This travelogue describes a trip to North Korea (NK) undertaken in March 1995. Present were Paul B., an Australian computer scientist and psychologist; Erwin H., a Dutch UN soldier just back from Bosnia; and Rick B., a roving database administrator currently stationed in Africa. The journey was organised in record time by VNC Travel of Utrecht, The Netherlands (VNC.Travel@inter.nl.net). Cost was about US$900 per person for a week in NK, which included an overnight train between Beijing and Pyongyang, two guides, a minibus, accommodation, attractions, and 3 meals a day. You have to make your own way to Beijing, though.
We were often asked why we were planning a trip to NK. Why would anyone want to holiday in a backward, dour, isolated, run-down extremist country? Both Rick and Paul are communist aficionados, but there's another reason. For the budget traveller, communist countries offer extremely low prices (see also our travelogues on Poland, Czechoslovakia, Moscow and The Baltics), VIP treatment, interesting food, and a chance to experience truly foreign cultures and vistas that haven't (yet) been overrun by Western advertising. For no extra charge, you also get a fascinating insight into one of the major (but doomed) ideological movements of the 20th century: Stalinism. Stalinism acts like a preserving agent, leaving countries like North Korea in pretty much the same state as they were 50 years ago. It's like a trip back in time, but whether it was to 1945 or 1984 we couldn't decide.
It's no longer true that one has to participate in the dubious pleasures of group travel in order to visit places like NK. Individual travel has been a possibility since 1986 and that is why our trip was able to be organised in just a week. The transport and guided tour would have also been supplied even if only one of us had ended up going. It's not certain whether this is optional or compulsory, but it's certainly the easiest way to get around a country about which so little information is available.
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From Beijing to Pyongyang
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After luxuriating for 3 days in the sights, sounds and pungent smells of Beijing, we checked out of the Xin Qiao hotel and made our way to Beijing Zhang - the main train station. I'd noticed on a previous trip to Guangzhou that the Chinese just love to hang around train stations; and sure enough, a few hundred people were to be found squatting near the main entrance. After struggling through the huddled masses and surviving a blast of X-rays from a 1950's contraption, we were left standing inside the dark, filthy, sweaty, smelly station surrounded by mysterious Chinese characters. We wondered how on earth we were going to find our train to North Korea. 'I'll bet', I said to Erwin, 'that that door on the left leads to a spacious, well-lit foreigners' waiting room with signs in English'. And it did. If only travel was always like this.
We were naturally very pleased to find that we were the only Westerners on the train. None of us knew anyone who'd been to North Korea before, despite requests for information on the Internet. Even our trusty Lonely Planet guidebook had the length of the train trip wrong by some 8 hours - but they admitted that the short chapter on NK was mainly based on one traveller's experiences in 1989. We soon met some North Koreans in the compartment next to ours; their English wasn't half bad, but interestingly enough they didn't seem to know the word `tourist'. They were engaging and friendly to the point of sexual harassment.
The next morning, the sight of a bridge which suddenly ceases halfway across a wide river announced our arrival at the North Korean border. From the train we could already see the slogans, posters and images of the Great Leader that we would encounter wherever we went. The customs officials on the NK side weren't of the gruff countenance I usually associate with Communist border guards, and they took their time thumbing through our Western magazines - stopping to look at cars, nekkid women or anything else that attracted their interest. What they seemed most concerned about was whether any of our maps, books or magazines were published in South Korea. I assume from their level of thoroughness that any such items would've been confiscated. Radios are apparently also a big no-no.
I was asleep when we arrived in Pyongyang and rushed out of the train to find myself wondering if I was still dreaming. The covered platform was a wide, empty, polished concrete affair, with a line of Mercedes Benzs parked down the middle and celestial music emanating from hidden loudspeakers. Our guide had no problem locating us and quickly ushered us through a side exit seemingly reserved for high officials, tourists and other VIPs. The Koreans had to line up, probably to have their internal passports checked to see if they were allowed to enter Pyongyang.
The short drive to the hotel revealed Pyongyang to be more or less as I expected - the Muscovian school of town planning but with less traffic. The cars on the road, old Volvos, Mercedes and various second-hand Japanese cars, were quite an improvement over the preposterous homegrown contraptions the Eastern Europeans used to get around in. When I remarked on this to our guides, they proudly told us NK was about to start producing its own vehicles. They also said that there are no restrictions on car ownership - apart from the purchase price. I don't know if I can believe this (as with many things they told us), but perhaps the difficulty that one would have exchanging worthless won for dollars is a big enough obstacle to explain the lack of traffic.
