Recently in Asia Category

Lisa Ling I have traveled to many places on many continents, but I never felt my personal freedom limited as much as it was during our time in North Korea. North Korea is usually off-limits to foreigners—especially to Americans. In order to film the work of Dr. Ruit, a Nepalese eye surgeon, the only way that I could enter the secretive state was to go undercover posing as part of his medical team. Ruit’s goal is to heal patients in poor countries who have gone blind from cataracts. My cameraman and I hoped that we would also get glimpses of real life in North Korea. It turned out to be one of the hardest assignments I had. The government sent us six (!) minders who accompanied us all the way from Katmandu, Nepal to North Korea and back. In Pyongyang they took away our passports and cell phones. There wasn’t a moment when we could wander off and walk around unobserved. I had to stay within eyesight of the hotel, so I jogged in circles around the compound. This is what prison must feel like. The only North Korean citizens we were officially allowed to film were Dr. Ruit’s patients. The number of people who came to see him was overwhelming. In the developed world cataracts hardly ever cause blindness, and mostly elderly people are affected. Here, children and old people alike had lived in the dark for years. All were hoping for a miracle. We witnessed Dr. Ruit and his team operate on more than one thousand people in only six days. It was an act of unbelievable stamina, and proved Dr. Ruit’s deep-rooted humanity. Then the crucial day arrived. A thousand fearful and expectant patients with their eyes bandaged were gathered in one room. What would happen when the bandages come off? Nobody knew and everybody, including us, held their breaths. Dr. Ruit went up to every single person, talked to each one soothingly – and slowly took off the bandage. One by one, we witnessed the miracle happening. Old women saw their grandchildren and children their parents for the first time after years in the dark. But what was so remarkable was that immediately after regaining their sight, rather than thanking the doctor, people started crying and bowing and giving thanks in front of pictures of the Dear Leader Kim Jong Il and his father, Kim Il Sung as hundreds clapped and cheered in unison. I never saw such an extreme personality cult before.

Willie Theisen - Pittsburgh Zoo Elephant Manager The villagers of the Jalapaiguri district dread the night. That’s when the lumbering giants emerge from the forest to gorge on their crops of rice and corn. In West Bengal, villagers are waging war with marauding elephants that destroy their homes without warning causing the roof or walls to crash in on sleeping families. Villagers awake to the terrifying spectacle of rampaging elephants wrecking their home. They flee in panic grabbing family members who stubble into the chaotic darkness. But in many cases, as the dust settles, families discover that not everyone made it out alive. Tragically, events like these are becoming commonplace in areas of the world where elephants and people live in close proximity. Wild elephants are by nature very peaceful animals and under normal circumstances prefer an existence away from people. They are genuinely good-natured and spend most of their day eating and caring for their young. But in some regions human development and population growth have encroached on elephant territory—depriving them of food sources and creating a situation ripe for conflict. I’ve been caring