A NORTH KOREAN NIGHT OUT

I just read on the net that Colin Powell rejected North Korea's demand for any kind of 'rewards' in return for greater cooperation, but I've done MY part for North Korean-Canadian relations simply by having dinner at my North Korean student's restaurant here in Phnom Penh.
How the heck did I end up with a (former) student who is North Korean in Cambodia? Cambodia has always had this weird, pseudo-friendly relationship with the world's most closed-off, Stalinist state; the King has a vacation house there, for God's sakes. Two semesters ago, teaching at the university, I had an eighteen year old North Korean kid in my class, who I assumed was SOUTH Korean, but then I learned, by accident, that he spent most of his life growing up in Burkina Faso Africa, where his father taught Tae Kwan Do to the corrupt Communist government regime. Mama mia. He was a good student, a smart student, but the only book I every saw him carry was a biography, in Korean, of Kim Jong's father. And he once wrote a paper for me denouncing the United States, reiterating his dream of joining the North Korean army, and stating that 'my mother always told me that anyone who doesn't love their country is like sperm in the streets.' I don't know about you, but my mom told me to eat my vegetables...
What I like about living here is that you see all these huge international issues played out on a daily, small-scale restaurant. I go to this North Korean restaurant with a couple of friends tonight, and the food is really good, and the waitresses -- dressed in flowing white robes with blue trim -- periodically interrupt their serving duties to take center stage at the front of the restaurant to dance and sing old Korean songs. It's bloody surreal, and it's bizarre, and yet, there it is. They live at the back of the restaurant, and they can't leave without an escort, and at the end of the night I go up and shoot the breeze with my former student, who is a nice, smart kid brainwashed by an utterly corrupt regime, and so it goes.
There are fifty million North Koreans basically held hostage by their corrupt leader. There is a movie out back home called TEAM AMERICA where Kim Jong is the villian, and he is a puppet, and it is a comedy. But these people are real, and their plight is real, and this is a world where women are forced to work and perform in a restaurant in Phnom Penh, and to have it as part of my normal, daily routine, well, it's a trip. A real, real trip.
This convergence of politics and the personal is what makes living here so fascinating. Back home I can read about Colin Powell negotiating with the North Koreans. Here, I can have a warm, friendly conversation with my old North Korean student, and it is genuine, and it is real, and it is a reminder that all of these global, complex issues you see played out on the news every night have a true, human component than is always more fascinating, always more humane than you could ever image. (Or this St.Catharines boy could imagine, anyways.)