North Korea’s route to riches through the diplomatic pouch
Ben Hills
LAST May a sting operation in the port city of Vladivostok by a government anti-narcotics squad bagged two drug dealers and a stash of 8.5 kilograms of heroin, worth millions on the street.
Nothing surprising about that - drugs, extortion, contract killing and general mayhem are commonplace in Russia's wild east, where police are fighting a losing battle against crime gangs.
Except this wasn't a Russian Mafia operation - the men arrested were identified as officials of the North Korean Public Security Ministry (the equivalent of the KGB), according to the Russian daily Komsomolskaya Pravda.
Beer cans and ballet. How Australia tries to present its culture to the world
Ben Hills
FROM the vast pyramid of Foster’s beer cans that greeted Crown Prince Naruhito at the official launch, to the last honk of Alan Dargin’s didgeridoo, it was obviously Australian - but just what was it meant to achieve? Celebrate Australia, a month-long promotion of Australia’s arts, entertainment, produce and scientific achievement, finished this week after a cycle of 100 events in Tokyo and 32 regional towns and cities around Japan.
Ben Hills
"You must be careful where you walk," says our guide, Lan Phetrasy, as he leads us around the rim of an enormous bomb crater and onto the mysterious Plain of Jars, the most dangerous archeological site in the world.
The track snakes off through the sunburned grass up a hillside and is marked by hundreds of numbered wooden posts hammered into the ground - one side of each post is painted white, the other red. Step on the wrong side and the last sound you hear may be the explosion of an American land-mine.
Ben Hills
THERE it stands, dominating the city from the top of Sejongno - Seoul's main boulevard - an immense four-storey pile of grey granite topped with a copper dome, once the grandest building in all of north-east Asia.
In its vaulted halls and marble-pillared galleries, the National Museum displays floor upon floor of priceless art and artefacts, the crown jewels of Korean culture. In a previous incarnation, the building housed the parliament where Syngman Rhee proclaimed the independence of the Korean Republic in 1948.
Breaking the bank - how I beat the casino in Khabarovsk.
Ben Hills
IT was 9 pm, but the sunlight was still filtering through the thick velvet curtains - white nights, they call them round here - as I took on the Amur Casino. Through the gloom I could see the croupiers idly spinning their roulette wheels, waiting for the punters. I took a sip of my Heineken beer and placed a pile of chips in front of me on the green baize blackjack tabletop.
"Sank you," said Olga, the pretty brunette in the red bolero jacket. She dealt me a card, then another - a king and an ace. Blackjack. She pushed a larger pile of chips back to me.
Ben Hills
Kang Chol-hwan was 15 years old the first time he saw one of his friends murdered. "Until then I was too young and I was not allowed to watch the executions," he says, in a matter-of-fact way. Kang was forced to gather with thousands of other inmates of the camp on a muddy parade ground beside a frozen stream while guards tied the condemned man to a white wooden pole with three strips of cloth.