October 2009 Archives

This is the seventh in a multi-part blog on North Korea. You can find the others here

When I got back to Pyongyang it was gray and overcast and just beginning to drizzle. I shook of my bus daze as we drove through the city's silent streets.

Our minders took us directly to the circus.

Outside our private entrance, a group of Koreans practiced marching in the empty parking lot. Drill instructors ran beside them, yelling to get their legs up higher, and sometimes hitting them with sticks.

We had a brief encounter with the North Korean elite while we waited to go inside. It was the only time we would come into contact them. A black Mercedes slid up to the side entrance and the driver jumped out to open the rear door. A couple stepped out, dressed in designer clothes and carefully made up, seemingly more at home in the fashionable streets of Beijing than in the coarse sackcloth of labourer's Pyongyang. But what struck us most was the child. He walked by with his nose in the air, reeking of superiority, as though he didn't notice us at all. Contempt had been bred into his bones, and it oozed from him. Next to the Lacoste crest on his shirt was the pin of the Leader that every North Korean must wear. They were immediately whisked inside, no doubt to an elegant private box. These are the people who are soaking up the aid money the Dear Leader accumulates with his nuclear blackmail schemes, while the rest of the country starves.

In the basement of the building I found a large washroom with marble walls and shiny chrome fittings. When I went to wash my hands no water came out of the taps. Our minder didn't look surprised. It was a metaphor for everything I saw in Pyongyang: surface elegance, but underneath it's all broken down. An empty façade, like the false front of a main street Old West town, but concealing a more sinister illusion.

When we finally walked into the crowded circus to take our seats, every single head in the place turned to stare at us, and conversation completely died out. Each scuff of our shoes or squeak of our seats seemed to carry through the entire building. It was a reminder of exactly how isolated we were in the country, and just how rare our visit was at the time.

I was fascinated to watch the reactions of the audience to the performance--it was as mesmerizing as the show itself. I got the sense they'd all been there many times before and knew exactly what to expect. They laughed uproariously in all the right (acceptable) places, and many of them even seemed to be relaxed. It was such a contrast to the dour unsmiling faces I saw in the streets each day. Perhaps in the anonymity of the circus they could let their guard down, if only for a while.

Besides going to the circus, it seemed there was very little for people to do in whatever free time they might have had. There was a theatre, and North Korea makes movies, but the themes were invariably about the revolution or the Korean War. There were also two state television channels, but when there was anything on it tended to be the same sort of thing, or rebroadcasts of famous speeches by Kim Il-Sung. Not exactly the best way to unwind from a day of hard labour.

Then again, unwinding didn't seem to be a priority. When the work day ended, the North Koreans were obliged to attend things like mandatory marching practice, militia training, self-criticism groups, or ideological study groups. There was no relief from the constant indoctrination. Brainwashing was a way of life, and it formed the totality of their world. It even started getting to us.

This is the sixth in a multi-part blog on North Korea. You can find the others here

The International Friendship Hall is one of the most bizarre things I've ever seen.

It's an enormous marble Korean-style building constructed to house all of the gifts given to Kim Il-Sung, from almost every country in the world. Many of these gifts were from heads of state (the most elaborate being from fellow dictators), but the majority were from Communist parties and Juche philosophy study groups in different countries.

At the entrance we were instructed to hand in our cameras and pull large cloth covers on over our shoes. The temperature was maintained at an artificially controlled chill, somewhat like a morgue (I imagined it held the rotting remains of the North Korean people's hopes and dreams).

Inside, gilded ceilings soared above us as our feet whispered across polished marble, shattering the glittering reflection of cut-glass chandeliers. A large part of the building seemed to extend into the mountain behind it. Like Dr. Who's tardis, its inside was much larger than the exterior would lead one to believe. There were straight hallways so long I could barely see the end of them, with doorways on each side opening into gift rooms organized by country and region of the world.

We were told we didn't have nearly enough time to see it all, which according to the official guide would take about a week. We decided to view the gifts from Western countries, curious to see what might have been sent from our homelands. (For the record, Canada's section was quite small, four or five modest gifts including a small soapstone carving and a Group of Seven art book--it felt diplomatic, an extension of the barest courtesy.)

The most extravagant gifts were of course from fellow dictators: a bullet proof limo from Stalin, luxury railroad cars from Stalin and Mao Tse-Tung, a stuffed alligator waiter holding a drink tray from the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, an enormous sailboat intricately carved from a single massive block of jade from China... It went on and on. There was even something from North Korea's great enemy, the United States--a basketball brought by Madeline Albright on her visit during the final months of the Clinton administration.

