Sky Canaves

Amid the impossible challenge of trying to reconcile my impressions from the trip inside North Korea (quiet and docile citizens, the sense of time travel 50 years into the past, many small kindnesses) with the face presented to the outside world in the latest details of its sophisticated nuclear program and the brand new violence, plus the heaps of contending speculations (some here here here), I’ve been sorting through the remaining words and images. Here, to paraphrase a friend, is the North Korea mind dump of what I can say (see also related photo dump started on Flickr):

Quietude

Unlike in China, where the potential for luan (chaos) always seems to be bubbling under the surface, things appear calm here. This is what stability and harmony really look like.

Fishing on the Taedong river in Pyongyang

Man on a bridge, hotel in background

Kindergarten kids at a model farm near Wonsan

Flowers

There must be a rule, or at least some very strong exhortation, that compels residents of Pyongyang’s Soviet-style apartment buildings to decorate the ledges of their balconies (which most have) with potted flowers.

A standard Pyongyang residential building bedecked with flowers

Juche

Kim Il-sung’s major contribution to political philosophy, the concept of Juche is the official state ideology of North Korea, and basically underlies everything. Often translated as “self-reliance,” juche as outlined by my guide sounded like a communist version of Ayn Rand. Man is in control of his destiny, she said, yet somehow the revolutionary masses take the lead role in shaping man’s destiny under the direction of the great leader.

Plaques from Juche study centers around the world, at the bottom of Juche Tower

Laughter

People are quiet but they still laugh and play: Roller-skating in Kim Il-sung Square, rowing playfully on the Taedong river, jogging in packs, playing netless badminton on the sidewalk outside a hotpot restaurant. We tried foosball and shooting pellets at an amusement corner by the river.

Skating fun in Kim Il-sung Square

Paddling fun

Running fun

Shooting fun

An Ad-Free World

Visual imagery around town is largely limited to three types: The propaganda poster (1) the leadership mural (2), and the simple pictographic indication of what a shop has for sale (3).

Type 1: Propaganda poster

Type 2: Leadership mural

Type 3: Cameras

Type 3: Noodles

Country Driving

Along the roads outside Pyongyang, there are scattered people, sitting and waiting with their bundles, some alone, others in pairs or small groups. Others walk.

A scene at the side of the road

Hamlets nestled at the base of hills in the distance, most of these villages consist of a handful of low-slung whitewashed buildings with traditional-style gray tiled roofs. Any place of any significance will feature a square with a pillar-type monument in it.

Typical small town DPRK

Most of these towns can be home to no more than a couple of hundred people, in which case it would appear that a significant part of the population is on the move, waiting by the road or walking along it. I saw few public buses, and people are more likely to hitch a ride on open trucks.

Kumgangsan

The site of a scenic mountain resort near the DMZ built by Hyundai for the use of its South Korean employees. In 2008 a tourist was shot and killed by the armed soldiers who patrol the area, and Hyundai abandoned the place. This year the park was opened to North Korean tourists, and it has also been designated as a site for North-South family reunions. Security is very tight on the approach to Kumgangsan, with much waiting at various military checkpoints along the way.

The view at the top

The park features the obligatory series of rocks shaped like animals—elephant here, turtle there, frog and crocodile, even a Gwan-eum Buddha, and inscriptions on the cliff faces—names of Chinese visitors of old, the characters sized according to how much the carvers were paid.

Inscribed landscapes

It was raining the day we were there, and our park guide, sensing my innate clumsiness on the wet rocks, insisted on holding on to me on the way down, though she was hardly any bigger than me. She taught me the one word of Korean that I remember, chong-cho-ni, which she said meant “slow,” and we locked arms and chanted this as we came down the rain-slicked mountain, especially whenever we reached a trickily steep portion. My other guides lagged behind, and as we waited for them I pointed at them and said, “chong-cho-ni,” which got a good laugh.

Official tour guide on the left, Kumgangsan park guide on the right

Pyongyang Metro

Bewilderingly fancy, 100 meters underground. The escalators are so long that some people opt to sit on the steps for the ride. Most passengers wear pins with Kim Il-sung’s face on their chests, always on the right side.

Reading the news on the metro platform

Television

I turned it on for the first time in my hotel room in Wonsan. There were two channels, but both showed the same news program, featuring visits by important people to important sites, followed by a weather report that covered the entire Korean peninsula. Some text announcements were read out and then it was time for some revolutionary karaoke. The lyrics of a ballad scrolled beneath communist imagery of people walking by monuments, workers with their fists raised beside a party flag, interspersed with shots of flowers and clouds above mountains.

No photos from the television, so here are some scenic little boats instead

Birthplace of Kim Il-sung

I immediately recognized the place by its thatched roofs, spotted in the TV news report on VIP visits the previous evening in Wonsan. There were only Chinese tourists around, snapping photos of the ancestral Kim family agricultural and kitchen tools, such as a noodle press and a couple of legendary misshapen earthen jars.

Chinese tourists at Casa Kim

Departure

The day was shrouded in heavy fog. Buildings, people, everything appeared ghostly on the way to the little airport.

Traffic cop in the morning haze

It is tiny and chaotic at the departure area of what seems like the world’s smallest international airport. Departures and arrivals are all in one hall, everyone here checking in for the single flight to Beijing. I’m escorted to the line for the “Bussiness Class” (sic) check-in counter, which in a cruel socialist twist is several times slower than economy. My guide and a man standing behind us express some frustration and occasionally step up to the counter to poke their heads over and see what’s going on. You know the waiting is bad when even the locals can’t stand it.

Departing on the state carrier

Peace. Hope to be back soon.