Neil Armstrong......The Astronaut's Astronaut

Today sees the private Ohio funeral of Neil Armstrong  who died at the weekend aged 82. Piers Sellers, the British-born Nasa astronaut now deputy director of the sciences and exploration directorate at Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Centre, has paid a delightful tribute in today's UK Guardian newspaper, which is quoted beneath Neil's photo below.

I remember watching that first moon landing in July 1969 just weeks short of my 21st birthday at a flat in Lexham Gardens in west London. I can clearly remember Armstrong's first historic step on to the moon's surface but I no longer have the slightest idea why and with whom I was in Lexham Gardens. 

Sang Froid is a term that was invented for Neil Armstrong.  You're flying what is basically a bedstead several hundred feet above the moon's surface with just 60 seconds fuel left  between you and certain death. Trouble is, you can't find a place to land because of rocks all over the surface. Panic? Not Neil Armstrong, he kept his cool and found a spot with 15 seconds left between him and oblivion.  He would certainly have won the Gold for Sang Froid had it been an event at the 1968 Mexico Olympics. 

by Piers Sellers

First up, Neil Armstrong is my hero. He's absolutely iconic. He's the astronauts' astronaut.

It's amazing when you look at what he did. The business of flying the X-15, which was basically a piece of steel pipe with a rocket on the end, was dangerous enough. Then there was the Gemini 8 which went out of control, but he managed to figure out what was going on, saving the spacecraft, his crew mate and himself. That was incredible. And then there was landing on the moon itself. This man's career, as a test pilot and as an astronaut, is completely peerless.

But, I think, the man himself was a more complex and richer personality than many give him credit for. He was a very dedicated engineer who became a professor of engineering when he retired from Nasa. He was really interested in how science and technology influence society and the development of civilisation. He was a deep thinker, insightful, well-rounded, not your ordinary "fighter jock".

He was simply the best.

The Rise of Vice Marshal Cho Ryong Hae

The sudden removal of Vice Marshal Lee Young Ho, supposedly the most powerful military man in North Korea for " health reasons" combined with the emergence of Kim Jong Un's wife in the media signals a struggle between modernizers and conservatives in Pyongyang. Below is a profile of the man who has been increasingly photographed at the side of Kim Jong Un in recent months. I believe he will play a major role in North Korean politics in the coming months.

Vice Marshal Choe Ryong Hae is Director of the Korean People’s Army General Political Bureau. As Director he is responsible for the political management of the DPRK’s military forces. Choe is one of the second revolutionary generation and knew the late supreme leader Kim Jong Il for over 50 years. He has a vast network of political and social relationships across North Korean elites and has a close relationship with Jang Song Taek who is Kim Jong Un's uncle. During the 1980s and 1990s Choe had a leading role in consolidating the succession and political support of Kim Jong Un's father Kim Jong Il when he was head of the Kim Il Sung Youth League.


Choe Ryong Hae was born in Hwanghae Bukto in 1950. He is the son of Choe Hyon (1909-1982) who served as Minister of People’s Armed Forces and NDC Vice Chairman in the 1970s and was a revolutionary colleague of Kim Il Sung in the 88th Brigade before World War 2 . Choe trod the classic educational; path Mangyo’ngdae Revolutionary School and Kim Il Sung University.

After climbing the party ladder during the eighties and nineties he fell from grace in 1998 only to return later as a Deputy Director of the KWP General Affairs Department. From 2006 to 2010 he served as the Chief Secretary of the Hwanghae Bukto KWP Provincial Committee. Significantly, Choe traveled to China with Jang and Kim Jong Il in August 2010.

On 28 September 2010, Choe was given the rank of Korean People's Army [KPA] General in a military promotion to commemorate the 65th anniversary of the Korean Workers’ Party. At the 3rd Party Conference he became a member of the CC KWP Secretariat and an alternate member of the CC KWP Political Bureau and member of the Central Military Commission.


Then in April 2012 Choe was promoted to KPA Vice Marshal. During the 4th Party Conference on 11 April 2012 Choe was also elected to membership of the Politburo Presidium and Vice Chairman of the Party Central Military Commission. At the 4th Party Conference, DPRK media noted that Choe had been appointed Director of the KPA General Political Bureau, a position close to the new leader. Then at the 5th session of the 12th SPA, Choe was elected a member of the National Defense Commission the nation's most powerful organization. He is now a very important person, just how important will unfold in the next year or two..

Trooping The Past

There is no doubt Queen Elizabeth has performed her duties as Head of State wonderfully. Throughout her long sixty year reign, she has barely put a foot wrong. Today the annual Trooping the Colour ceremony to mark Her Majesty's official birthday is again taking place in central London.

