Notes from the Road

Chapter 4: On-the-Spot Guidance

Aug. 3, 2008

One of the things Kim Il Sung (and now Kim Jong Il) apparently loved to do is provide "on-the-spot guidance." This entails visiting some factory or other facility, inspecting it, and then imparting some morsel of wisdom that is superhumanly brilliant. Such visits often comprise the bulk of newspaper and TV reports in North Korea. From the Mansudae Monument (or, as I am coming to think of it, the BB-KIS -- Big Bronze Kim Il Sung), we can see the Chollima statue, a landmark commemorating one such on-the spot session.

As Mr. Ri related the episode, after the Korean War (which, by the way, North Koreans are taught was started by South Korea and/or the U.S.), Kim Il Sung visited the sole functioning steel factory. At the time, it was producing 60,000 tons of steel a year. Kim Il Sung met with the factory bosses and told them that increasing output by 30,000 tons a year would really help North Korea rebuild. But they said that they could only add 10,000 tons a year. Then Kim Il Sung met with the factory workers and told them of his request. The next year, the factory turned out 120,000 tons of steel! The statue of the Chollima, a mythical character akin to a Pegasus and said to be capable of running 400 km a day, was thus erected in honor of the workers.

Next, it was off to Kim Il Sung Square and the Korean Central History Museum, a musty collection tracing the evolution of man from apes up to the 1900s (I guess they believe in evolution here?). Our female, English-speaking guide ushered us through the rooms, diligently explaining how Korea was the "cradle of civilization" and noting that Korea had movable type 200 years before Gutenberg invented his printing (this, in fact, is true). It was a rather tedious tour of pottery and scrolls and whatnot, although one highlight was when our guide stopped to play the best-known Korean folk song, "Arirang," on a metal xylophone. If you've never heard the song, it is beautiful. Here's a YouTube version.

Twice during the tour, our guide stopped at special items designated with red placards. The items, she informed us, were put on view thanks to the "wise guidance" of Kim Il Sung or Kim Jong Il. Father and son must like the museum: According to the giant posters on display, Kim Il Sung had offered on-the-spot guidance 118 times and Kim Jong Il nearly 70 times. I really wanted to quiz our guide and she if she could recite by memory each date the leaders visited. But then I thought, what if she messed up and got punished? Later, we would visit a department store, which had received only three paltry visits from the dynamic duo.

En route back to the hotel for lunch, I saw something that gave me a bit of a shock: An honest-to-god billboard advertisement for a car. Walter, our American tour coordinator who has been to North Korea dozens of times, informs us that the billboard promotes a joint-venture car, the Pyonghwa, assembled in North Korea. The company is majority owned by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church. (To read more about the cars, click here). I wondered: Could this be the hole in the Communist dike, the beginnings of a consumer culture, where products are actually marketed to people? (Even people who aren't allowed to buy them?) And should I feel happy, sad, ambivalent? One thing North Koreans can at least enjoy is a life without the visual clutter of advertising. Of course, this is probably something they will only be able to appreciate in the event they experience life in a capitalist culture.

After lunch in a restaurant in the hotel basement, we are told to pack our things for our overnight trip. But there are more weird rules: Don't turn in your keys, because when we come back tomorrow, you'll have the same room. But no, you can't leave anything in your room. (Not even my poster of Pyongyang, which I bought here.) Mr. Ri could not give me a good reason why I couldn't leave anything in my room. Then he ended up taking my poster and putting it in his room, where apparently it was fine to leave things. I wondered: do they think we'll leave something bad, and if so, what? Democratic propaganda? Messages to the maids? A bomb? Air fresheners in mass quantities? It's a mystery. Or, as Mr. Ri put it to me, "A different social system."

Indeed.

