November 2009 Archives

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

Every first world metropolis needs a subway, and the Great Leader's urban paradise is no different. But as with everything else, the North Koreans went a little overboard. Other world cities pride themselves on having functional transportation systems. Pyongyang's exists as yet another monument to the glorification of the Fatherland.

Each subway station in Pyongyang is slightly different, with a different décor and name derived from its revolutionary theme, which bears absolutely no relation to the station's geographical location.

The stations I visited were deep underground, far deeper than necessary judging by the flat topography of the city and the lack of competing lines. The escalator felt like it was descending to the Earth's core, or perhaps to the depths of hell. My ears popped more than once on the way down. I assumed the stations were to be used as bomb shelters in the event of war, or that they had some other nefarious purpose.

I've largely confined these travelers' tales to what I saw and heard at the time, rather than bring in what I learned after I got out. But I'll make an exception here. I later learned that our suspicions were likely quite accurate. This quote from a very cool website on the Pyongyang metro: "Documents passed to Changchun Car Company, which built the original subway cars, indicate that Pyongyang has a substantial secret metro system for government use", and "Apart from the secret lines, the Pyongyang Metro was designed as part of a broader military system of tunnels and underground installations. The stations are very deep underground and are fitted with multiple (usually triple) heavy blast doors, indirect linking tunnels, and other features that imply military purposes or service as emergency shelters."  I've provided the link at the bottom of this blog for anyone interested in reading more.

The platform of Puhung (Rehabilitation) station was built of marble, polished to a high sheen to better reflect the glow of the enormous chandeliers which lit the station. Its walls were adorned with broad ceramic tile mosaics, the largest of which graced the entryway above the stairs: "The Great Leader Comrade Kim Il Sung among Workers" (15.8 x 9.25 m). According to the official English-language brochure The Pyongyang Metro: "In the underground station is the mosaic mural "The Great Leader Kim Il Sung among Workers" which depicts the great leader who, regarding "The people are my God" as his motto, devoted his whole life to the people, sharing life and death, sweets and bitters with them."

Here's another dose, if you simply can't get enough of that wonderful propaganda: "The works of art at Puhung Station represent the appearance of the country which is prospering day by day and the happiness of the working people who enjoy the equitable and worthwhile creative life to their hearts' content thanks to the popular policy of the Workers' Party of Korea and the Government of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea."

Despite the questionable choice of subject matter, the North Koreans really do excel at this type of art. Their craftsmanship is impeccable. By contrast, the subway cars themselves were a little down at heels. The doors didn't even open automatically--we had to open them manually, and turn to slide them shut again. Inside each car the two regulation framed portraits of the Leaders hung at one end, in case we needed another reminder of who's in charge, or who we have to thank for all this.

Our car was nearly empty, perhaps because they'd chosen the national holiday to take us for our token ride, or perhaps, as I suspected, because the system rarely ran, given the power cuts and blackouts which have become a daily constant in the country. Quoting again from the Pyongyang Metro website: "Indeed, whether the Metro is in regular service at all is not entirely certain. Practically the only non-North Korean eyewitnesses to Metro use are the visitors given the showcase ride on the system."

It seems that the other passengers in our car may have planted there for our benefit, though they did do a very good job of seeming to be surprised by the presence of foreigners: "Inevitably, they are taken for a one-station ride, between Puhung and Yonggwang stations, accompanied by their North Korean guides. A handful of well-dressed Korean passengers also board the train."

Our driver was already waiting for us when we arrived at the next stop: Yonggwang (Glory).

After touring the subway station, we were whisked off to an amusement park. This wasn't part of the official agenda; it was actually a request. It all came about as we drove past the park on our bus a couple days earlier. One of the guys in our group saw the park, leaped to the window, and in a thick Norwegian accent cried with great sincerity, "Oh a roller coaster! Why are we just going past?" Being rather compassionate individuals and quick to extend the hand of hospitality, our minders sought permission to take us to this gem of the People's Paradise.

At first glance, the Mangyongdae Fun Fair didn't look like very much fun. It was shabby and down at heels, a far cry from Disneyland or even Canada's Wonderland. Glum soldiers with Kalashnikovs guarded the entrance--perhaps to ensure patrons really did have a good time. Many of the "rides" seemed like the rusted remnants of an inner city children's park.