for zoo elephants for 27 years and could barely believe the stories of these raging elephants--in my experience these creatures were gentle, intelligent giants. I traveled with the National Geographic Explorer crew to India to document the impact of the human/elephant conflict and try and provide some insights into why elephants were attacking people. We joined one of India’s elephant squads that are charged with solving these conflicts while protecting both species—human and elephant. Their job is particularly critical during harvest season when elephants stealthily sneak onto crop fields and feast on the high protein snacks throughout the night. The men must track and maneuver the elephants back into the forests in the dark. The patrols are on call from sunset to well past midnight. But when elephants are reported in a field many of the villagers respond immediately, chasing the elephants away themselves rather than waiting for the experts. By the time the squad arrives, the village is usually electrified, tense, and chaotic. Calming down the villagers, in my opinion, was actually the most difficult part of the squads’ job. They are frightened and ready to defend their turf and the youngsters are all pumped up and eager to chase the elephants. Tarun Mahalanabish, the leader of the Binnaguri squad, has spent many years with the wildlife department and has an intimate knowledge of elephant behavior. He knows the best strategies to move elephants and the importance of keeping them together in a herd to reduce stress and confusion – and he passes on this knowledge to his team, ensuring they all approach these tense situations in the same way. It is important and impressive to note that this particular squad has had no fatal incidents, with elephants or humans, within their zone they patrol—a tribute to the leader’s experience. As I drove with the squad, the first time we spotted an elephant in the headlights of the jeep everyone’s adrenalin levels soared and we pursued the animal to keep it moving. We nicknamed the squad’s jeep driver “Mario Andretti” because he could chase the elephants with incredible skill and speed. While in hot pursuit, the team figures out whether the elephant is a loner or in a herd. Depending on the location, as I soon found out, the team may have to jump out of the jeep and pursue the elephants on foot to move them back to the forests—incredibly dangerous! The squad tries to teach the elephants that the forest is a safe zone where they will not be pursued. I ran with the squad trying to determine how close to follow the elephants, how to keep the team together, and how to best keep the elephants moving. The situation was crazy and I was convinced these guys were out of their minds. They have basically no technology or weapons—just spotlights, firecrackers and shotguns filled with birdshot! The spotlight is actually a car battery wired to a bulb—and that car battery is especially heavy when running through fields. The firecrackers frighten the animals with noise. The shotguns the squad members carry are filled with birdshot, so firing is about as effective as shooting about 30 BB guns. If the elephants decide to stop running and confront the squad, they are totally defenseless—they will get killed. But as the squad leader explained to me chasing them on foot to the edge of the field was the only way to ensure they returned to the forest. Not all squads were this good. Others we worked with had no idea about elephant psychology and just chased the animals chaotically.

