[imText1]My misgivings at not being allowed to move around without a guide were easing off. I looked at it stoically: outwardly comply to all that is asked of you while, in reality, secretly do whatever you want anyway. It was the same as in any dictatorship. I had a lot of fun educating Miss Choe on life in Western Europe, while both Nicolas and myself found ways of getting around town unattached.
It was great to be on the streets, free to explore. We saw girls in “Shock Brigade” uniforms marching tirelessly in step, determined young men with red flags over their shoulders, and war veterans laden with medals hobbling in and out of the subway- it was like being in our own personal weird Communist propaganda movie, just like the ones we’d been watching these past few days! Given the fact that every second person was in uniform, nobody in the street seemed to care that here we were, foreigners, walking around without the all-important omnipresent guide.
There was one exception: I hadn’t been in the train station for long when I was thrown out by a female officer. Not that there was particularly much to see, anyway, unlike the parks surrounding the station where people from the countryside hung around waiting for their train.
They were evidently a lot poorer than the Pyongyang city dwellers. Still, it was a far cry from the famine said to be plaguing North Korea, as reported by the media in the West. The propaganda machine here did admit to some problems- as depicted in Forever in Our Memory– but there was no evidence of anyone actually starving to death…at least not in the capital.
[imText2]One night, the whole city had a power failure that lasted several hours. Nicolas and I were sitting in the hotel restaurant when it happened. Through the window we could see that the city was in complete darkness, except for the Juche tower, which still had all its lights on. We decided to go over.
The tower was located in a park on the Taedong River, the huge “flame” on top- a twenty-meter high electrical torch- burning all the more brightly in the pitch black night. According to a documentary film I had seen, the tower symbolized “the greatness of the immortal Juche idea, bringing its incredible light to the world for all to see.” There weren’t many people around, and certainly no evidence of the bored teenagers who would congregate at such a place were it in the West. The few shadowy figures gave one another a wide berth, and all had their nose buried deep in a book. Party manifestos that carried more clout when read under the influence of the tower’s shining beacon, perhaps? No- I was later told these people were desperate for a light whatever the source, frantically cramming for an exam the following day…
Juche is the central ideology or “religion” of the country, governing every aspect of daily life. In short, Juche transforms the Great Leaders into virtual gods and asserts that North Korea must deal with all of its issues and problems with absolute independence- just like every other country should. The latter idea finds its expression in often-repeated slogans like “Kim Jong-il is leading the whole world to independence!” Of late, right-wing activists in Europe have found a certain affinity in Juche: fuck capitalism, kick the foreigners out and keep the nation pure.
[imText3]I would have preferred to stay in Pyongyang- watching movies most of the day and hanging around the city unguarded- but the visitor’s schedule didn’t allow it. I had to go to Mount Myohyang on an overnight trip. Nicolas had been there before and, with a little persuasion, he was able to talk our hosts out of having to go a second time. I had no such excuse. Mr. Sok, Miss Choe, along with the driver who had brought us from the airport on our arrival, still attired in his cool black uniform, accompanied me to Mount Myohyang.
The trip took two hours, on a four-lane motorway almost void of any other vehicles. We did pass the occasional truck by the roadside, however, where drivers tried to repair an engine surrounded by a diligent group of people all waiting for their ride to resume.
I had a good time talking to Miss Choe. I discovered she had been to other countries, such as China, Bangladesh, and Thailand. But the experiences she drew from travelling abroad differed greatly to mine. For her, Beijing was simply confusing- too many people, too many cars, too much chaos. She wasn’t used to such pandemonium and it scared her. To me, Beijing was great- a city in the full swing of development. But I could understand Miss Choe’s apprehension; her background was very different to mine, and even different to that of the Chinese. In a way she reminded me of a typical “Protestant mother”- always helpful, always open to other opinions, but staunchly unswerving when it came to her own religion (which was Juche).
But this wasn’t an issue right now, and we were happy to talk about life in various places outside of North Korea.
The Hyangsan Hotel was a huge structure built by a Japanese company, but apart from myself and a Taiwanese tourist group of about thirty people, it stood pretty much empty. The information brochure boasted of two cinemas being inside, so I inquired at the reception desk as to what was playing.