The only notable attraction was the roller coaster we had spotted from the road, but even it looked exhausted. Ground down by privation and years of hardship, it seemed barely able to summon the inertia to make it around its two loops. Every time I watched it go up, I was sure it would creep to the top, lose speed, and simply fall off.

A few of us agreed to ride it with Jon, despite the fact that we had to pay $4 each. A long line of Koreans snaked around the platform's base; they'd probably been waiting for two hours or more in the stifling summer heat. One of our minders simply pushed through to the bottom of the stairs, barked a command, and everyone immediately cowered aside to let us pass. I didn't see a singe person grumble at the unfairness of our VIP treatment.

Now I have to tell you that I've jumped out of airplanes, climbed mountains and met grizzly bears in the wild face to face. I'm not the least bit nervous about roller coasters because they're designed to be safe--but this one looked like an elaborately devised random execution machine, something straight out of Kafka. It was with considerable hesitation that I allowed them to strap me in.

The cars creaked and groaned as they slammed around the track, metal screeching against metal in a triumph of communist engineering. When we reached the top of the loops, I did feel that moment of indeterminate hesitation I saw from below, but after only the briefest of shudders we continued down the other side, shaken and thankful to escape with our lives. The entire ride--one circuit of the tiny track--lasted less than a minute. Not really worth the wait for all those Korean people, but I guess it was worth $4 to us because it was so odd.

Those interested in reading more about the Pyongyang Metro are urged to check out this excellent site, complete with maps, photos, and all the speculation any North Korea watcher could ever desire: www.pyongyangmetro.com

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

 
Our escorts chose National Liberation Day--the holiday celebrating Korea's liberation from the Japanese occupation of the Second World War--to make our obligatory visit to the Grand Monument on Mansudae Hill. There were a lot more people than normal in the streets of Pyongyang, and the sun blazed down with a festive vengeance.

The Grand Monument is the famous gold-tinged statue of Great Leader Kim Il-Sung that towers over the city. He stands gazing off into the distance, his hand indicating the way ahead for the Korean people, the Juche way of prosperity and self-reliance. Nearby I saw a man pulling up grass and stuffing it into a cloth sack. I wondered if he was planning to eat it. When the food crisis was at its worst, the government printed books on how to use such things as grass for food. This coincided with the cheerful "Let's eat only two meals a day!" campaign. Somehow I doubt that the corpulent elite participated in that one.

All visitors to North Korea are expected to stop at the Grand Monument to place flowers in a show of respect to the Leader. I'd been told this before I entered the country, and I wondered why they hadn't brought us on the first day. This holiday was the obvious reason--they'd been saving it up.

One of my colleagues placed the bouquet for our group, and we lined up to give the 'one-time bow' as instructed. No doubt the North Koreans extracted full propaganda value from the occasion, telling the local people that yet another group of foreigners has traveled here from afar to pay their solemn respects to the Leader, who is of course revered around the globe.

I was surprised by the number of North Koreans who were there and at other public monuments. I wondered how often residents of Pyongyang visited the place, if it was mandatory, and how often they placed flowers?

The Grand Monument is flanked on both sides by statues depicting war scenes, one showing the Great Leader valiantly at the forefront of the fight against the Japanese, and the other showing him bravely leading the fight against the Americans and their puppet stooges the South Koreans during the Korean War. It was a shrine on an enormous scale to his (manufactured) memory and his greatness.

What I find most disturbing about the entire thing is that the Grand Monument had been built more than 10 years before Kim Il-Sung's death. Despite all his noble talk of self-sacrifice and living for "his" people, he was a full participant in the cult they built around him, and in his eventual deification.

Later that afternoon, our minders took us to a large park where local people gathered to celebrate the holiday. I have to admit I was a little surprised by this. It was the closest we'd gotten to actual North Koreans, and given the boisterous gathering and loose crowds, it was there that our escorts ran the greatest risk of us making unsupervised contact.

The people in the park were more relaxed than those we'd glimpsed on the edges of tourist sites. They waved hello and smiled rather than glare at us with fear and suspicion.

Small groups gathered in circles on the ground, playing traditional instruments, eating and drinking. Dancing broke out with increasing frequency, and small crowds of onlookers formed around those blessed with the greatest talent. Good natured drunks staggered through the scene, spreading good cheer with breath that would stop a lion in its tracks.

We strolled through the park at a relaxed pace with our minders. They even paused from time to time to translate for us when someone said hello. Of course it was nothing more than "hello" and "where are you from," but it was the deepest level of contact we'd experienced so far.