Bill Swift - Associate Producer Taking buildings for granted… The idea that a building’s walls will stand up seems as safe a bet as gravity’s pull or the sun’s rising. Most of us don’t worry much about whether our apartments, offices, supermarkets, or schools are going to collapse on us as we go about our daily routines. But should we? National Geographic Channel’s Explorer takes a look at buildings around the world that despite having appeared structurally sound, some for years on end, came crashing down in a moment’s notice. We dig deep into the histories of these buildings to discover why. Collapses around the world… The Sampoong Department store in Seoul, South Korea was one of the swankiest stores in town. It had everything under one roof, from a gourmet grocery to high-end clothing and cosmetic boutiques. Many local Koreans, and in particular the city’s movers and shakers, would drop by for their evening meals and errands.

Remains of the Sampoong Department Store.

That is, until the evening of June 29th, 1995, when in less than 20 seconds, the mall came crashing down with an estimated 1,500 unsuspecting shoppers and employees inside. Not just a single floor or area, but five stories of the North wing pancaking into the four basements, killing more than 500 people and injuring over 900. There was no sign of a natural disaster, terrorist act, or a wrecking ball in sight. Yet one minute the department store was bustling with diners and shoppers and the next, all five floors were a heap of rubble. It is considered the worst structural collapse of a building in modern history. We pulled out our magnifying glass to examine this disaster and two other collapses –the Hyatt Regency in Kansas City Missouri—considered the deadliest structural failure of a building in the United States—and the recent Charles de Gaulle Airport collapse Terminal 2E in Paris, France. Off to Seoul… Despite its shocking death toll, the details of the Sampoong disaster are nearly undocumented in the US media. So to find out what happened – what made this seemingly sound building collapse without a moment’s notice—we decided to pay our own visit to where the disaster occurred. We arrived in Seoul, South Korea in the spring of 2005. The city is home to over 10 million Koreans, about one fifth of the country’s population. A trip from one end of the city to the other can take up to two hours and parts of the journey can be made along a contiguous string of passages and buildings. Seoul’s breathtaking skyline is dotted with magnificent skyscrapers and towers. Dubbed as one of the “Tiger economies” of Asia in the 1980s, South Korea saw foreign investments pouring in as the country surged economically, even hosting the Summer Olympic Games in 1988. This global attraction galvanized a building boom, producing the cosmopolitan Seoul we know today –with its sprawling street mazes, bridges, and skyscrapers. The evening and morning traffic in today’s Seoul could rival that of Los Angeles or New York City. Luckily, to navigate this urban infrastructure, we had the help of our van driver Mr. Lee—friend to many foreign journalists and celebrity to many locals. The cars fly left and right as he forges his way through gridlock, aided by a flashing light and bullhorn, which he uses to declare a “media emergency” when escorting journalists on deadline. Many of the local police officers even seem sympathetic to his mission and let him through. With the help of Mr. Lee, we wove between the towering structures of Seoul relatively unscathed. Downplaying the adversity—the tragedy and trauma… For the most part, the Koreans we spoke with were very kind, letting us into their lives to record their stories. At the same time, however, many of the Sampoong survivors struggled to speak frankly about their experiences—the destruction and their personal loss. Perhaps reflecting on the trauma is too overwhelming. Or they’re reluctant to add their stories to a list of other tragedies in Korea from the last decade – a subway gas explosion and fire (set by a mental patient and killing over 120) in the southern city of Taegu in 2003 and the Songsu cantilever bridge collapse that caused dozens of casualties in 1994, just before the Sampoong disaster. We met with a number of the collapse survivors and heard some amazing stories. Unfortunately, we couldn’t include them all in the Explorer episode. One woman left a particular impression with me – Mrs. Ha. She was a thriving entrepreneur, running two very successful snack shops in the Sampoong building. She recalled the day’s events with incredible repose. She was dropping a package off in the basement garage when a security guard told her the building was going to collapse. He wasn’t going to let her back in, but Ms. Ha insisted on re-entering the building to tell her employees to evacuate. With an ironic twist of fate, her employees narrowly escaped, but Ms. Ha was caught in the basement during the collapse and had to find her way out through one of the emergency stairwells. For our interview, Ms. Ha was confident and composed, but it wasn’t until our cameras were turned off that she began to weep. The collapse had devastated her way of life. The settlement she received following the disaster didn’t come close to being enough to recoup the life, and lifestyle, she had before.

An actress portrays Ms. Seung-Hyeon Park, an employee at the Sampoong Department Store who was buried in the rubble for 17 days without food or water before she was found.