North Korea, Chapter 3: Mr. Kim and Mr. Obama

August 3, 2008

It is nearly impossible to describe Pyongyang to an American without talking about what isn't here. This is not, necessarily, a negative statement. Nor is it a romantic one. It's simply something that becomes apparent gradually as we criss-cross the city in a tour bus: There's no litter. No homeless people camped in doorways or pushing shopping carts down the street. No druggies panhandling in the subway. No honking taxis, no prostitutes sauntering in the dusk, no aggressive souvenir hawkers insisting, "Hey mister, just take a look! One dollar!" No traffic jams, no parking meters, no malls, no neon billboards, nobody walking around with a bluetooth headset, jabbering to people who aren't there. No morbidly obese people. No wannabe gangstas with oversize pants drooping off their rears, no women wearing excessively revealing tank tops. No Starbucks, no 7-Elevens, no Internet cafes, no sign-spinners on the corners, no newspaper boxes on the sidewalks. Instead of the mini satellite dishes that sprout on the balconies of so many American residential high-rises, flowerpots dot the verandas of the apartment blocs here. Instead of the pounding of jackhammers or the roar of bulldozers, the quiet labors of men with simple shovels and pick-axes go plink-plink, tink-tink at construction sites. This is the best of the best. Who knows what life is like in the vast swaths of the city that are off-limits to our foreign eyes?

As if seeing Kim Il Sung dead in a glass box were not enough for one morning, the next major attraction on our (government-set, of course) itinerary is the Mansudae Grand Monument. And grand it undeniably is: a 20-meter-tall bronze statue of the Great Leader, flanked by two massive, three-dimensional sculptures. On the giant Kim's right are larger-than-life figures fighting Japanese colonialism; at the front of the artwork is a triumphant everyman holding aloft the works of Karl Marx. On the giant Kim's left is a similar tableau commemorating the Korean War, but the figure at the head of this piece carries the works of Kim Il Sung. For some time in the 1970s, the Kim statue was covered in gold. But it was stripped off, the story goes, after China's Deng Xiaoping came for a state visit and was so aghast at the ostentatious display that he balked at giving North Korea more aid. For video, click here.

It is customary, our guides insist, to present flowers at the foot of the massive Kim, so en route to the colossus we stop off to buy a bouquet in a nearby square bordered by the Grand People's Study House (aka the national library); Department Store No. 1; the Mansudae Art Theater; and the Mansudae Assembly Hall (or national assembly). As we disembark from the coach, we hear what sounds like the strains of a live brass band coming from the direction of the department store. Making a beeline for the source of the music, we find a dozen or so performers -- trombonists, accordion players, trumpeters -- set up on the sidewalk across from the shop, which is undergoing renovations. Workers on flimsy scaffolding are resurfacing the exterior with mortar hauled up by basic rope-and-pulley systems. Mr. Kim said the musicians were there to encourage the construction crew, who apparently had "volunteered" to toil on Sunday, normally a worker's only day off. Nothing like some revolutionary hymns to take the sting out of working on the weekend!

Back on the bus, we drive by the national assembly building, and Mr. Ri makes a point of noting that the legislature has 687 members who are, of course, elected by the people. He adds that North Korea has not one political party, but three. And while the Korean Worker's Party has been in power since, well, since forever, the other two parties are not opposition parties but "friendly" parties. Just one big happy family! Later, I ask Mr. Kim where and how balloting is held. He says polling places are announced months in advance, and "the person who will be elected" is introduced to the public via biographies in newspapers and on TV and at party meetings.  When I ask if there is any competition, he says, "you can write the name, or you can erase it and write something else. But it has to be unanimous." So, I say, if even one person votes "no," or writes a different name, then that person is rejected? Mr. Kim looks at me as if I am utterly daft and says, with the slightest clip to his voice, "This never happens."

In that instant, I believe, a glint of understanding flashes between us. Yes, this is absurd, he seems to be saying. I know it is absurd. But I am not about to come out and say that. Anything approaching truth must be communicated in a rarefied English, in an exchange dusted with the finest subtlety so as to be unimpeachable should another English-speaking North Korean happen to hear. This, it seems, is a land where a wink or a nod would be so flagrant as to be dangerous.

