive thud, a whoosh of a rocket, or series of small bangs.
No, this isn't a blog from war-torn Baghdad, but from Beijing on Chinese New Year's Eve. People have left in droves to celebrate New Year with their families elsewhere in the country, and those who remain are priming their fireworks, ready to see in the Year of the Pig, which begins on Sunday.
Nationwide, China's railways are expecting to carry more than 155m people over the New Year period - a record.
Discuss (10 comments) Email this | Link to thisAt first I found it amusing. “Hey, Bill Clinton,” shouted our hotel doorman, as I crossed the lobby, soon after checking into our Hanoi hotel. By this weekend,.it was starting to grate. “Bill Clinton, when you going home?”
And it wasn’t just the doorman. The floor lady, two taxi drivers, two waiters and a man from the Foreign Ministry have all told me that I look like the former president. I’ve started to stare into the mirror at the end of each day, not sure whether I should feel flattered or appalled.
I really don’t think I do look like Clinton, and I soon developed a theory: that all this attention wasn’t so much about me, but about him - a product of the Vietnamese continuing fascination with the past president, who in 2000 became the first U.S. leader to visit Vietnam since the end of the war.
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A woman admires a new window display put up prior to this week's APEC summit in Hanoi.
Photo by NBC's Ian Williams.
Hanoi has a far slower pace after Ho Chi Minh City, though no shortage of the dramatic contrasts that are such a feature of the new Vietnam. Take our hotel – a marvelous Soviet relic that seems somehow stuck in a time warp. Yet just down the road is a raucous new bar, based on the theme of the Wild West, complete with a seven-foot neon cowboy over the entrance.
First the hotel: It’s called the Vietnam Trade Union Hotel, a squat eight-story building, close to Hanoi’s crumbling colonial-era police headquarters. There are big APEC signs near the entrance, and like much of Hanoi, the place has been given a fresh coat of paint.
There’s a gift shop near the Spartan reception area, selling Russian-style Matrushka nesting dolls and key rings with portraits of Russian president Vladimir Putin. There are many sales ladies behind the desk, though it proves enormously difficult to get their attention. A man from the Foreign Ministry tells me that the service culture of the south is still catching on up here.
Discuss (11 comments) Email this | Link to thisHO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam - The news has dominated the weekend newspapers here: an American company announcing what’s thought to be the single largest foreign investment ever made in Vietnam. Intel is to invest a billion dollars in a new microprocessor plant, to be operational by the end of 2009, and expected to employ around 4,000 Vietnamese.
I witnessed the signing of the deal in the ornate ballroom of Ho Chi Minh City’s town hall, where senior executives from Intel were clinking champagne glasses with Vietnam’s communist prime minister and other top party officials. A string quartet played popular classics in the corner as waiters in starched white shirts served snacks. From time to time you had to pinch yourself as a reminder of where you were, as the two sides heaped lavish praise on each other.
Discuss (1 comments) Email this | Link to thisEverybody has their favorite story about those wacky North Koreans. One popular tale passed among Pyongyang’s small band of intrepid diplomats is about the short-lived Australian Embassy, which was closed a few years ago soon after it opened. It was said that the North didn’t appreciate Australia’s offer to mediate with the South.
In fact, the story goes, that wasn’t the reason at all. The fledgling embassy had thrown an opening party, a toga party. There aren’t many cars on Pyongyang streets, and the sight of the tiny foreign community criss-crossing town wrapped in white sheets was too much for the grim-faced Stalinists. “They weren’t sure what it meant, but were certain of one thing - it was a conspiracy,” one diplomat told me.
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