Opera singer says only talks will stop North Korea crisis

8:41am Friday 13th October 2006

A TEESSIDE opera singer, feted by the North Koreans, has implored world leaders not to impose sanctions on the country following its testing of a nuclear weapon.

There was international outrage earlier this week when the country's leader, Kim Jong Il, announced his nation had become the ninth member of the elite nuclear powers.

Punitive action has been promised amid fears of a new Cold War.

However, soprano Suzannah Clarke, who has been visiting the country most people know very little about since 2003, has called on world leaders, including US President George Bush, and Prime Minister Tony Blair, to think of the impact sanctions would have on the country's citizens.

"If there are sanctions on trade, there will be no trade, which means no money. If there is no money, they can't feed the people," she told The Northern Echo.

"If there are sanctions, then I am really worried; people will starve, caught as they are in the middle of a war of words."

Ms Clark, who is a celebrity in the North Korean capital Pyongyang, said: "If I can go out there and find a position of warmth with their people, then perhaps we can find that same position on another level.

"I am hoping North Korea will be willing to engage in discussion, but maybe the world will have to take the first step."

Middlesbrough-born Ms Clarke who, on a visit to Korea this year, presented local people with accordions and guitars as a gift of friendship, added: "In the past, we have looked at things in a military light. When you imagine North Korea, you think of tanks and guns. You don't think of children, of little girls in pink dresses playing in a playground.

"They are very kind, hospitable people, very musical. They love singing, they love dancing and are educated in their isolation, while there is a definite line you can't cross.

"For a lot of these people, life is about how to manage on what food they have.

"You visit them and they tell you their home is your home. Their children are totally delightful, but very disciplined.

"There are two sides to North Korea. They are doggedly determined and an extremely proud people, and very difficult to negotiate with.

"Negotiating what aria to sing over there is difficult enough. Negotiations have taken me to within two minutes of a performance."

Ms Clarke said the only way forward was to talk.

"We don't want to push them any further into a corner, because there is no more corner left, and the further we do it, the worse the situation will be. We have to find another way," she said.

The singer's connections with the nation began when she sang a North Korean Friendship Song for the veterans of the 1966 World Cup football team when they revisited Teesside, in 2002.

There were seven surviving members of the team, which famously knocked favourites Italy out of the 1966 World Cup, at Ayresome Park.