Miss Choe met us at our rooms and led us to the hotel restaurant. “Sorry, it’s not open yet,” she apologized, and seated herself next to Mr. Sok at the entrance. I was looking for some topic of conversation, and remembered what a Japanese film critic had once told me: North Korea had a much wider variety to offer in terms of traditional Korean dog-meat dishes than did the South. Miss Choe seemed perplexed. “You really think Koreans eat dogs?” she said in response to my line of conversation. “Who told you that?”
“Well, it’s kind of common knowledge in the West,” I said. “I was actually told by a Japanese film festival visitor who came here a few years ago.”
“Who was that?”
“Um, sorry-I forgot the name. Is that information wrong?”
“This person is a liar!” said Miss Choe, a little upset. “We don’t eat dogs!”
Feeling somewhat sorry for having pursued that particular topic of conversation (and the fact I was unlikely to experience the delicacy of dog meat in North Korea, just as I had failed to do so far in the South), I walked over to a big display on the wall featuring a rocket.
“What’s this?” I asked, trying to make the question sound as innocuous as possible.
“This is the satellite we shot into orbit,” Miss Choe replied dutifully, “although the Japanese imperialists claim it is a war rocket. They try to hurt our country with their war-mongering propaganda…”
“What was the satellite for?” I inquired further. The reply was simply “Umm…”
I proposed that it might have been for scientific purposes, although to me it just looked like a regular military rocket.
“Oh, yes,” said Miss Choe. “Scientific purposes.”
The doors to the restaurant eventually swung opened, relieving Miss Choe of anymore uncomfortable questions. “You have table eighteen,” she said as she waved Nicolas and myself through. “Good night.”
The food was vaguely Western and not very good. A middle-aged European couple, who looked none-too happy, were sat at the table next to us. We quickly fell into conversation with them. He was a basketball trainer from Yugoslavia, he said, unable to find a job in his home country because of recent political upheavals and resulting economic troubles. He explained that at an international championship, the North Koreans had approached him and offered him good money if he would live and train one of their teams here for a year. He made the deal. Together with his wife he had been living in the Pyongyang Hotel for only six weeks, and both were already looking forward to the end of the contract.
“How good is the pay?” I asked.
“It’s good,” he replied, “but when the year is over, we will have to spend it all on a psychiatrist. And maybe on our divorce.” They laughed.
Each had their own guide watching over them. Of course, sometimes they would manage to sneak away and breathe some fresh air alone- but that was rare.
A short but stocky man who was drunk came to our table. “U menya Sasha,” he introduced himself, babbling away in Russian, not caring whether we understood him. From what we could grasp, he was also a basketball trainer, but-unlike the Yugoslavs-had lived here for quite a while. His main interest was drinking sul, Korean hard liquor. He invited us up to his room and asked that we bring some sul. The Yugoslavians had made a quick exit when they saw him coming, and it took us quite a while and the promise that we would join him later before we were able to shake free of him.
Living in North Korea for any considerable amount of time didn’t seem particularly healthy for the brain…
Well, what now? Drinking, for sure, but not with the Russian guy.
“The last two times I came here, everything was easy,” Nicolas said, “Don’t worry. Let’s just go out and grab a beer. We don’t need a guide.”
We made it as far as the hotel lounge before being interrupted by Mr. Kim.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“Going out to get a beer. Don’t worry.”
“But you don’t know Pyongyang.”
“Well, I found bars in the strangest corners of Albania,” Nicolas replied. “I’m sure I’ll find one in the capital of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.”
Seeing that he couldn’t stop us, Mr. Kim simply joined us.
We walked with him through the same street that the big reception had been staged earlier in the day. Without illumination from street lights and with only the occasional apartment window glowing dimply, it was not pitch dark. Every room into which we managed to catch a glimpse we saw portraits of the two Great Leaders hanging on the wall: Kim Il-sung, the father and original Great Leader, and his son Kim Jong-il, who’d taken over after his father dies in 1994. Starting out as the Dear Leader, Kim Jong-il had since made it to the exalted status of Great Leader. His father, however, remained president for all eternity-people continued to pray for him in heaven or wherever a Great Leader resides after shedding his mortal coil.
Very few people and fewer cars were on the street. The occasional, always overcrowded Czech Tatra tramway zoomed by ghostlike. Pyongyang didn’t seem to have an abundance of bars. It took us a while to reach a barbecue restaurant near Kim Il Sung Square, which was almost a hangout for the locals-but not quite. The bar served Chinese Yanjing beer and took blue won-foreigner money. It didn’t particularly look it, but the place was apparently upscale.
North Korea has several kinds of money. Blue won is given in exchange for Western currency and can only be spent at designated places; brown won is for the general population. A foreigner can’t get brown won and thus can’t buy anything from places not licensed to deal with foreigners.
Nicolas and Mr. Kim reminisced about days gone by. Nicolas, it turned out, had come to North Korea for the first time in 1998, when he attended the Pyongyang Film Festival to show some of his documentaries. As head of the Swiss delegation, he was invited back to the annual April Culture Festival in 1999-where his delegation won the main prize of gold medal or something. To his astonishment, a few weeks ago he received a letter from Mr. Sok inviting him back, this time to attend the “Korea Film Show.”
About that particular event we would find out more in the morning.
