The IFE gets rather tedious rather quickly (most gifts are numbingly mundane - letter openers, ghetto blasters, chairs), but it is worth seeing just for the fleet of black bulletproof 1950's sedans (a gift from Stalin) and to check out what honours YOUR country has bestowed upon a ruthless dictator. We reluctantly agreed to bow to the statue of the Great Leader, but drew the line at the Dear Leader.
During this outing we also visited some nearby mountains where I marvelled at the sight of a frozen waterfall and Erwin was divebombed by a white eagle. Some very organised vandals had painted a large portrait of the Great Leader and one of his inimitable sayings on one of the rock faces. We also viewed some relics from Korea's more distant history, but most of these were replicas due to the mass devastation of the Korean War.
As the trip progressed we started talking more and more politics with our guides. We thought that the 3 of us were allocated 2 guides just so that they could keep tabs on each other, but even when we got them alone they would still never stray even an inch from the party line. Not so surprising in a society where political correctness is a matter of personal safety, but after a while I started to believe that they believed these obvious untruths they were expounding. For us in the West it's difficult to imagine a country with no serious crime, no poverty, no AIDS, no prostitutes, no homosexuals and no women who smoke, but maybe not so for people who have been told this all their lives - and don't have access to foreign magazines and newspapers. At the Grand People's Study House in Pyongyang, which we also visited, locals have to register with name and address in order to just look at a book. When we requested to see some foreign newspapers (to look up a football result!) they said that yes, of course, they had them but no, we couldn't see them.
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Our next arranged visit was to the Victorious Fatherland Liberation War Museum, which commemorates the Korean War (click here for an American perspective on the war). The Korean War is a relatively little-known and `uninteresting' war in the West (maybe because `we' didn't win), but in North Korea the memory of it is so fresh, you would think it happened 5 years ago, instead of 45.
Our guide was a bit surprised when we first asked to alter our itinerary to include the War museum, as few Western tourists ever express any interest in it. However, I believe that to understand North Korea you have to have some appreciation of the war, and especially of the North Korean interpretation of it. Everywhere you go in NK you see references to it: statues, sculptures, monuments, cemeteries, paintings, postage stamps. And these weren't produced 40 years ago; there is still a flourishing industry in them today. For instance, one of the sites we visited was a `Revolutionary Martyrs' Cemetery' established in 1982! War dead from all over NK - some of which had been RIP'ing for more than 40 years - were dug up and brought there, to be given a handsome marble headstone and a life-size bronze torso bust on a piece of real estate with the best view of Pyongyang that money can't buy. For a country in such dire economical straits, there must be a reason why they spend so much time, effort and emotion on keeping alive the memory of a war that started in 1950 and effectively ended just one year later.
The War Museum in Pyongyang serves to promulgate the North Korean version of the war. We were met by a stout museum guide who, like almost all of her colleagues in NK, spoke no English (our guides translated) and seemed to be delivering a memorized monologue. The tour took about 2 hours, but I think it could've easily have been shortened to one hour if they just said 'Kim Il Sung' instead of `The Supreme Leader Generalissimo Kim Il Sung' and `America' instead of `The Imperialist American Aggressor'.
One of our first stops was an entertaining light-animated map that showed the seesawing nature of the war. In the NK history books, it was the Americans who struck first, launching a sneak attack on Sunday June 25. To put it mildly, this seems unlikely. The North Koreans claim that the Americans poured military hardware into South Korea for years and then launched a surprise imperialist attack on the peaceful and defenseless North Korean peasants who were busy out tending their rice paddies. It was strange to see, then, that according to their map, the well-prepared American attack was halted by said peasants after progressing just a few miles over the border. The 'counter attack' had the victorious North Korean forces in Seoul by Wednesday. The museum proudly houses the first tank that entered Seoul - a Russian T-34!
When I remarked to the guide that this accomplishment seemed `incredible', she smiled and thanked me.
We were then led from room to room, each detailing a different aspect of the war (e.g., the exploits of artillery men, mountain warfare, etc.) I noticed that every room had at least two huge paintings of the Great Leader participating actively in every aspect of the war. Sometimes there were as many as 4 paintings.
