It is the second day of my vacation in North Korea. It’s lunch time already.
Our guide brought us to a seafood restaurant that supposedly serves the most
delicious chicken’s feet on the eastern coast. Our hopes were dashed almost as
soon as we arrived. On each table there was a single plate of lukewarm fried
fish and squid. but this disappointment was soon overcome with further surprise
when very delicious mandu (dumplings) were served. Observing this, it was hard
for me to understand why the restaurant is called a seafood place.
Before we began to move to another place,
we got word that we would have a bit of free time to do as we pleased. Hearing
this, I ate as fast as possible and went outside to take advantage of the rare
opportunity. There was a group of tourists out there. They had name tags
written in Korean and were chatting with one another in Korean. I was overcome
with curiosity so I asked them, “Are you from South Korea?” They responded, “No
we’re from China.” I found out that the were ethnic Koreans living in the
Chinese city of Yanji. I asked about the definition of the characters on the
picture above and my new friends informed me it said, ‘Il-sim-dan-gyeol,’ or strength
through unity.
Sightseeing without the direct supervision
of our guide turned out to be an enjoyable experience. I double checked that
our guide was still inside eating before grabbing my camera and heading back
outside. I wanted to go and check out a plaza we had seen on the way into town
while on the bus. It looked like a plaza with statues of the Kims.
When I was walking in that direction, I saw
a soldier across the street. I was a bit nervous because rogue travelers have
been known to get into trouble. I just strolled down the street in a calm
manner and didn’t change my pace. Thankfully, he passed by without incident.
I went to see the statues and began to head
back to the restaurant to meet up with the rest of the team. I made eye contact
with a woman wearing high heels along the way. She was continuing to gaze at
me. She said, “I’m a guide. But I’m not a Chinese language guide, I’m an
English language guide.” I realized that this guide might be able to get me in
trouble for roaming about unsupervised. I made the excuse that I was in a rush
to get back to the group.
We walked to the restaurant together. I
tried to ask her a question but she couldn’t speak Chinese very well, so I told
her to just answer in English. She was surprised and responded by asking, “You
can speak English?” I think that most North Koreans believe that Chinese people
don’t know how to speak English. The day prior, when I explained to the head
guide that I could speak English, he was taken aback. Of course, the Chinese
education system is more advanced that the North Korean education system. I
don’t know why the North Koreans judged that we would be unable to speak
English. Even in the old days I heard a joke that North Koreans recognize that
America, Japan and South Korea are more powerful, but will never admit the
power of China. This experience seemed to vindicate the underlying message of
that joke.
The guide then began explaining in English. It was a simple thing, but she
wasn’t able to say it properly. I was shocked that she was “an English speaking
guide.”
Over the course of our six-day trip, this
was our only opportunity to see a passenger train. It was not in motion. There
are a lot of train tracks in North Korea. Everywhere you look, you can see them
crisscrossing this way and that. But we never saw a passenger train actually
operating in motion on any of them.
Our luck was good because it was harvest
season. This yellow field leaped out at us as we drove past. It was very
pretty.
However, as soon as we passed that pretty
yellow field, we came across this field of grain, which was infertile and
drying up. A nearby stream is available to help water the field, but it was
still dying.
North Korean farmers are still living on
the public distribution system. They are allotted food according to their time
worked. So no matter how hard they work, if the harvest goes great, they still
only receive the same fixed portion. They can’t take back a portion of the
harvest they helped to reap. In such a system, who would be motivated to work hard?
That’s why even grain fields in ideal conditions go bad like the one pictured
above.
After our trip to Wonsan, we came upon a
coastal road. The east coast is freckled with mountains. So the coastal highway
is located up on the seaside mountains. Aside from certain special zones, I
don’t think most of the east coast is accessible. Between the coastal highway
and the beach, there are barbed wire fences. And there were two guards
patrolling the region as well.
Aside from us tourists, the beach was totally empty. I asked why there weren’t
any North Korean people around. The guide said that usually the beaches are
packed but they stayed home because of the cold weather.
We stopped for a minute when we entered the
Kumgang Mountain area and I took a shot of this two kids. They were carrying
large bags.
We arrived at the Kumgang Mountain Tourism
Region. This region also has military jurisdiction. To get through it, you have
to pass by two guard stands. Our guide was very strict and severe about us not
taking pictures as we passed through the guard stations. He said we could be
executed for it.
In the past, only South Korean tourists
could come to enjoy this region. But in 2008, a South Korean woman was shot to
death and ever since then the inter-Korean tourism project has been shut down.
The tourism center was reopened in 2012 with the caveat that mostly everyone
except South Koreans could visit.
A hotel in the Kumkang Mountain tourism
region. Soldiers with guns were on guard in the area.
The first floor of the hotel. This picture
came out dark because the interior was quite dark. The hotel did not always
have access to electricity.
We arrived at the hotel at 3 pm. The guide
informed us that the electricity would turn on at 4 pm and then off again at 11
pm. Our assigned room was on the 8th floor. Our bags were quite heavy but
we had no choice but to use the stairs until the electricity came online again.
So we decided to wait until 4 in the lobby.
We were riding the elevator when it
suddenly stopped on the 7th floor. The light turned off inside the elevator
cabin and it became quite dark. The electricity had gone out again and the
elevator had become stuck. I was shaking with fear. Thankfully there were
people outside the elevator. They went to get someone from the hotel to help
us. We tried to be still as we waited but were all very concerned that the
elevator would fall. So we tried to open the elevator door from the inside. We
pulled the doors open using all our strength and hobbled out.
We didn’t use the elevator for the rest of
our two day stay. At one point, the elevator became stuck again when others
were riding and a hotel staff member opened the door using a tool. It was a
very procedural kind of service. It seemed as if he’d done it many times
before.
The inside of our hotel room. We had a
television, which only had access to two channels: channel four and channel
five. One was the state broadcasting station and the other was the BBC, which
we didn’t completely understand because it was in very fast English. The TV had
access to foreign stations because it was for the exclusive use of foreigners,
but the rooms for North Koreans only had access to the state broadcasting
station.
The hotel in the picture was made by a
South Korean company. The North-South cooperative project for the reunions of
estranged families began here in 1998. According to our guide, the reunions
have stopped because of worsening ties on the peninsula. He said that the hotel
is no longer in use.
As the guide talked about the worsening
relations of the two Koreas, he continued to bring up two people. The first was
former President Lee Myung Bak and the second was current President Park Geun
Hye. He cursed the presidents for ruining inter-Korean relations in their
attempts to seize power. I thought about whose fault it really is…Kim Jong Un
came to mind…
I wanted to take a walk outside before
dinner, but I decided not to go far after seeing a guard stand not close to the
hotel premises. Dinner was five different kinds of banchan, or side dishes. It
was a generous portion, but everything was cold. I was still hungry after
dinner, so I went to a local meat restaurant afterwards.