At one point, half of our group paused on the margins of a crowd to watch some particularly good dancing. One minder stayed, while the other half of the group continued along the path with our other minder. It wasn't difficult for me to take advantage of the confusion and drift off alone in the direction they'd gone.

I thought I'd made a clean escape, but a casual glance over my shoulder picked up our video guy--the suspected spy--quick legging it in hot pursuit. He was twisting through the crowd with a harried look, but I hit an open stretch and my legs were longer. I adopted my most naïve look and sped up until I lost him.

I eventually ran into the other group, but for a brief five minutes I was alone and unsupervised in North Korea.

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

It took me nearly a week to realize why Pyongyang felt so much like a stage set. It wasn't just the marble monuments and the enormous public buildings, the empty ten-lane streets and the weird scarcity of people. It was the almost total absence of shops. In all our bus rides through the city, I'd seen nothing to suggest that people actually lived there.

I did see the odd place that looked like a store, with a plate glass window and display shelving, but they were always dark and empty. And I never once saw a restaurant. Restaurants must have existed for the elite, but no signs marked their location and they weren't advertised.

As travelers, this robbed us of a staple window into that place. When wandering alone I tend to ditch tourist sites and guidebook highlights in favour of grocery stores, cafes and small shops. Shelves stocked with strange products tell me more about the physical and emotional appetites of a culture than an airbrushed museum ever could. Watching the flow of life ebb and surge through a café or down a street gives me an immediate sense of how a culture views space, how they interact with each other, and which small details of life they see as important.

Because Pyongyang was bereft of shops and other natural gathering places, we were forced to interpret its people through cold stone of monuments and the tedium of propaganda. We voiced these concerns to our escorts, and though they were confused by the mundanity of our request, they agreed to pass it along.

Two days later they announced that our request had been approved, and we pulled up in front of what our minders referred to as a 'local' bookstore. But the books were in English or other foreign languages, with only a small Korean language section next to the door. The shop obviously existed for the benefit of Pyongyang's small number of resident foreigners--embassy and aid workers--and its even scarcer visitors, though I can't imagine how desperate you'd have to be to want to read anything by the Great Leader.

While in the store, one of my colleagues told our minder that he was interested in buying a tape of revolutionary songs. He asked him to recommend one from the stock on the counter. Our minder took him aside, and in a low sultry whisper said, "Do you just want a normal tape, or are you interested in hard revolutionary songs?" It sounded like he was offering hardcore porn.

As the week dragged on, we kept asking to be shown some aspect of day to day life in North Korea--a place where residents shopped, not a place designed for foreigners. They finally agreed to show us a supermarket. When we walked in, I was immediately surprised by the number of goods on the shelves. I'd expected scarcity. It wasn't crammed like the shelves in the West; the goods were more sparsely laid out, but there didn't appear to be shortages of anything.

On closer inspection, I discovered that every single item was imported from Argentina. A foreign aid worker from Scandinavia who happened to be shopping in one of the aisles filled us in. Apparently the store was run by an Argentine businessman as a joint venture with the North Korean government, and it was where the North Korean elite and resident foreigners shopped.

This obviously wasn't what we were hoping to see. But perhaps there really was nothing to show us. I suspect that for the rest of the population there are no shops. The rest survive on government rations, and on what little food they're permitted to grow for themselves.

The Scandinavian aid worker also told us she had freedom of movement within Pyongyang, and was allowed to drive her own truck. However, she couldn't go outside the city without an escort, and permission was difficult and time consuming to obtain. The entire time we talked she spoke in a low voice, looked around often, and was very careful in her choice of words. Thanks to her we were given an authentic glimpse into life behind the walls, so our stop there wasn't a total loss.

The supermarket obviously didn't meet the terms of our request, and so as a last resort our minders made a brief stop at a shopping mall. It wasn't what we in the West would think of as a shopping mall--more like a four-story department store in a nondescript gray building. But it was obviously where upper caste North Koreans shopped. (As for the elite, they typically fly to Beijing.)

The shelves were somewhat bare and unusually stocked, with the strangest items laid out side by side. One section featured items as disparate as food, tools, a circular saw blade (but no saw), clothing, sports equipment, and fake Rolex watches, all placed side by side and spaced carefully to give the illusion of abundance.

With each of the products, one display item was set out on top of a stack of boxes that presumably contained identical items. Things are never as simple as they appear in North Korea, however. While browsing the music section I saw four harmonica boxes sitting beside some other instruments in a glass case. I asked the attendant if I could see one of the harmonicas. She opened the boxes one after another, but they were all empty.