Most of the buildings that we saw on that short drive were just drab brown rectangular blocks, with the occasional Chinese-roofed structure placed amongst them to great effect. But every now and then we caught a glimpse of a pyramid-shaped, 1000-foot high building rising out of the skyline like a hulking grey Godzilla. We had never heard of, or seen pictures of, this amazing structure, but our guides seemed oddly coy about it. They call it the 105 Building - when completed, it will be the tallest hotel in the world. And this in a city that probably gets as many tourists as Chernobyl. When pressed, the guides disclosed that construction had started in 1987. Eight years later, it's still nowhere near finished. Apparently scurrilous tongues in the West (and the South) have been suggesting that the structure is unsound, so we were forbidden to photograph it up close.
We were somewhat dismayed to have read that our Hotel Haebangsan was a C-class hotel, the only one of its sort open to foreigners. However, I've seen some ratholes in my time so I'm easily pleased. It was quite adequate, with our only complaints being the lack of hot water early in the morning and the height of some of the doorways. We even had a TV in one of our rooms. There were only two channels (three on Sundays), which both stopped broadcasting around 10 pm. Not a great loss, as the style and presentation had 'state television' written all over it. Typical offerings were soapies set during the Korean War, documentaries on the Great Leader (featuring an excited yet breathless narrative style) and musical interludes by a military band.
Our guides took us downstairs to the dark dining room, and left us to eat at a table by ourselves - something that would happen nearly every meal on the whole trip. We found it strange at first, but were grateful for it later as otherwise we'd be spending every waking hour with them. It also gave us a chance to laugh, grumble and talk about what we'd seen without inadvertently insulting our hosts. The meals we were served were far better than one would expect in a country with severe food shortages. There were often 6 or more dishes brought out at a time, with rice, soup, chicken, beef, spicy fish and pickles. Not bad, but not great either.
After dinner we went with our guides to a bar upstairs for a better introduction. Guide No. 1 was 31, but years of nicotine addiction made him look about 42. Kids who smoke in order to appear older will certainly have no cause for complaint later in life. G1's English was passable, but nowhere as good as Guide No. 2's, a 28-year old graduate of the Tourism Academy who naturally has never been to an English-speaking country. After establishing our ages and marital status (a high priority in status-conscious Korea), the foremost question on their minds was who the leader of our group was. We took turns, just to confuse them.
Later we informed our hosts that we wanted to take a walk through nighttime Pyongyang. They assured us that we were allowed to venture out alone but G1 convinced us to let him come along so we wouldn't get lost, and so he could give some explanations. The streets were cold, dark and deserted, lit only by the neon slogans on the larger buildings. There was no Western advertising to be seen, and I'm hard pressed to think of any other capital city in the world where this would be the case. After a short stroll we arrived in Kim Il Sung square, and I knew I had arrived at the dead heart of the world's last Stalinistic country. Lenin, Marx, and (of course) the Great Leader smiled down upon a large square bathed in neon and deserted except for us and some roller-skating children. There was virtually no traffic to be seen or heard.
Across the river from the square is the kitschy Juche Tower, a symbol of their ideology of self-reliance. In fact, the Chinese pulled their chestnuts out of the fire in the Korean War, and the Soviet Union then bankrolled the whole operation until it, itself, collapsed. At least these days the North Koreans are getting an opportunity to put their self-reliance to the test - with some help from the nominally still Communist China. There are signs of hard times everywhere: the air is polluted from the burning of coal for power, previously forbidden bicycles have made a reappearance on Pyongyang's streets, towns in the countryside appeared to be lit only by candlelight, and in museums the fluorescent lights are extinguished every time you exit a room.
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On our first morning in Pyongyang we awoke to the sound of joyous citizens marching - literally - and singing on their way to work. Rubbing our hands with enthusiasm we ventured out to see the sights of Pyongyang. First stop was a subway station with 160m deep escalators and an overabundance of blue-uniformed staff surveying the situation. The stations were like those in Moscow, made of something that looked like marble and nicely decorated. In contrast, the subway cars were rickety, noisy, poorly lit and only decorated by - what else? - a portrait of the Great Leader. We were then driven to the main Great Leader statue where our guide conned us into buying a flower to lay before Him for an outrageous US$7.
At the birthplace and childhood home of the Great Leader, just outside Pyongyang, I managed to upset our local guide by asking her if it was true that the Dear Leader (Great Leader's son) was actually born in the Soviet Union (as I'd read in the West), and not on top of a holy Korean mountain, as they prefer to believe. Vicious lies, she assured me. Back in Pyongyang, next to the Arch of Triumph (3m higher than the one in Paris) we saw and photographed a large group of schoolchildren doing synchronized gymnastics. |
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