“Well…nothing,” came the reply.
Miss Choe told me that she and Mr. Sok would be served much humbler meals than myself at dinner time, and so left me to dine and spend the night alone. What to do in this empty hotel complex? Unfortunately, wandering around outside wasn’t an option-as the hotel was situated in the middle of a dark forest there would be nothing to see there.
After writing a few postcards, I went down to the lobby where a small Korean group watched a re-run of the marathon girl’s victory in Seville on TV. The hotel bar wasn’t open anymore, but I discovered a small karaoke bar, where three drunk Taiwanese men were singing along to a tape they had evidently brought along themselves. Staying there wasn’t really an option, so I bought some bottled beer to take to my room. Schlitz from Milwaukee was the only thing available, about the worst American beer on sale in the world.
I settled down in front of the TV to find that the last programme on the only channel had just finished (North Korea has only one regular channel. Only on holidays does there operate a second and third TV channel. Of course, no foreign channel is available). The radio also had only one station to offer, featuring a “revolutionary” mix of traditional Korean and Western musical elements, and pretty much the last thing I wanted to hear. There wasn’t much else left other than to turn in early and go to sleep- as all North Koreans do, according to Miss Choe.
In the morning, we went to the International Friendship Exhibition- the sole reason for us coming to the Hyangsan hotel and the only reason the motorway had been built into the mountains in the first place. The exhibition complex consisted of two buildings: one housed diplomatic gifts to Kim Il-sung and the other, smaller one, gifts to Kim Jong-il. The construct went deep into the mountain. There were no windows, only doors weighing several tons, and tunnels that went much deeper than we were allowed to see. The exhibition complex supposedly doubled as a nuclear shelter for the government.
No effort was spared to erect the exterior buildings. Shaped like traditional Korean wooden structures, they were made entirely of marble and granite. We had to wear slippers while walking through them, so not to damage the precious floors. The exhibitions themselves were hilarious. Not so much Kim Jong-il’s exhibition- there wasn’t much in that one to see- but Kim Il-sung’s. I often wondered what an internationally recognised dictator might receive as gifts- well, here was the answer. The items on display ranged from the pathetic, to the super-kitsch, to the expensive. There was a fruit bowl from Jimmy Carter, presented when he brokered the nuclear arms deal in 1994 (and which looked like it had been filched from a Soho coffee-house dishwasher); porcelain doves awarded by American religious leader Billy Graham (there were several porcelain doves on display; apparently Graham travelled to North Korea quite often… well, if he ever wound up running a state it probably wouldn’t be that much different to North Korea); a bear skin from Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaucescu; a hunting rifle from East German head-of-state Erich Honecker; a set of petroleum lamps given by Emperor Bokassa of Central Africa (who was later imprisoned for cannibalism)… I forget what the gift from Pol Pot of Cambodia had been, because we were hurrying by the glass display cabinets so quickly. Mr. Sok skipped the tour. I was accompanied only by Miss Choe, and a local guide- a young girl who spoke only Korean.
We made a special stop at the German display. Here the guide knew little about the individual pieces, and so I became an impromptu guide. There was a little piece of the Berlin Wall, awarded by writer Luise Rinser; an Ernst Thalmann bronze statue was a gift from the DKP, the West German Communist party financed by the East Germans that never got higher than two per cent in any election (two percent being a generous figure); a Thalmann plaque was the gift presented by the West German KPD, a leftist splinter group of the seventies…
Miss Choe dutifully translated all my remarks to the local guide, though they were sometimes taken aback by what I said: “What? The Communist getting only two per cent in elections?”
We came eventually to a set of wine glasses, another gift from Ceaucescu. I told the story I was itching to tell. “You know,” I said. “Ceaucescu owned a collection of state gifts similar to those in this exhibition before he was shot in 1989. The collection was auctioned off just last month. People from all over the world came to bid for some of the tackiest stuff.”
Neither Miss Choe nor the guide had heard that Ceaucescu had been executed by his own military.