It felt like I'd punched another small hole in the façade.

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

Any propaganda tour of Pyongyang is bound to include a visit to the American spy ship Pueblo, captured by North Korea in 1968. To most people 1968 is ancient history, the distant past. But the North Koreans are still gloating over it and the international incident it caused.

Our site guide was a grizzled old campaigner with a chest full of ribbons, apparently one of the three North Korean soldiers who actually boarded and captured the ship. He escorted us around the vessel, pointing out ancient electronics equipment, maps, empty weapons racks, and documents which included photos of the captured crew and blown-up copies of their signed confessions (which, from my reading at least, didn't seem to admit to much of anything). Places where the Pueblo had been hit by North Korean small arms fire were circled in bright red paint.

The old soldier described the entire boarding operation in minute detail, with vividness and immediacy, as though it had all happened yesterday.

We then had to watch a video showing old international news footage voiced over with anti-American diatribe, proving that then-President Lyndon Johnson first denied the Pueblo's spy mission and was later forced to admit to it. America maintains that the ship was in international waters at the time of its capture. As for me, I'm not taking any sides on this one. I'll leave you to look up the details and decide for yourself.

After 40 minutes of virulent anti-American propaganda, we turned to the old soldier and said, "Thank you very much for the tour. Here are some American cigarettes." He accepted them happily.

From the Pueblo we were taken to an enormous eight story public building called the Children's Palace. As with all government structures, its interior was sheathed in marble and lit by elaborate chandeliers.

The Children's Palace is where kids go to enjoy "voluntary" extra-curricular activities.

We passed through room after room where groups of children studied things like embroidery, painting, calligraphy, traditional dance, singing, and traditional Korean musical instruments. The computer lab was filled with the latest PC's, running software newer than anything I'd seen in Japan at the time. Our minders tried to usher us through quickly, but I lingered for long enough to see that the screen displays were all in English, and the kids were just clicking randomly with the mouse. They didn't actually know a thing about computers. Like government workers everywhere, they'd been instructed to sit there and look busy.

At the conclusion of this tour, we were led to a large concert hall on the first floor to watch an "informal" show put on by the children. It was nothing short of incredible. They had full stage lighting and sets, an orchestra, and water fountains. It rivaled any professional show I've seen in Canada. They sang like opera stars, played a variety of Korean instruments and danced--of course the themes were mainly revolutionary, but this didn't take anything away from the sheer spectacle of their performance.

As if on cue, the event hit a creepy patch when they came to the obligatory song dedicated to the Leader. Old video footage of Kim Il-Sung among the people flickered across the background, and whenever he made an appearance the Koreans in the audience burst out in applause. In the grand finale, the singers turned toward his image, one hand on their hearts and one outstretched, singing "Thank you" with tears of joy streaming down their faces. (Thank you for what, exactly? For turning them into slaves?) 

At least the Great Leader came across as warm and friendly in his videos, and with a touch of charisma. The next song was devoted to the Dear Leader Kim Jong-Il. Very little video footage of him exists. This was projected on the screen, as well as the same four or five old photos I'd seen on bulletin boards in all the hotels. Without fail he always looked ill at ease and slightly maniacal.

Throughout the entire one-hour performance I had to keep reminding myself that these were just children. The strict discipline and rigorous training necessary to achieve such a level of skill must have been Spartan indeed, and I'm pretty sure it wasn't voluntary. I suspect it's the same as athletics in any totalitarian country. Those who demonstrate an early aptitude for sports are shoved into it from a young age and forced to train relentlessly as their duty to the Fatherland. Yet another example of how personal will and individual dreams are swallowed up for the glory of the nation. In the DPRK even childhood is expendable.

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

One of my creepiest experiences in North Korea was a tour of a primary school.

Our bus pulled into an empty, cheerless concrete schoolyard, and we were marched up to the principal's office. I had immediate flashbacks of all the times I'd spent in the office as a kid, and the string of suspensions I earned. I wonder how I would have fared in Pyongyang?

  We sat around a large conference table, where the principal told us about the North Korean school system and how her school is run. In primary schools, morning classes are devoted to Communist morality, revolutionary history, Korean language and arts (with revolutionary themes), and the study of the lives of the Great Leader and the Dear Leader. I suppose leftover time must be allotted to math and science. Afternoons are apparently free leisure time. Students can go home and do their own thing, or they can voluntarily study such things as traditional music or dance. We would learn more about what "voluntary" meant that afternoon.

