First things first, however. The morning was set aside for the one official function every visitor to North Korea must respect: placing flowers in front of the statue of Kim Il-sung at the top of Mansudae Hill, a structure as high as a skyscraper that overlooked the city. It was a rather chilly morning, quite suited for such a solemn ceremony.
But it wasn’t that ceremonial in the end- Mr. Paek simply gave me a bunch of flowers, which I plonked down on the top of a pile of other flowers all wrapped in plastic. Our guides then took photos to commemorate the “event.”
From Mansudae Hill we overlooked the bizarre concrete structures of various sports stadiums, revolutionary monuments of all shapes and sizes, and an endless mass of Eastern European-style housing projects. From the bus on the way down, we also had a clear view of the Ryungyong Hotel- or rather, of its incomplete construction. The 105 storey pyramid of the Ryungyong Hotel absolutely dominates the skyline of Pyongyang. Knowing about it already, I decided to bait Miss Choe: “What is that big pyramid?”
At that moment the bus took a turn and the building was obscured from view by trees. “What pyramid?” Miss Choe replied, “I can’t see a pyramid.”
At its inception, the Ryungyong was meant to be the “tallest hotel in Korea.” Construction on it commenced- so legend has it- when Kim Jong-il heard that a South Korean company was building a 103 storey hotel in Singapore. He wanted his part of Korea to have an even higher one, especially when considering it could have been host to guests of the 1988 Olympics. Alas, the Olympics ended up as a purely South Korean affair with no Northern involvement at all. North Korea had boycotted the games, and in so doing lost the spirit to finish the pyramid hotel. They continued half-heartedly on its construction until 1991, after which time it was patently obvious that Pyongyang would never see completion of the 300-metre tall pyramid with its seven resolving restaurants. There was no money with which to finish it, and not enough expertise on how best to continue. What remained was this great empty shell-of which postcards are available. They show what appears to be a magnificent, occupied building at sunset with light shining brightly from within. Looking closely one can tell that the last rays of the sun are shining through the empty window frames of a white elephant…
The “Korea Film Show” could start. Held in the screening room of the Film Export and Import Corporation, it was indeed a series of screenings held solely for Nicolas and myself. There were no film directors or publicity people to meet, and no audience outside of us two- with the exception that Mr. Paek and Mr. Sok would occasionally sit in on the screenings with us. Almost none of the films had subtitles, but the room did have a microphone and speaker system through which Miss Choe or Mr. Kim could translate the dialogue into English.
The very first film was a relatively recent production called A Far-Off Islet. It told the story of a young teacher living on an isolated island, whose school has only two kids. Her desire is to relocate to Pyongyang because “she wants to be close to the Great Leader Kim Jong-il”. Events transpire that enlighten her to the fact that her true place is indeed on the island. In the end the Great Leader sends her his regards, praising her as “a heroine of our time.”
I liked the dramatic scene where the teacher is pedaling her bicycle to produce power from her bicycle dynamo for the beacon of the local lighthouse, thus saving a ship from crashing into the cliffs. But otherwise A Far-Off Islet was rather tedious.
[imText1]Over the course of the next few days, I would explain to Mr. Paek that I wanted to see films packed with action, evil Americans, Southern spies, real drama and contemporary conflicts. And I wanted to see Pulgasari, the North Korean Godzilla movie I had heard so much about in Japan, where it played theatrically in 1998 and did well.
Mr. Paek did understand my requests for “strong movies” and he made a great effort to get me films that would meet my demands. With Nicolas, it was a little more difficult. He had never been a film show organizer, let alone a distributor, but that, it seemed, was how Mr. Sok had regarded Nicolas when he invited him. Nicolas just said: “Show me some documentaries- that’s more my field.” He was a documentary filmmaker, not a film sales person.
The next two days at the screening room brought a marked improvement in Mr. Paek’s selection of films. We got to see hilarious Korean War taekwondo spoofs, cute war heroines, and medieval sword fighters. One film even featured the lazy son of a North Korean labor hero, who has doubts about the arduous nature of North Korean progress. Of course in the end, he learns to find his place in society and becomes a labor hero himself. My favorite movie however was My Happiness, starring two cute girls drafted into the North Korean army during the Korean War (1950-53). One scene had the chief nurse of the girlie unit swimming over to a South Korean warship, whipping hand grenades out from beneath her jacket and screaming, “Long Live Kim Il-sung!” before blowing the ship and herself to bits. In another scene, the missing boyfriend of one of the main heroines returns home after the war. To everyone’s amazement his legs are intact. Rumor had it that he’d lost them both, but it transpires that emergency doctors in the field saved them by transplanting their own bones and muscles!
Topping My Happiness, however, was Forever in Our Memory, a brand new 1999 picture. It dealt with the terrible weather calamities and resulting food shortages of recent years- using cinema to try and turn disaster into propagandist nonsense. Regimental commander Ri Chol Suk receives orders to take his platoon into the starvation zone and help folk in the countryside battle against the bad weather. This they achieve by carrying buckets of water for miles to overcome drought, and using their own bodies to build a dam and hold back flood waters!
Propaganda doesn’t get much more audacious that this! What a display of utterly unbelievable heroism! That said, however, the Great Leader is without question always the biggest hero- in spite of the fact that he is never overtly pictured or portrayed in any feature film. Here, his presence is denoted by the tire tracks he leaves in the dust, over which the people of the countryside clamor with true religious fervor.