Scores of soldiers in nineteenth century fancy dress stamped their way up and down the sandy ground of Horse Guards Parade as Officers sitting on horses with bits of dead bear wrapped around their heads barked public school orders at them. Not a female soldier was any where to be seen

Meanwhile across the globe in the thirty minutes this anachronistic fancy dress parade was being played out China launched three Officers comprising two men and a woman in to space orbit.

The contrast could not be clearer. The United Kingdom, an increasingly insignificant, medium sized, class-ridden European monarchy stuck with institutions living out a faded past. China the emerging superpower looking to the future.

Quite a Sabbatical!!

I'm not sure why I took such a long sabbatical from blogging. It was just going to be for a few weeks over Christmas but has ended up lasting for slightly more than a year. Anyway, there is too much going on in the world so here we go again.

Armistice Day 2010

Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae MD. [1872 -1918].

Lt Col McCrae, a Canadian doctor, sat down and wrote his famous poem shortly after the death of one of his closest friends, Lt Alex Helmer at Ypres on 3rd May 1915. Dr McCrae had tried in vain to save him, but his wounds proved fatal. “In Flanders Fields” became one of the most famous First World War poems, somehow encapsulating the tragic, sad, pointlessness of it all.

The sadness was compounded when Dr McCrae who had saved hundreds of  lives, tragically lost his own life to pneumonia in January 1918, just months before the end of the war. He was buried with full military honours in Wimereux Cemetary a couple of kilometres outside Boulogne.  His was a great and noble soul.

During the five years I lived in Belgium, I’d sometimes drive to Ypres after a bad day in the office to watch the daily six o’clock memorial ceremony at the Menin Gate [Meenenporte].  It never failed to put things in perspective.........

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row

That mark our place, and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below

We are the dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow

Loved and were loved, and now we lie

In Flanders fields

Take up our quarrel with the foe

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch: be yours to hold it high

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders fields

Historic Meeting in Pyongyang

The experts, spooks, bloggers and journalists have all expressed their opinions about what will be happening at the conference of the Korean  Workers Party [WPK] which opens tomorrow in secretive Pyongyang. The truth is, nobody knows for sure; everybody is guessing. There have been only two previous conferences of the  WPK since North Korea was founded by Kim Il Sung [shown below with his young son Kim Jong Il in this family portrait] at the end of the Second World War and they were convened in 1958 and 1966.

Most of the experts speculate that tomorrow will see Kim Jong Un installed as his sickly father's successor.  While this may happen, my belief is that the main result of this meeting will be economic. I'm betting this is the Deng Xiaoping moment, marking an historic shift to open up North Korea and its economy.

All North Korean Kremlinologists will have their antennae primed for the next forty eight hours. Hopefully, we'll know by the weekend who Kim Jong Un is and what he looks like. He may look strong, but twenty seven is awfully young for a leader in a closed confucian society like North Korea.

China, Japan and the USA must be concerned about future stability on the peninsula if such a young man is pushed forward as the next leader should Kim Jong Il suddenly die in the near future and I suspect this is one of the main reasons China is probably promoting a Dengist opening to the North Korean leadership.

Ironically,  the CIA will also be trying to find the best "Get Well Soon" card for Barack and Hillary to send Kim Jong Il. The last thing the Obama Administration needs is an attack on Uijongbu by hard line militarists
For North Korea watchers this a very exciting week.

A Sad Anniversary

I just didn't feel right this morning. My kibun was bent all out of shape and I couldn't figure out why. Then I saw the date and realised today would have been my brother David's 70th Birthday. He died on 8th January 1984 in Seoul, Korea aged just 43. The Koreans cremated his body the next morning and David's Death Certificate just read: Cause of Death: "Illness"

By the time the police knocked on my parents' door, poor David was already ashes. I was in Tokyo on business in 1987 and decided to go incognito to Korea and see if I could find out anything more about David's end.  I presented my passport at the immigration window at Kimpo Airport in Seoul and watched with increasing concern as the Immigration Officer firstly scrutiniised me again after looking at a list on her computer and then pressed a buzzer that must have rung somewhere in a security office. I was arrested and held incommunicado overnight in  an airport cell before being deported on a flight to Hong Kong early the next morning.

We never were able to establish how David died. A burst ulcer was the closest we got.  David Nicholas Elliott Squires would have turned seventy today.  I would swap everything I've ever done to be able to buy him a drink today. God Bless you, David, wherever you are today.