The day before we flew to Pyongyang, we were given a list of dos and don’ts. Banned items included telescopic camera lenses and satellite phones. And we should never ask our government-appointed minders about the late Kim Il Sung or his descendants, warned the Beijing-based British tour leader tasked with keeping us in check.
North Koreans saw them as god-like figures, he explained, and most believe the party line – that Kim Il Sung was born on North Korea’s most sacred mountain, Mt. Baekdu, and that rainbows appeared the moment he took his first breath.
Our first hotel was on an island in the middle of Pyongyang’s Taedong River. I don’t know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t what I found – a 47-story explosion of kitsch with a bowling alley in the basement and a revolving restaurant on top.
These amenities were hugely appreciated, considering we could only leave the hotel under the supervision of our government minders who, it turned out, were partial to a beer or two (particularly those produced by the city’s Taedonggang Brewing Company). In the evenings we’d join them at the hotel bar, chatting about our families and jobs (but never asking about theirs).
Don’t get me wrong – the sense that there were invisible lines we should never cross was omnipresent. Visits to statues of Kim Il Sung were the few occasions when we could take photos, but minders would vet our snaps – if the head or feet were cut off, they had to be deleted (although I think my minder eventually accepted my inability to capture the entirety of these statues wasn’t a sign of disrespect, just that I was a useless photographer).
One day, we were taken to see Kim Il Sung’s embalmed body, which lies in a clear glass sarcophagus at Pyongyang’s Kumsusan Palace of the Sun. Before entering the room, we had to pass through a tunnel-shaped fan (designed to prevent dust contaminating the eternal leader’s final resting place), after which we were encouraged to offer a deep bow at his feet. I’ve since heard that the reason his head rests on a buckwheat pillow is to hide a tumour on his neck – god forbid North Koreans suspect their dear leader could succumb to something such as cancer.
Other surreal moments included the visit to a Pyongyang karaoke bar when we belted out Western hits then hit the dancefloor with our minders and a visit to a Pyongyang funfair, where I ate burgers in a restaurant designed to resemble an American diner before riding on one of the scariest rollercoasters I’ve been on. We were the only Westerners at the crowded funfair, and as we were flung around the hairpin turns, locals, the majority of whom seemed incredibly smartly dressed for a day at the fair, gathered below, laughing at this strange bunch of Westerners looking decidedly terrified as they braved the park’s most popular ride.
All of the park’s other visitors were North Koreans from Pyongyang – the privileged few granted permission to live in the city, almost certainly on account of their roles within the Workers’ Party – and some of whom almost certainly had access to television, but even for them, the spectacle was clearly an unusual one.
But my favourite days were ones spent in rural areas far from Pyongyang. At Lake Sijung we enjoyed waterside picnics, sipping rice wine with our minders and feasting on mussels cooked over an open fire. Outside of Pyongyang, our hotels appeared to be inspired by The Shining’s Overlook Hotel. One particularly spectacular example, in which we were the only guests, had bright green carpet on the walls and sunken jacuzzis in bathrooms.
The lack of artificial light – especially in rural areas, where there’s little electricity – ramped up the eeriness, although one unexpected advantage was the stargazing opportunities. One evening, in a hotel near the coastal port of Wonsan, our minder led us to our hotel’s rooftop to admire the most star-spangled sky I’d ever seen.
A visit to the JSA (Joint Security Area – a section of the DMZ), in North Korea’s south, was the highlight – one which provided an opportunity to peek behind the veil of secrecy which had shrouded our visit, although we knew it would be big on propaganda and short on facts. The JSA is where the two Koreas, still technically at war, face off, and it’s the only spot along the DMZ (the 250-kilometre-long, four-kilometre-wide strip of land dividing North and South Korea) which members of the public – from either country – can visit.
Our guide, a stern North Korean general, started his tour in a conference room where he banged a cane against a map, highlighting the DMZ’s location and describing various incidents involving “Americans, the imperial aggressors.” One occurred in 1976, when North Korean soldiers killed two American soldiers as they trimmed a tree obstructing sight lines from cameras on the South Korean side. The axe, snatched from the Americans and used by the North Koreans to kill them, is proudly displayed in another building we visited – the room in which the Korean Armistice Agreement was signed in 1953.
Later, we were ushered towards huts straddling the demarcation line. It was surreal, staring over the huts towards the South Korean side mere metres away, where South Korean and American soldiers stared back. We were just 50 kilometres from Seoul, South Korea’s capital, but in a very different world. Our guide showed us inside one of the huts and allowed us to step briefly over the line running through its centre, entering South Korea momentarily while our guide anxiously eyed the door at the other end. It was used by South Korean visitors, and months previously, South Korean tourists had entered while visitors from North Korea were still inside. Panic ensued before both groups were ushered out, back to their respective countries which were so very close, yet so far apart.
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