DPRK: Doing the timewarp: Day 2

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  Pyongyang, Korea Dem Peoples Rep
Sunday, October 1, 2006

Our second day began with one of the highlights of our DPRK tour, a trip to the mausoleum of Kim Il Sung. The mausoleum is actually the former offices of the Great Leader and makes for an impressive sight, set in extensive and immaculately maintained grounds featuring colourful gardens and even a carp-filled moat. The mausoleum complex is unsurprisingly massive and following airport-style security checks we were ushered along what may well be the longest travellator in the world as we cruised down one of the building's wings and into the heart of its palatial interior. We had been instructed to wear a shirt and tie and must have looked a curious sight to the endless lines of North Korean army officers that we encountered waiting to have their own turn with the embalmed remains of their dead president. As we neared the room containing the body, we were directed through a series of rooms with increasingly lavish and ornate decoration. Marble lined most walls and statues and pictures of Kim Il Sung represented the sole contents of some of them.

Finally we made it into The Room and were divided into groups of four which, in turn, were required to line up next to one of the four sides of the glass coffin, gaze upon the suited, supine and very wax-like remains of Kim Il Sung, bow and then move on to the next side of the coffin. Such a 360 degree perspective makes this particular embalmed communist leader the best of the four available according to those that had now seen the full set (Mao, Ho Chi Minh and Lenin being the others). However, this was actually not the apex of the trip.

We were then herded into the Great Leader's medal room, a showcase for the numerous awards and medals bestowed upon him by what appeared to be almost every enemy of the US during the last 200 years. Included among them were several Order of Lenins and a fantastic, fake honorary degree in international relations, of all subjects, from Kensington University in California. We then had portable audio players thrust into our hands and filed into some form of memorial room whose walls comprised artistic representations of grieving people from all over the world. The audio commentary that emerged from the audio players, however, was an absolute gem.

It was provided by a English man who sounded like he was struggling to hide his northern dialect roots and had adopted a tone so artificially dolorous and melodramatic that it would not have sounded out of place in a pantomime. Better still was the script, patently translated direct from the Korean version. Our narrator told us of how the world wept for "10 days and 10 nights" following the Great Leader's death, the news acting as a "thunderbolt to their hearts" and resulting in an unprecedented outpouring of grief. "Tears scolded their faces", our narrator proclaimed with pathos, "then fell to the earth and were fossilised". Better still was the traditionally dressed Korean lady who was providing a live version of the commentary for the remarkably bored-looking mass of army officers that had joined us in the room. Her performance was even more histrionic comprising a sonorous to the point of being tuneful lamentation that looked like it was going to end in a flood of similarly scolding, fossilising tears were it not for the fact that she was clearly going to have to deliver this monologue several dozen times more during the course of the day. It was truly cracking stuff.

The mausoleum's opulence provided a stark contrast with the mass housing that lined most of Pyongyang's streets, as did all of the spotless Kim monuments and the state buildings. Monotone in colour and monotonous in design, the majority of the tower blocks in which Pyongyang's citizens lived looked old, neglected and shabby. Some were absolutely filthy and crumbling, looking decidedly dangerous and urgently needing the sort of attention which would probably not come any time soon from a government more concerned about increasing its military arsenal.

However, the sight of a depressed, paranoid and downtrodden people that I had partly expected was not to be found. Children played just as they do in other Asian countries, adults stroll the streets (and even a couple of joggers were seen),use public telephones and queue for public transport, couples wander hand in hand, and groups sit engaged in conversation or playing games. They certainly have cause for feeling depressed, downtrodden and paranoid. They live in what is probably the most tightly controlled social environment in the world. There is only one radio station (which, we were told has to be switched on in all occupied households during they day even if the volume is set to minimum) and, during the week, only one TV station too (although two more are switched on at the weekend). All media is controlled by the state including books and journals although films from Russia, China and, most popularly, India are allowed in as are South Korean soap operas which have become immensely popular in the North. Mobile phones were allowed for a short while before the government realised they could not easily track their use and promptly banned them, recalling some 20,000 handsets.

Nor was there any evidence of the starvation reported by western media although that is not to say that North Koreans in areas outside our tour view were not suffering. The people we saw (which would have numbered in the tens of thousands during the course of our tout) were universally slim and healthy-looking and almost no obese people were evident. In fact, only the ubiquitous Kim pins, securely attached over their hearts, and the 60s soviet-style surroundings betray their global geography.

During the course of our tour, we were accompanied by guides for all of our trips outside of our hotel. We were frequently given freedom to wander around the various sites we visited and the restrictions on our photography (expected to be draconian at the start of the tour) were surprisingly lax. On a trip to one of Pyongyang's parks later during the day, we were treated to the sights and sounds of Pyongyang citizens enjoying weekend picnics, sat behind easels painting landscape scenes with simple water paints, singing in choruses and solo performances with passionate, melodic voices about their national pride and their enduring adoration of the Kims (or so we were told). Sceptics might have suggested that the scenes were staged but there were none among our tour group by the time our park trip finished. Several of the singers appeared to be pretty intoxicated too although this only seemed to add to the fervour with which they belted out their patriotic lyrics.

The day ended with a long bus trip to our destination for the night, a spa hotel near Nampo city. The journey took us through the flatlands seen from the plane the previous day and gave us our first real glimpse of the country's rural life. The landscape was almost entirely converted into farmland, comprising broad expanses of rice and wheat fields most being readied for harvest. Notable during this and every other trip we made outside of the cities was the lack of forests, even on the mountains and hill tops. The state has clearly prioritised the creation of arable land and trees tended to be reserved for lining roads only. The result, however, was a patchwork quilt of yellow, brown and green fields filled with people busy cutting and collecting the crops. There was also little evidence of farming mechanisation; everything appeared to be done by hand here. The resulting scene was postcard-like in its bucolic beauty and reminded me of trips to the French countryside (or what the french countryside would have looked like 50 years ago or more!).

On the way we stopped at a long dam, an impressive feat of engineering but a somewhat boring experience compared with the park and mausoleum earlier in the day. The North Koreans are particularly proud of this structure and we had to endure a truly soporific video about its construction. We noticed a few days later that the dam was the image used as the backdrop to the North Korean news' confirmation of their ill-advised intention to conduct nuclear weapon tests.

We arrived at our hotel exhausted and most quickly settled into the spa baths included in every room's bathroom. Unfortunately, the bath in my and my room mate, Canadian web-head and fellow technophile Brendyn's room only seemed to produce dirty, brown water or smelly clear water. It was an unusual and not entirely comfortable place, clearly built, as most of the country's hotels are, for use by visiting communist officials and dignitaries. However a busy schedule was planned for the next day so we accepted its failings and turned in early.

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Pyongyang street scene

Pyongyang tram

Singers in one of Pyongyang's parks

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