While discussing North Korean politics is touchy, American politics are apparently free game, and I'm intrigued that our guides know so much about the upcoming presidential election, considering the information vacuum that they live in. They are curious to know which candidates we are supporting, and intrigued to hear that my mom and dad will probably be voting for different parties.  Later, as we are being hustled along to yet another monument, I half-jokingly complain to Mr. Kim that North Korea should let us stay longer than five days so we could see the sights at a more leisurely pace. His reply?  "Well, if Obama becomes president, then I think this will change."

Notes on photos: May Day stadium and Juche Tower; Mansudae Grand Monument; sidewalk band outside Department Store No. 1

 

North Korea, Chapter 2: A Cat Can Look at a King

August 3, 2008

This morning we get to peer, quite literally, at the cold, dark heart of North Korea: We are going to Kumsusan Memorial Palace to view the glass-encased, preserved corpse of the departed "Great Leader."

The theatrics involved in this pilgrimage are intense—starting with the donning of neckties (they're required for the men in our group). Arriving by bus, we find we are far outnumbered by thousands of North Koreans who are coming via streetcar—women in colorful traditional garb, men in matching dark blue polyester pants and shirts, young military recruits in too-big uniforms and hats that nearly swallow their delicate heads. Mr. Kim, one of our guides/minders, says Pyongyangites typically will visit Kumsusan once a year on excursions organized by their work units or clubs. It is no overstatement to say this is hallowed ground for the North Korean regime; one official brochure describes it as a "glorious temple."

From a staging area of covered walkways between the train tracks and the parking lot, we can see the mausoleum in the distance. It is an enormous grey stone structure, surrounded by a moat and with a vast plaza stretched out in front. "Kim Il Sung Will Be With Us Always!" read large signs on either end of the plaza.

We line up four abreast and proceed, perhaps not quite as orderly or as reverently as our guides would have liked, into the first of five or six very lengthy corridors outfitted with airport-style moving walkways and short escalators. The walkways move painfully slowly, but actually walking on the moving walkways is apparently verboten, and walking on the hallway separating the "to" and "from" moving walkways, our guide indicates, is completely out of the question. So we stand on the people-movers and are transported ever so slowly, over 1,000 meters, toward the main attraction. At one point we are "wanded" by security guards.

 

Disembarking from the last moving walkway, we are led over a shoe-cleaning device that is outfitted with green bristles and moist pads to remove dirt from our soles. Then, after surrendering our cameras and even our pocketbooks to the cloakroom girls, we are ushered through a set of huge, ornate doors into a hall lined with grey marble. There is nothing in the cavernous room except, at the far end, a towering, lily-white statue of Kim Il Sung. The Great Leader stands perhaps 20 or 25 feet high, against a backdrop of soft blue and orangy-pink lighting, as if he were the sun itself, rising. (Or is it setting?) Soft music is playing. I think we are supposed to bow before the colossal icon, but I'm too busy gawking to adhere to protocol.

 

Crossing through another massive room lined with grey marble and dominated by a massive staircase, we are taken into the "Hall of Lamentation." Attendants hand us small Sony audio recorders with a taped English message about the death of Kim Il Sung on July 7, 1994, right here in this very building--his former home and office. According to one official brochure, this is the building where Kim Il Sung "resolved with keen insight all problems, big or small, that arose in achieving the Korean people's cause for socialist construction and national reunification...[and] guided important meetings, formulated and published the lines and policies of the Party and the state, and directed the great politics of human love."

The great politics of human love?

The Great Leader, the official story goes, was burning the midnight oil, toiling at his desk at 2 a.m. on behalf of his people when he was stricken. The narrator's tremulous voice tells of the "inconsolable grief of the Korean people," who became almost "lifeless" upon learning of the tragedy. The poured out their sorrow here in this hall, where his body lay in state, and their tears "fossilized" in the floor, which explains, the voice says, why the black marble sparkles today. Kim Il Sung, the voice continues gravely, was "sent from heaven" and will live for eternity. When Kim Jong Il heard the "ardent" appeals of the public, he made the glorious decision to turn the building into a mausoleum. So the windows were bricked up and vast sums were spent remodeling the interior, adding the people-movers and the shoe-cleaners and whatnot. All, of course, as the country was plunging into a deep famine that killed three million people, according to some estimates, and left untold others eating grass, acorns and tree bark. This goes unmentioned.

