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Dutch magician performs for North Korean kids, proving you can find joy just about anywhere

Jesper Grønkjær’s sense of humor and awe has inspired smiles around the globe.

Jesper Grønkjær performs magic for children in North Korea.

North Korea is the most oppressive place in the world, and its people lack freedom of speech, press, or movement. The government, headed by Kim Jong Un, controls all aspects of its citizen's lives, and those who stand up against the regime are punished harshly. It’s also hostile to people outside the country for fear that outside ideas could destabilize the regime.

The country is so isolated from the rest of the world that it just recently opened its border to allow a small number of tourists to visit its Special Economic Zone for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2024, North Korea demonstrated its alliance with Russia by permitting more than 800 of its citizens to visit the isolated nation.

Another of North Korea’s recent visitors was Dutch magician and adventurer Jesper Grønkjær, who set out to see if he could manage to get a smile from its citizens. “I’ve spent my life proving one universal truth: a smile is the shortest distance between all people on Earth,” Grønkjær said.

"We know you can suppress people, but you can't suppress a smile. I will investigate that, and where better to do it than in one of the strictest countries in the world?” he opens his video on the Freeport Traveler YouTube page. When Grønkjær visited North Korea, he was accompanied by two guards wherever he went, and his passport was taken from him. At night, he was locked in his hotel like a jail cell. However, he still elicited huge grins from children and adults alike as he wowed them with magic tricks with animal balloons, a stuffed ferret, red foam balls, card tricks, and much of his joyful brand of Abracadabra.

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

While visiting North Korea, Grønkjær watched the country’s “Day of the Sun Celebrations” at Kim Il-Sung Square in North Korea. Held each year on April 15th, the holiday celebrates the birthday of Kim Il-Sung, the country's founder, and features dancing, military tests, parades, and concerts. For North Koreans, the holiday is akin to Christmas.

Grønkjær’s trip to North Korea isn’t the only exotic and potentially dangerous place where he has performed magic. He has also performed for Indigenous people in Peru, the descendants of the Incas in the Andes mountains, and the Masai warriors in Tanzania. The magician of 20 years has also performed for orphanages in Uganda, the jungles of Irian Jaya, the ice caps of Greenland, and the Las Vegas strip.


Grønkjær uses his adventurous expeditions as subject matter for his various lectures, print articles, and appearances on Danish television. When he’s back home, he performs more than 225 nights a year for family events, circuses, weddings, and corporate parties.

In a world where it can feel like the people in North Korea, Tanzania, Peru, or Denmark are a world away culturally and politically, Grønkjær’s work shows that no matter where you live on the planet or what language you speak, we all share the same sense of wonder and humor. While nefarious forces in the world work to drive us apart, he proves it takes very little for all of us to realize our shared humanity.

Sting has brushed off his 1986 hit song "Russians" because it's unfortunately relevant again.

I was a teen when the Cold War ended, so my childhood memories are marked by the ever-present threat of nuclear war with Russia. This was pre-internet, obviously, so we didn't have easy, direct access to people in different countries around the world like we do now. It's probably hard for younger generations to imagine, but the only Russians we ever saw were in TV shows and movies, and maybe occasionally on the nightly news.

Spoiler alert: They were not usually portrayed favorably. Russia was our country's longtime mortal enemy, after all. The Red Scare was over, but anti-communist and anti-Russian sentiment in the U.S. still lingered.

However, in the mid-1980s there was a peace movement that influenced—and was influenced by—artists and entertainers. We saw Russian ballet dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov's humanity in the movie "White Nights" in 1985. And we were compelled to consider that Russians were really no different from us on a human level in Sting's 1986 song, "Russians."


The former frontman of The Police included the song on his debut solo album "The Dream of the Blue Turtles," and he told the British daily newspaper the Express that the song was inspired by his watching illegal broadcasts of Russian children's television shows.


"I had a friend at university who invented a way to steal the satellite signal from Russian TV," he told the Express. "We'd have a few beers and climb this tiny staircase to watch Russian television. At that time of night we'd only get children's Russian television, like their 'Sesame Street'. I was impressed with the care and attention they gave to their children's programmes."

Hence the iconic line about hoping the Russians love their children too.

The song fit the era perfectly, coming out the year after "We Are the World" and a few years before the Cold War finally came to an end. Listening to it has always felt like looking at a snapshot of a specific moment in time, with time giving it a bit of the sepia tone of a bygone era. But now here we are again, with the threat of nuclear war with Russia hanging over our heads. And here we are again with anti-Russia sentiment too easily morphing into anti-Russians sentiment, making Sting's "Russians" almost feel like it could have been written yesterday (minus the references to "the Soviets" and Reagan).

It's a little easier this time around to remember the humanity in the people on the other side, especially seeing how many Russian soldiers have been young conscripts with no idea what they were being sent to Ukraine to do. But there are still people lumping the Russian people in with the sins of their government, which is both unfair and inhumane. Many Russians are victims of intense state-run media propaganda and censorship of outside information sources and genuinely have no idea what's really happening in Ukraine. Many people in Russia who do understand what is happening have risked their lives protesting the war, with arrests of protesters growing into the thousands.

Sting shared a new live performance of the song with a message that reflects what many of us are feeling.