As we made our way through this vast treasure house, the contents of which must surely have been enough to feed the starving country for years, we met up with a group of touring schoolchildren. The regime extracts full propaganda value from the place, telling its people that North Korea is looked up to by the rest of the world, and that the Great Leader was loved and respected so deeply that other nations showered him with presents.

The tour finally culminated in the epitome of ghastly hagiography. We were ushered into a dimly lit room with bird calls emanating softly from the shadows. I glanced around walls lined with a few important gifts, until my gaze reached the far end and I gave an involuntary shudder. Tastefully lit from below by spotlights was a very life-like wax figure of Kim Il-Sung standing in a forest setting. It was apparently sculpted soon after his death, and I have to admit he looked rather fresh.

We were told that in this room the Great Leader lives on for the Korean people. We were then "encouraged" to line up in front of it and give a "one-time bow" to show our respect. The bowing was just a motion, it meant nothing to me, though some of my colleagues were visibly uncomfortable at being made to perform this gesture. In my opinion, by far the worst part of it was that Ol' Wax Kim looked like he might break into a smile and start giving "on the spot guidance" at any second.

After touring the Hall of Gifts we were led to an outdoor terrace on an upper floor for a rest. The view over the valley and surrounding mountains was indeed quite beautiful. So beautiful, in fact, that our guide told us "when the Great Leader was here he was so inspired by this view that he composed an on-the-spot poem." She then passed us a copy in English, and one of the guys was obliged to read it aloud. We all expressed polite appreciation over the Great Leader's way with words, but jeez, it didn't even rhyme.

To me the most appalling thing about the Hall of Gifts is that it had been built during Kim Il-Sung's lifetime. He willfully participated in the elevation of himself as a living god. And of course the official myth has been extended to the next generation.

There was another hall of gifts across the parking lot from the main one, this one housing presents received by the (current) Dear Leader Kim Jong-Il. It was much smaller than the father's repository, with many empty, sealed rooms. Our guide explained this away as foresight: enough rooms had been built to anticipate all the gifts the Dear Leader would receive in his lifetime. No one pointed out the fact that, well, Young Kim's getting up there in years, and that place is an awfully long way from being full.

The entrance to this treasury was guarded by soldiers cradling silver-plated, engraved Kalashnikovs. As we walked towards it, the heavy stone doors slid apart automatically in true James Bond fashion. I expected to see Blofeld roll up in his chair, petting a white cat and leering through a monocle.

The guide insisted we didn't have much time--there was clearly a tourist backlog waiting behind us--and that we could only see a few of the rooms. She took us through the section containing gifts received by Kim Jong-Il over the previous two years (you'll recall that the gifts in the other hall were organized by country). Two of the rooms were mostly filled with modern crap sent from South Korea--furniture, big screen televisions, VCR's, and computers. For all I know, these may have been leftovers from one of his houses.

I'm pretty sure that what we saw in the second building must in truth have been all the official gifts Kim Jong-Il has ever been given. He's reclusive, he seldom receives visitors, and he's only ventured abroad a couple of times.

It must be lonely being a dictator, spending all your time running the country (into the ground), writing books, and warding off enemies.

Come on. What are you waiting for? Send the guy a birthday present.

This is the fifth in a multi-part blog on North Korea. You can find the others here

After another horrid hotel breakfast we were taken to visit a Buddhist temple in the mountains. It was said to be very old, but detailed questioning revealed most of it to be a concrete reconstruction. According to the North Koreans, the original temple was destroyed by the "American imperialists" during their bombing campaigns in the Korean War.

The design was similar to Chinese temples I'd seen, with intricate carving and garish, vividly painted patterns in Halloween orange and chimney red. But all similarities ended with the superficial external.

The entire setting felt like a façade.

The site guide's responses to our questions were vague, and she often evaded the subject by giving the answer to an entirely different, unasked question.

When asked how many practicing Buddhists there are in North Korea, she said she didn't know.

When asked if we could meet the priest or temple monk, she said yes, and then abruptly changed it to no. She suddenly remembered that he was performing a ceremony no one could watch. (Perhaps I'm just being overly paranoid, and he was simply on the bowl...)

Unlike the temples I'd visited elsewhere in Asia, no one was praying there. There were no local people, no monks. Only two bored soldiers standing around watching us. And, as everywhere else, a pair of people sweeping and clipping grass. Our guide was dressed in traditional Korean clothes and had been waiting for us when we arrived, but one of the guys saw her at our hotel that morning. She was clearly a prop as well.

