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.
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