It’s very difficult working on a story like this, particularly in a foreign culture. You struggle to tread the line of being a good journalist and asking the difficult questions, while respecting the cultural sensibilities of privacy and the intimacy of tragedy and trauma. How to tell the story… We wanted our viewers to get a sense of what things were really like on the day of the collapse, to convey the sense of tragedy and trauma the survivors experienced, through a re-creation of the scene. Obviously, there weren’t any cameras filming on the day of the collapse or recording underneath the debris as survivor Seung-Hyeon Park awaited rescue. A Hollywood backlot with an earthquake set would have been helpful to shoot these scenes. Instead, we had to create a realistic set for the re-creation and do it with the limited resources we’ve got here at National Geographic. It took real creativity and a lot of teamwork. Luckily among our staff, we had someone whose father’s a Hollywood set designer and happened to be coming to town. We won't give away his secrets, but with a crew of carpenters, painters, interns, staff members and friends all joined together, we managed to re-create a Korean disaster here in Washington. Seoul post-Sampoong? So what happened in Seoul after the Sampoong disaster? The department store owners and the affiliated government officials were indicted. There was indeed a call for tighter regulations and oversight of the building codes and those who enforce them. It’s not certain, however, if the new policies are working. Recent newspaper articles, memorializing the 10th anniversary of the disaster, decry the lack of enforcement of the legal codes instituted since then. Professor teaching a new generation… But there are individuals in the industry looking to ensure that history doesn’t repeat itself. Central to our exploration was Professor Lan Chung, one of the lead investigators of the Sampoong collapse and currently the Dean of the School of Architecture at Dankook University. We sat in on one of Professor Chung’s very well-attended lectures on the Sampoong disaster. Professor Chung is committed to educating future architects and engineers about past mistakes and future pitfalls to avoid. The packed lecture hall seemed to prove students are eager not to follow in the footsteps of their predecessors. And for the future of architecture? As modern materials and engineering allow architects and designers to build bigger, better and more aesthetically-pleasing structures, are we pushing the limits of technology too far? There’s no clear cut answer. According to Dr. Roger McCarthy, Chairman Emeritus of the California based engineering consultancy firm, Exponent, Inc., modern architects want to create awe-inspiring building designs that are seemingly held up by magic. Dr. McCarthy warns those in this quest: “Anytime you take a design closer and closer to the limit of the material, any time you shrink a factor of safety… with each foot closer to the edge of the cliff, place each foot down very carefully.” Leaving Seoul…Things we take for granted… We left the Sampoong rubble behind, equipped with inspiring survival stories and lessons from engineers and architects alike. Returning to the Incheon International Airport to catch our flight home, I marveled at the airport’s architecture. Just five years old, the new international airport is awe-inspiring – replete with glass ceilings, towering arches, and expansive LCD monitors lining the moving walkways. Coincidentally, I was reminded, as I traveled the passageways through the terminal, that this building was another masterpiece of Architect Paul Andreu – the same architect who designed Terminal 2E of the Charles de Gaulle International Airport in Paris. The same terminal which came crashing down unexpectedly in 2004… Should I have been afraid? Concerned for my safety? Possibly, but oddly enough, I wasn’t. I was hardly bothered at all. While architectural disasters that occur once in a blue moon are traumatic, they are very rare. Even after having completed all the research for this program, I want to trust the engineering feats of the architects embodied in the structures that surround us. Particularly the ones for public use. I’m happy to see engineers and architects take on new challenges, creating more beautiful buildings for us to enjoy. I choose to trust the structural integrity of most architecture, but I temper that with an awareness of my surroundings, and if a building is crying out, making noises, showing signs of sagging, cracking and leaking, I’ll get out quickly.

Bijal Trivedi - National Geographic Channel

“There is a history book in your DNA [that reveals] how people are related to each other all over the planet and how we have moved around,” - Spencer Wells

Analyzing DNA from the cheek cells of a group of Mongolians enabled geneticist Spencer Wells, an Explorer-In-Residence at the National Geographic Society, to figure out whether they were indeed descendants of the notorious warrior who lived 800 years ago and thousands of miles away. Such exotic historical enigmas are daily fodder for Wells who is in the midst of the Genographic Project (GP)—a massive undertaking to sample human DNA from around the world to illuminate human genetic and migratory history. “There is a history book in your DNA [that reveals] how people are related to each other all over the planet and how we have moved around,” says Wells. The last 10,000 years are of particular interest to Wells who, since childhood, wanted to be an historian. “I was fascinated by Egypt and Greece and Rome and all of these great empires and I’m very interested in the impact of these empires on the patterns of genetic variation—for example, can we see traces of the Phoenicians in North Africa?” says Wells. His latest adventures have led him to discover that Thomas Jefferson’s ethnic background is not quite as one would expect. He has hunted down possible descendents of Solomon, the third king of Israel. And, he has entered a world where science and religion converge—the search for what he calls the “scientific Adam,” the man who gave rise to all men today and the “trunk” of the human family tree. Wells has used DNA to trace this common ancestor back to Africa and perhaps to the very plains where he may have hunted. He has even identified a living tribe with an ancient lineage that offers a window into the life of “scientific Adam”—and, the face of one of the tribe members served as a model to determine what he may have looked like.

Face of Adam image created by Animetrics.