Our suspicions were confirmed back in Pyongyang a couple days later, when we visited a temple that was almost an exact duplicate of this one, right down to the placement of the buildings and the brightly painted statues.

I learned later that the government maintains these places, as well as a couple Christian churches, to show to visitors and foreign aid workers. They do this to demonstrate "proof" of North Korea's tolerance and openness.

The government claims many freedoms for its citizens on paper, including freedom of religion. But the only religion permitted in North Korea is the cult of the Kim regime.

This is the fourth in a multi-part blog on North Korea. You can find the others here

One day I took an overnight trip from the capital of Pyongyang. A field trip of sorts. It was the only time we were permitted to sleep someplace other than our hotel, locked down on an island in the city.

We drove on a smooth, wide multilane "tourist highway" that begins in Pyongyang and ends at Mt. Myohyang, a couple hours to the north.

Apart from the occasional military vehicle, we were the only thing on the road. Well, the only thing on wheels. There were the usual walking clusters of people, the sweepers, and work groups supervised by uniformed soldiers.

The countryside was lush with rice paddies and potato fields, peppered with the bent backs of workers. Though the land remains pristine and unpolluted largely due to a lack of industrial development throughout most of the country, this abundant greenery was somewhat misleading. It was the tail end of the harvest, and the countryside is normally lush and green at that time. The northern mountains, which make up most of the country's landmass, are much drier and totally lacking in agriculture.

After just two days on the inside, we were already suspicious that the land bordering the highway had been carefully tailored for us to see. Most visitors and officials who come to North Korea take this route at some point during their stay. The government is very careful about what they see, and as we learned a few days later, they spare no expense in creating the most elaborate illusions.

Throughout the countryside, in the middle of rice paddies and on the sides of hills, I saw billboards etched with Korean characters. These were political propaganda slogans or words from the Great Leader. Even there, in the middle of a field, the average North Korean can't escape thoughts of the Leader. Messages are deliberately placed to remind them of the regime and to draw their minds back to their oppressive day to day reality. In every small village and at every crossroad there's guaranteed to be a giant painting showing the Leader doing something. He truly is omnipresent.

The trip was supposed to be a routine drive down a manicured tourist highway, but luck was with us, and I was able to catch an unexpected glimpse behind the curtain of lies the North Koreans had so carefully woven for our benefit--one of only a few instances during the entire trip that the truth showed through.

It happened when we were forced to turn off the main road due to unexpected maintenance work. Our watchers were as surprised as we were by the detour--it was clear from their reactions that they hadn't been briefed to expect it.

Unlike the "tourist highway," the local roads were barely passable. It was obvious from the way people sat on the road or walked down the center without looking back that they were unused to traffic. The only vehicles I saw were wooden carts pulled by oxen. A steam train sat on a siding, the people working on it indicating that it was still in use. Even some of the military vehicles had hand cranks on the front. They must have been from the First World War. I wonder if the Americans know that, to totally cripple the North Korean land forces, they just have to send in a small team of saboteurs to steal the cranks?

By then we'd developed a method of taking photos of things we weren't supposed to record. During the first two days, we asked our watchers for permission every time we wanted to snap an image of a monument. Over time they began to trust us, and we were obliged to ask less and less. They assumed we knew the rules and were cooperating. And so, each time we wanted to document something forbidden, I stood in front of a monument or other acceptable subject while my accomplice focused over my shoulder. Many of the photos you see here were obtained using that simple method.

The other highlight of the drive was a stop to tour a large cave system. Several North Korean tour groups were passing through at the same time. They were visibly startled to see us, and they turned away quickly. Unlike the Chinese they didn't stare.

Our cave guide's comments throughout the tour were typical of the sort of propaganda we were bombarded with during every waking moment of our stay. At least twice she paused to say, "On this spot the Leader stopped to pose for a picture, so if you'd like to take a picture here please go ahead." And near the end, "On this spot the Leader offered on the spot guidance. He said, 'We don't want our guests to get tired, so we should put some benches here so they can rest.' And so we built these benches." She stopped and turned to us, clearly expecting applause, as though the Leader had just invented time travel or cold fusion.

Despite the distracting flow of propaganda, I couldn't help speculating that perhaps the cave also housed an underground bunker. There are said to be many all over North Korea--they're master tunnellers, and have reportedly concealed entire nuclear enrichment facilities and military bases inside a vast network of subterranean caverns all over the country.

