North Korea aficionado Roger Barrett is simmering with anger as he takes his seat in a hotel-foyer bar in Beijing. He's become increasingly wary of journalists of late - this one in particular. Despite his obvious fury, however, he is looking much improved from a few days ago.
Then, standing behind the customs barrier at Pyongyang International Airport in the grey 6am light, Barrett, a former British army officer and graduate from the elite Royal Sandhurst Military Academy, looked anything but. He was rumpled and looked as if he'd just spent all night in a dimly lit, smoky basement bar in a whacky frontier town negotiating cash deals and the release of hostages.
As it happened, that's exactly how the venture capitalist had spent the night, the last of a bizarre business-golfing long weekend to North Korea.
BARRETT RUNS THE Beijing-based Korea Business Consultants, a small company that seeks to do business with Kim Jong-il's defiant nuclear outpost. He recently took a small group of, mainly British, businessmen to North Korea for the First Business-Golf Challenge - just two weeks after the country's underground atom-bomb test of October 9. The four-day trip was designed to allow the foreign investors to hobnob and do deals with the 'Dear Leader's' small band of freemarket entrepreneurs: those mandarins charged with bringing in much-needed investment to prop up the ailing economy.
The pressure on Barrett was immense; obtaining visas to a harsh, post-Stalinist, nuclear-capable, axis-of-evil member would be enough to send a lesser man to the psychologist couch. Arranging a weekend that included the most potent symbol of capitalism - a networking game of golf - had been far more tricky.
Many old North Korean hands say you have to possess a certain kind of lunacy to deal in any way with the communist throwback nation. They say it is not unusual to be granted your visa just an hour or two before the departure of one of the three weekly flights from Beijing to Pyongyang - the only air link into North Korea. Yet, as the world ganged up on Kim and threatened more sanctions - and as aid agencies warned of a looming humanitarian disaster - Barrett pulled off the impossible. He led an assorted, merry band of businessmen seeking new frontiers and contacts into a country that offers a highly disciplined, skilled workforce and lower wages than China.
The trip went well, all things considered, and he arrived back at his Beijing office relieved that his latest venture had turned out - in his eyes, at least - to be a resounding success. Then the phone rang. On the end of the line was a member of the business delegation, who was now exposing himself as a reporter. My fall from grace was rapid.