Unlike medical geneticists who study genetic changes that cause morphological differences or diseases, population geneticists like Wells study genetic changes that don’t have any effect at all. These changes, called genetic markers, are created by random mutations in the DNA and are passed down through the generations. Each population accumulates its own distinctive set of markers. As these mutations are pretty rare, if two people share one of these markers that suggests they share an ancestor. By comparing DNA samples from many different populations, Wells hopes to reveal the shape of the human family tree, from twigs to trunk. Wells has traveled the world studying genetic patterns for about the past 15 years. He’s completed fieldwork in central Asia, India, and the Middle East collecting samples from about 10,000 people. Analysis of these samples revealed a broad-brush view of how man originated in Africa and moved around planet to Australia and Central Asia. “But,” says Wells, “10,000 samples isn’t enough to reveal details about how we are all related and moved around.” To figure out the details he proposed a project that required 100,000 samples—the Genographic Project. As part of the GP, 10 centers scattered around the globe will each take blood samples from 100-200 indigenous populations (50 to 100 individuals per population) over the next five years. Together the project should yield data on at least 100,000 individuals. Everyone knows a little about their parents, grandparents, and maybe even their great grandparents—but beyond that is a historical realm. “People always ask ‘it must be really tough to get samples from tribes in remote regions’ but that’s not true. When you explain to people that they are carrying this history book in there genome, in their blood, and that you can help them read it they are fascinated—most people want to participate.” “I’ve sampled in Lebanon and Christians and Muslims alike want to know if they are related to the Phoenicians—they are intrigued by the chance they could be a descendent of this great imperial power,” says Wells. Similarly on the island of Pate, off the coast of Kenya near the Somalia border, the people have an oral tradition that they are related to Chinese sailors who washed ashore on 400-foot ships and married local women. Wells discovered that the residents of Pate don’t have any Chinese Y chromosomes but they have Y-chromosomes from everywhere else—India, Pakistan, the Middle East, and Europe. However, the presence of 15th century Chinese pottery on the island suggests that there may be truth to the tales and more genetic sampling is needed. “Genographic is not really a genetics project. It is using genetics as a tool to study history and anthropology. I’m interested in the impact of the Inca empire on the genetic patterns in upper Amazonia, in Central Asia I want to look at the impact of Alexander the Great,” says Wells as he rattles of a hit list of historical mysteries that he hopes to solve. The GP has taken on a particular urgency because of massive migrations currently in progress. People are leaving their ancient homelands, moving to the cities, and becoming part of the melting pot. As people marry individuals from other cultures genetic patterns are quickly scrambled. If Wells can’t identify the location where a particular genetic pattern arose, it becomes tricky to identify how different ethnic groups are related to one another. “This makes the job of a population geneticist very difficult because though you carry your genes with you, you lose the context in which that genetic variation arose,” says Wells. A symptom of this mixing is the rapid decline in the number of spoken languages in the world. In the year 1500, linguists estimate 15,000 languages were spoken; today there are 6,000. By the end of the century about half to 90% of those are going to be extinct, says Wells. “We are going through a period of cultural mass extinction. We have a narrowing window of opportunity to collect genetic samples from indigenous populations where people have stayed put for a very long period of time.” Wells hopes that by studying the DNA from these groups he can locate where particular genetic changes occurred and when, which will reveal how our ancestors migrated around the planet. To date, Wells has visited about 50 countries to sample different genetic lineages. Of all the indigenous tribes he has met, the Hazabe of Tanzania have had the greatest impact on Wells. “I have hung out with other Bushmen and they are fascinating. But most of them don’t actually live the hunter-gatherer lifestyle. They can still mock it up for a film crew but none of them actually live in villages. The Hazabe live as hunter-gatherers. They are actually pulling up trees and carving bows and arrows and they make fire by rubbing sticks together, it is amazing and it really does give you an insight into the way people probably lived 50 or 60 thousand years ago.” You don’t need to be a member of an indigenous tribe to participate in the Genographic Project. Log onto National Geographic's Genographic Project to find out how you can contribute to the scientific endeavor of deciphering the human family tree and, learn about your ancestors.