 

After that buildup, we prepare to enter the inner sanctum. To reach it, we must first pass through what looks like a bank of four elevators or the entry to Star Tours at Disneyland. We step into the small space, and suddenly high-powered air jets fire strong bursts of wind over our entire bodies--dislodging any specks of dandruff or lint that might, mon dieu, fall upon the floor where the Great Leader rests.

 

Thus blow-dried to an acceptable level of cleanliness, we file into a dimly lit, silent cube of a room, stretching perhaps 30 feet tall and paneled in black marble. Uplights cast a deep red glow into the vaulted ceiling. Guards are posted at each corner. The corpse of Kim Il Sung, dressed in suit, lies in a clear box, his illuminated body covered from the shoulders down by a crimson cloth and his waxy-looking head propped up on a white cylindrical pillow. The procession begins from his feet (bow once), stops at his right elbow (another bow), then at his head (no bow here, unclear why), and lastly at his left elbow (final bow). Some women, grasping kleenex, let out small sniffles. Art, one of my fellow travelers who grew up in communist Poland, dismisses them. "Crocodile tears," he said. "They made me cry too, for Stalin."

 

Like a meal with one too many courses, the tour continues into a room lined with display cases filled with medals, proclamations and honorary degrees conferred upon Kim Il Sung by obscure universities and backwater African dictatorships. Large photos of Kim with nefarious personages of the 20th century--Yasser Arafat, Moamaar Kadafi, Haile Selassie--adorn the walls. Lastly, we are shown Kim's personal train car and black Mercedes, parked in front of a huge electronic map illustrating, with multicolored lights, all the trips Kim took by train and plane, domestically and internationally, by year, down to the very last kilometer.

The presentation is so overwhelming, so mind-blowing, that I am actually happy to spend 20 minutes reversing course on the tortoise-like moving walkways, because it gives me a little time to start digesting what I have just seen. Of course, as we are leaving, more crowds are being transported in, and I search  their faces, looking for clues about what they are thinking about the whole experience. Are they impressed, as they are supposed to be? Do they see it as an elaborate charade? Are they simply happy to have a day off from work? After a while, some of us begin an impromptu game: Make the North Koreans smile. We  grin and wave, and even say Annyeong Hashimnika --hello or good morning--in Korean, and see what reactions we can elicit. We get strong responses--lots of waves and smiles back--from younger people, particularly women and teenage girls.

It is a relief: I come away with a little faith that one-to-one, human-to-human contact might still be able to overcome the pablum our leaders feed us.

 

Notes on photos: Pictures of moving walkways, Kim Il Sung statue, awards room and train from KOREA  PICTORIAL, Pyongyang, DPRK, 1997. All other photos by Julie Makinen and traveling companions.

 

 

 

North Korea, Chapter 1: Down the Rabbit-Hole

August 2, 2008

How I wish Alice had come along to help me describe this strange yet unexpectedly beautiful land. It’s a place where past is present, and the future seems past, nothing is quite as it appears, and when you ask someone to explain it all – well, it just gets curiouser and curiouser.

As Air Koryo Flight 156 descends into Pyongyang, it’s hard to believe my eyes. Chartreuse fields of rice and emerald rows of corn stretch out below low, rounded mountains under a baby-blue sky. Skinny rivers snake here and there, sunlight shimmering on their waters, and small towns poke up from the green carpet every so often. Could, hidden in this bucolic tableau, really be all the horrors we Americans think of when we think of North Korea? Are we soaring right above political prisoner camps and starving children and vast underground compounds housing secret nuclear weapons projects, and yet unable to see anything amiss at all?

I’ve been waiting several years to come face-to-face with North Korea. After working on hundreds of stories about the “Hermit Kingdom” and having previous trips fall through, I’m a bit in awe to finally touch down on the tarmac in Pyongyang. This place really does exist in three dimensions, and is home to millions of people, presumably with the same kinds of hopes, dreams and fears as anyone. Traveling here may be proof I’m a tad crazy, but at least I have company: 14 adventurous Yankees, including an octogenarian professor from Chicago and her son; a 74-year-old motorcyclist who grew up in Stalinist Poland; two high-school teachers; a Cincinnati real-estate developer; an arms-control expert; a grocery-store employee and her husband, who owns a drywall business. We are a motley bunch, I suppose, brought together by a shared desire to explore this world to the fullest.