The cave was deep, the highway to the capital was a good, smooth road, and a suspicious helipad was located right outside. The entry was also covered by a two-storey cement building. There were certainly many unlit side passages which could have concealed a steel door. The entire time we were underground I poked around at the back of the group, looking for the entrance to a world of James Bond villains that I knew must have been there.

After touring the caves, we got back on the road and finished the drive to Mt. Myohyang. Our hotel looked like a base from a science fiction film, with two angled wings and a revolving restaurant on top. That bit about the restaurant was extremely odd, because the hotel had been built in a vee of the mountains. At dinnertime it was pitch black and there was absolutely nothing to see.

A few more notes from my recent trip to Japan (and then we'll get back to North Korea)...

Today I'd like to talk about one of the coolest cities in the world, a place where I lived from 2000 to 2002.

Tokyo is a vast urban sprawl that spreads to engulf neighbouring cities and towns faster every year. The current population of the metro area is approximately 28 million. It bears mentioning that the population of Canada, an enormous country 26 times the size of Japan, is 31 million.

Imagine all the people of my vast nation crammed into one sprawling city, jammed together and stacked like cordwood. Then insert strange smells, unintelligible flashing neon signs, and a cacophony of screeching trains, shouting voices, and raucous pachinko parlours.

Tokyo is far too vast to present one unified face. It's a kaleidoscope that shifts and changes depending on where you focus your gaze. The original city was established as Edo in 1600. Over the centuries it grew and oozed amoeba-like across the Kanto Plain, swallowing up smaller towns. The intricate networks of trains and subways are the capillaries that connect these disparate masks; two train stops can totally alter your surroundings.

Plunge with me into the circulatory system of this great pulsing beast, as we take a look at a few of the places I wandered last week...

Every day 2 million people pass through the gates of Shinjuku station, the busiest commuter station in the world. Shinjuku is probably the focal point of the city, though it isn't its geographical centre. Its station represents a physical veil between Japan's publicly agreed illusion and its darker national psyche. On the West side the skyscraper district pierces the grey sky with businesslike vigour. It's all very staid and matrimonial. But on the East side lurks Kabuki-cho, the red light entertainment district, where ties are loosened, words are slurred, and a thin line of spittle escapes the corner of a mouth. Neon signs proclaim illicit pleasures behind doors that in other neighbourhoods might be discrete... 

Harajuku is a claustrophobic alleyway strip of cheap clothing shops and jewellery stalls where trend-obsessed youth come to see and be seen--mostly to be seen. Fashion pioneers and design gurus flock to their inventiveness in the hopes of stealing it to conceal their own creative bankruptcy. But they can never steal the essence.

Akihabara is the electronics district. Its streets are lined with discount shops displaying futuristic gadgets magically snatched back to our present. Neon strobes flash the world in pale disconnected sci-fi fragments. Software sings and hardware hears. Geeks and nerds prowl the streets in packs like wolves. They are the bullies here. Rather than physically beat you to a pulp they sneer through flashing spectacles and talk down at you in scathing Help Desk fashion.

Tokyo is utterly unique. It's not Japan, any more than New York City is America. It's fast-paced, ultra-modern, overcrowded, and incredibly expensive. With so many aspects to its character, so many niches, exploring it would take decades.

Through it all, the dizzying pace of construction ensures constant change. It doesn't exactly invalidate your impressions, for they were subjectively true in another time. Rather, it solidifies them. The city, like life and the senses, is a constant flux, and you the archaeologist are simply responding to subtle cues buried in deep strata of time.

My apologies for the long delay since my last update. I've been in Japan for the past couple weeks and just returned home.

We'll get back to North Korea very soon. But first I'd like to share with you a few images from this last trip...

Let's begin with sumo.

I got hooked on sumo while living in Tokyo between 2000 and 2002. As a martial artist the technical aspects of course impress me--the throws, the strategies, the sudden reversals. But it's even more interesting when you get to know the history of each wrestler and the particulars of their style. Who does well against who, who can be counted on to upset the balance by beating the big yokozuna, all of these elements factor in to the grand tournaments held every other month.

I had the opportunity to watch morning practice at a sumo beya when I lived in Tokyo, but I never had a chance to attend an actual tournament.

Last week I was fortunate enough to get tickets to the Aki Basho (Fall Tournament), which is held in the historic Ryogoku district of Tokyo. Here are a few images of Day 8...

Colourful nobori line the entryway to the Ryogoku Kokugikan

The fighters perform the dohyo-iri ('ring entering ceremony')

Yokozuna ('Grand Champion') Asashoryu performs the ring entering ceremony...

My view from here...

Yamamotoyama in action...

Preparing to fight...

Today's scoreboard...