Another highlight was a battle panorama set up like one of those fancy electric train model landscapes. It told of the heroic exploits of the North Korean truck drivers who managed to ferry supplies over frozen mountains under incessant American attack. In another incredible episode, a destroyed wooden bridge halted their progress. The peasants from a nearby town volunteered to rebuild the bridge by standing underneath it, hoisting the scattered logs onto their backs, and letting the trucks drive over them!
The adjacent room was dedicated to heroic North Koreans. One unfortunate lady had had both her breasts ripped off by Americans, but soldiered on regardless. A gunner lost both his arms, but managed to keep slaying the Yankee dogs by firing with his chin (quite impressive, considering the enormous kick of those guns).
It was hard to judge the truthfulness of many of the episodes recounted in the museum. On the face of it, some seemed possible (e.g., that the Americans tried germ warfare, dropping infected vermin on the hapless North Koreans), but I found that their credibility was severely hampered by the many obvious fabrications. For example, there was a photo of American soldiers in a trench, where someone had clumsily painted frowns on the Americans' faces. 'They miss their mommies', our guide said when we exploded into laughter on seeing it. What is the point of such nonsense? The fact that such a photo can remain on display shows the lack of internal criticism or free thinking.
The basement of the museum houses a collection of hardware from the war - gleaming tanks, fighters and weaponry from the North Korean side, contrasted with rusting, damaged planes, helicopters and tanks from the UN - sorry, the Americans (as the North Koreans always insist).
The final room we visited was devoted to American atrocities. Shooting women and children, executing prisoners, torture, chemical warfare, germ warfare, you name it. In Simchon, a city to the south of Pyongyang, they have a whole museum devoted to this tasteful topic. Interestingly, the Americans counter-accuse the North Koreans of atrocities in the same city so there must be something to the story.
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Suffer the Little Children
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Kids in North Korea are exceedingly polite. They greet foreigners (and each other) with a comical vertical-arm salute and a ringing 'Aniyong Hasimnika!'. Sometimes they simply give you a deep bow. Apparently they have been instructed to treat foreigners with extreme deference, maybe to boost tourist revenue.
Today we were visiting the School Children's Palace in Pyongyang, where talented children could participate in after-school activities. I found this idea of voluntary participation a bit out of step with what I'd seen so far, and separate questioning of the guides failed to reveal whether this institution was for all kids or not, and whether attendance was optional. The Palace was certainly magnificently maintained and well equipped, with an impressive theatre and a large indoor swimming pool. The 10-metre dive tower even had a glass elevator.
We were taken for a brief visit to a classroom where we saw children playing accordions, for goodness' sake. They all smiled and looked happy, but the suffering that room must have seen is unimaginable. We were then rushed on to the theatre, where our entrance was greeted with a thunderous applause by the school-age audience. They do this just to impress foreigners, I'm sure, and it certainly worked! The show was cute, but I was suddenly reminded of the performing animals at the Circus and wondered how long it had taken to etch the frozen smiles onto these young faces. We saw 5-year-olds playing violin, and other obvious examples of child abuse.
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Epilogue - Land of the Rising Son
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Things are moving fast in North Korea. At the time of writing (June '95), it was reported that Kim Jong Il has finally been promoted to 'Great Leader' status, that NK is accepting food aid from the South, and that the 1953 armistice is being rescinded (the two countries are still technically at war).
North Korea was easily one of the most interesting trips we have ever made. We can recommend it to anyone, as our guides earnestly hoped we would (we told them we would be posting a travelogue on the 'net). There seems to be little of the apathy of the Eastern European regimes that turned those countries into garbage heaps even before they collapsed. The streets really are spotless in Pyongyang (okay, you'll find the occasional scrap of paper) and the guides are friendly, extremely helpful and informative - we could, and did, ask them anything.
North Korea is in big economical trouble, as the recent acceptance of aid from South Korea and Japan surely demonstrates (not that they deny that they are a 'developing' country). Russia is no longer interested in supporting Communist regimes and China doesn't seem to be too generous lately either. Like the Soviet Union and East Germany, if this country collapses then it will simply cease to exist. You'd better hurry if you want to experience this fascinating historical oddity before it disappears forever.
Comments are welcome - especially from Koreans!
cheers,
Paul & Rick Bakker
bakker@etl.go.jp
Copyright 1995 - Paul Bakker
Paul Bakker / bakker@etl.go.jp
The opinions expressed above are my own, not my employer's.
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