We will be here for five days and four nights—the maximum currently allowed for U.S. tourists. Europeans and others can stay longer and travel to a few more places within the country, but we are all bound by some common restrictions. The first of these comes at the airport, where customs officials confiscate our cell phones. They also want to know if we’re carrying laptops or any other devices capable of communicating with the world beyond. This, of course, is as much about keeping us incommunicado as it is about ensuring North Koreans remain cut off. And yet the outside is being invited in slowly. The small terminal is packed with businessmen from China, Japan and Europe; American scientists coming to monitor disarmament progress; British, Russian and Chinese tourists here for an exotic look-see. Surveying us all enigmatically from the airport’s roof is a huge portrait of “Great Leader” Kim Il Sung, North Korea’s founder, whose cult of personality suffuses this land, even 14 years after his death.

The government travel agency has assigned our group two official “guides,” one of the euphemisms so rife in this country. Mr. Ri and Mr. Kim will keep tabs on us (and each other), show us what the regime wants us to see, and be subject to our questions (answering them, I suppose, is another matter). We’ll also be accompanied by a bus driver and a videographer, who will capture the highlights of our grand tour of the Earth’s most staunchly communist nation and then, in brilliant stroke of state-run capitalism, sell us each a $55 souvenir DVD.

The 14-mile road into the capital is four lanes wide, but there is hardly any traffic. The route’s shoulders, though, are busy with a few bicycles and many more pedestrians—weary construction workers in mud-stained T-shirts toting shovels, women in heels and pantyhose, men in 2-piece dark blue polyester outfits. Where, I wonder, are they all coming from or going to? There seems to be nothing nearby. Someone asks Mr. Kim: Do people normally work until 6:30 p.m.? It depends, he says—the government has staggered people’s work hours to reduce traffic on the roads at rush hour. Boy, I joke with my seatmate, it’s really working—of course, the critical shortage of fuel doesn’t hurt. But then I feel bad. Does it bother Mr. Kim to have to tell such fibs?

Finally we reach the city proper. It’s jaw-dropping to enter a metropolis of 3 million and see no traffic jams, no one jabbering on cell phones, almost no shops and no advertising—unless, of course, you count the billboards on every other corner with huge, colorful propaganda posters and signboards with red Korean characters, all ending with exclamation points, exhorting the populace: Further the grand socialist revolution! It’s eerily yet refreshingly quiet. The scale of the city is hard to convey, but it’s clear this is a place built by people who believe bigger is always better. Expansive boulevards are lined with high-rise concrete apartment blocs. Imposing official buildings sit heavily, hulking with marble. It would all be impressive, yet it seems a cruel layout in a country where people aren’t allowed to own cars. Everywhere, men, women and children are walking, or waiting in lines 50 or more deep for vintage electric-powered buses to drag themselves up the street to their stops. Still, Pyongyang is not without beauty and charms--small rivers lined with willow trees, parks with massive pink lotus plants in bloom. The Taedong River cuts a beautiful swath through the center of the city.

We come at last to a very wide road, perhaps six lanes in each direction. Mr. Ri tells us, with evident pride, that it was built in 1989 for a socialist world youth gathering. Hotels were constructed along the boulevard for attendees, he says, and when they left, they became apartments for 25,000 families—given, of course for free.

Our bus pulls up at a nondescript building that turns out to be a restaurant. The dining room is on the second floor, and I can’t help but wonder: Is that so ordinary people can’t look in and see what we are privileged to eat? (Already, I realize, I am becoming suspicious of everything.)The dining room is done up in Asian kitsch, with karaoke playing on a TV in the corner. The waitresses, dressed in traditional colorful Korean hanbok--long skirts and short jackets—bring us the local brew, Taedonggang, plus, surprisingly, Coke and Sprite. Then comes the onslaught of food: fried dumplings, kimchi, cucumber salad, rice and broth, mixed vegetables in a sticky sauce, tofu, omelettes, mystery meat, some undersized potatoes and a few pitiable corn cobs with misshapen kernels. Dessert is half-frozen tomatoes. Having read that the country is facing its worst harvest in a decade, I’m embarrassed about the vast quantities that remain on the table, even when we all have eaten as much as we can.