"I’ve only rarely sung this song in the many years since it was written, because I never thought it would be relevant again," he wrote. "But, in the light of one man’s bloody and woefully misguided decision to invade a peaceful, unthreatening neighbor, the song is, once again, a plea for our common humanity. For the brave Ukrainians fighting against this brutal tyranny and also the many Russians who are protesting this outrage despite the threat of arrest and imprisonment - We, all of us, love our children. Stop the war."

It's a beautiful rendition. And for those who may not know, the cello part of the song is actually a theme from "Lieutenant Kijé Suite" by Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev.

The combination of war and media can influence people's thinking about a group of people. In war times, it's far too easy to start dehumanizing people on one side or the other, especially when one side is quite clearly the aggressor.

But everyday people don't choose to go to war. Those decisions are made by government and military leaders, with no input from the people they are charged to protect and defend. So we have to guard ourselves against blaming an entire people for the evil deeds of those in charge.

Calls to our common humanity are always needed, but they're especially needed in times of war.

Photo by Phil Hearing on Unsplash

Donated strollers provide some respite to weary Ukrainian parents.

A parent's love knows no bounds and that sentiment is on full display as mothers and grandparents trek through unfamiliar territories fleeing the war in their home country of Ukraine. The images coming out of Ukraine and the bordering countries of the refugees are heartbreaking. Despair, confusion and heartache are etched across the faces of loving parents, grandparents, sisters and brothers. Grief is palpable as seen in the videos and images on our screens, but some volunteers in Poland are helping families experience their first sense of reprieve since Russia invaded Ukraine.

Moms across the globe know what it’s like to care for a tired, scared or cranky child. They especially know how it feels to parent while you are also tired, scared or cranky. Not many of us understand what it feels like to parent through an active war, or while fleeing from your home country, but every parent can empathize with what these families must be going through. Several volunteers in Poland took it upon themselves to ease the literal and figurative load of the parents seeking refuge from Ukraine by leaving strollers on a train platform. Many of the strollers were filled with blankets and other things a parent may need, but wouldn't have had the space to carry while fleeing their country.


It’s currently estimated that more than 1.5 million people fleeing Ukraine have entered neighboring countries over the past 10 days. The number of refugees who have entered Poland from Ukraine is expected to reach 1 million in the coming days. Poland has been the recipient of the largest number of refugees since the invasion of Ukraine began.

The empathetic gesture by these volunteers in Poland stands in stark contrast to the war happening in Ukraine. News of this thoughtful act came from a photographer, Francesco Malavolta, after he shared a poignant photo to his Twitter account. He later shared another photo of fully decked out strollers waiting for tired moms and children along the border of Poland and Ukraine. The display of compassion from one human to another is soul soothing.


People from all over the world are trying to find ways to help the Ukrainian people. Outside of the strollers being left for weary refugees, there are people utilizing digital means to put money in the pockets of the people of Ukraine. Some people are buying digital goods from Etsy, while others are renting out Airbnbs with the sole purpose of spending their dollars in a way that directly benefits Ukrainian individuals.

While strollers stuffed with goodies won’t end the war or bring families back together, moms will be able to lay their babies down, giving their arms, backs and souls some respite.

Russian police forces in Moscow suppress demonstrators.

Ukrainian citizens aren’t the only ones standing in defiance of the Russian invasion on Ukraine. Thousands of Russian citizens have defied Vladimir Putin’s one protester rule, and have been protesting the war in Ukraine en masse. And obviously, this isn’t just any protest.

Here in America, we can protest just about anything, just about any place we deem fit to feel our discontent. Unless people become unruly or destructive, there generally aren’t arrests or violence. As long as the group you’ve gathered is protesting peacefully, it is within your rights to remain unbothered by whatever authority may be present to ensure peace.

In Russia, protests that consist of more than one person are illegal and expressly outlawed in all forms. There have been reports of people protesting and never returning. Russian citizens are swiftly jailed and oftentimes injured during the arrest. There have been videos of people screaming as they are being carted away by the police, some have speculated that they are screaming because they aren’t sure they’ll return. No matter why they’re screaming, it’s obvious from the videos that protesting in Russia is dangerous, and the fact that these people are willing to risk their lives to speak up for their neighbors is admirable.



Currently, more than 6,400 Russians have been arrested for protesting since the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.On one day alone, more than 2,000 people were arrested in 48 cities across the country for protesting, according to OVD-info, a rights group. The rights group was deemed a foreign agent last year due to Putin’s opposition to activists, rights groups and opposition figures. The bans on protests and activist groups haven’t slowed down the increasing demand from the Russian people to end the war in Ukraine.

Tennis star Andrey Rublev showed his disapproval of the war by writing “no war please” on a camera after his win in Dubai. Rublev is the seventh best male tennis player in the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) and the on-camera writing came days after protests began in Russia. The people of Russia are feeling emboldened enough to stand against a war that they do not support in a way that can cause them physical harm, and at the very least certain jail time.

While in Moscow protestors were often outnumbered by the police, they dared to show their very real anger with the war by shouting, yelling and displaying signs with anti-war sentiments scrawled across them. Some protesters even wore masks with the word “enough” written on them. Outside of a department store in St. Petersburg, protesters stood shoulder to shoulder, linking arms and chanting.

Protests spread much further than Russia, as thousands of people protested in the streets across Europe in opposition to the war. Russia has been levied heavy sanctions from across the globe; even Switzerland, a country famous for its neutrality, spoke out against the war. It’s been heartwarming to see all of the support the Ukrainian people are receiving, but the most unexpected support is coming from within Russia itself.