As we emerge onto the street, the last flicker of daylight is turning to night, and yet the streets are still packed with people walking. All around us are apartments, but I see not one window glowing with illumination, nor are the streetlamps on. Occasionally a bicycle or moped headlight pierces the dusk. I think: If there is no electricity, must people walk up to their apartments, some 10 or even 20 stories high? How often do they have to make that slog, after walking innumerable miles home?

As we drive toward our hotel, apartment lights begin to flicker on and soon the whole city is glowing dimly—not with a big-city neon garishness, but with the blue-gray hue of florescent bulbs. Then suddenly, all the buildings on the left of the bus go dark. A power cut. I wonder whether it’s a simple blackout, or part of some routine rationing of electricity among neighborhoods. Mr. Kim remarks that it’s unusual to have an outage in the summer, because hydropower provides a good deal of electricity. Left conspicuously unsaid is how bad things get in the winter, when the rivers freeze.

As we near our hotel, Mr. Ri informs us of three rules we must adhere to during our trip.
No. 1.: Take care with any newspapers, magazines or other publications that include pictures of Great Leader Kim Il Sung and his son and current ruler, Dear Leader Kim Jong Il. Perhaps he feared we were already desecrating the publications we received on the airplane, such as this week’s Pyongyang Times. It had 2 front-page stories, the first headlined, “Kim Jong Il Inspects Army Units,” and the second, “Kim Jong Il Sees Russian Dance Performance.” It also had a story deliciously titled “Absurd Act,” which began: “The six-party talks have entered a new phase, but Japan is behaving ridiculously.” Mr. Ri says we must not tear or wrinkle any photos of the leaders in such publications, and we certainly must not dispose of them in the dustbin. I wonder, then, how do people deal with newspapers stacking up, if they can’t throw them away?

Rule No. 2: Ask before taking pictures. Some people, he says, may be insulted by your picture-taking. Apparently by “some people” he means military personnel, because when we passed a small truck ferrying soldiers in its bed on the way to dinner and we all whipped out our cameras, Mr. Ri stood up and waved his hands and yelled, “No Pictures!”

Rule No. 3: Don’t go anywhere without your guides. Not that it would be easy to, considering we’re being housed on an island in the middle of the Taedong.

The Yanggakdo Hotel is one of about three places in the capital where foreign tourists are kept. Built in 1995, it somehow has managed to achieve a 1970s vibe that would make Austin Powers say, “Groovy, baby.” Among the amenities: a basement “rec center” with swimming pool, three-lane bowling alley, billiards bar, table tennis and pachinko room, shoe repair and massage parlor. Plus a deserted casino, built by a Macau tycoon who’s rumored to help Kim Jong Il launder money. On the 46th floor, there’s a revolving restaurant. In the lobby, there’s a post office, a bookshop, a watch shop, film developing lab, DHL service, and a sundries store (highlight: a huge bottle of Adder Liquor, with a snake bottled inside). Outside, a nine-hole golf course awaits.

My room on the 34th floor is clean, if dated, and provides magnificent views of the city, the Taedong, the 150,000-seat May Day stadium and the Juche Tower, an obelisk slightly taller than the Washington Monument and topped with a red flame. It commemorates Kim Il Sung’s “Juche” philosophy, which calls for national self-reliance and independence, apparently at almost any cost—including millions of lives. Still, at 10:30 p.m., I am happy to see that the city has sufficient power to light up the monument as well as countless apartment buildings stretching north and south of the river. I sit down in bed with my notebook, trying to capture all that I’ve seen in just a few hours.

Before I know it, I nod off. I awake at dawn with my notebook in my lap, my pen in my hand and the lights on, feeling guilty about wasting power.