While we were talking one of the guys asked if he could take her picture. She nodded yes, but as he began snapping photos she stopped in mid-sentence and pointed to the wall above her head, at the ever-present framed pictures of Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-Il. "Please be careful not to cut the Leader's photo in half," she said.

I later discovered that it's a crime to do so. It's also a crime to tear a picture of the Leader in half, even if it happens accidentally.

(I heard a story about a German who visited North Korea on the same sort of trip as me. He was smoking in his hotel room, and he butted out his cigarette on an old newspaper. He didn't know there was a photo of the Leader on the other side. The cleaning staff found it and reported him. Armed men burst into his room, threw him on the floor, and shoved guns in his face, screaming in furious Korean. The situation was eventually calmed down, and he was immediately deported to China, his trip at an end. The punishment for locals is time in a concentration camp.)

After our brief talk with the principal, we were given a tour of the school. We were told that unfortunately it was summer vacation and the students were away. We'd seen kids all over the city wearing school uniforms, but apparently they were involved in "voluntary extra curricular activities." I wonder if the kids are always on vacation when groups of foreigners come to visit?

Despite that warning, when we toured the classrooms we discovered some children had been brought in for our benefit. The girls were dressed in frilly white dresses and traditional Korean gowns--hardly the kind of thing you'd wear to school.

The hallways were silent, but just as we were about to step into the science lab the room broke out into animated voices. We walked in on the teacher in mid-lecture, as one eager boy was offering the perfect answer to her question. The noise died moments after we left the room.

In another classroom I saw a picture of Kim Jong-Il as a child sitting on his father's knee. I asked our minder how old the Dear Leader would have been in this photo. He said about 10 years old. I then asked him the date. It corresponded exactly to the date when the military museum guide told us the child prodigy General Kim Jong-Il was leading battles and planning military strategy against American and UN forces during the Korean War. The official propaganda is full of such contradictions, but everyone ignores it as though their life depended on it (it does).

  Those first two classrooms were weird, but they had nothing on the art class. We entered the room to find that the kids had just finished drawing perfect copies of a bird. They were just setting down their pencils as we walked in. Tacked up on a bulletin board were other samples of their work. One showed a ship being torpedoed, with "USA" written clearly on its side. Another showed an American soldier being stabbed in the throat by a schoolgirl with a giant pencil as great gouts of blood spurted from the wound. This isn't something they dreamed up on their own. Everything about their upbringing in North Korea has been carefully calculated to indoctrinate such hate.

Our last stop was the music classroom. The students struck up a well-rehearsed concert just as we walked through the door, but the effect was calculated to seem like they'd been "practicing" all along. They played for 20 minutes, accordion, guitar, traditional songs and dances.

They were really quite good, but I didn't get the impression that they were enjoying it. Their faces were frozen in fake smiles, and they all swayed back and forth in the same zombie-like fashion. When anyone made a small mistake, they snuck fearful glances at the stern-faced teacher like a pet cowering in anticipation of a kick.

When the concert ended the children set down their instruments and rushed towards us in a group. They simply wanted to grab and shake our hands, but all I could think about was that drawing of the American soldier being stabbed in the throat--I covered my neck and almost recoiled in horror.

Here are a few more photos from the school visit, because you really have to see it to believe it...

Studies in the lives of the Great Leader and the Dear Leader, one of their core subjects:

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

Any trip to Pyongyang involves extensive tours of the city. It's North Korean's showcase, a vast stage set carefully designed to promote the myth of the Fatherland and the success of Kim Il-Sung's Juche philosophy.

Our first stop was a house said to be the birthplace of Kim Il-Sung. It was a poor little dwelling on the outskirts of the city, set amidst vast manicured lawns and flowerbeds. As I walked through the grounds the shrubbery startled me by playing military music, and trees burst into exuberant flurries of recorded birdsong as I passed.

The site guide told us how the Great Leader had been born into poverty. His parents were tenant farmers or gravediggers or something along those lines, and the Great Leader's childhood experience was one of toil, hunger and good old fashioned character building--it sounded very much like the typical North Korean experience today, but if it was good enough for the Leader, who are they to complain?

The entire site was of course a reconstruction. The tools leaning against the wall were unscuffed, and the pots and pans in the kitchen had been blackened with paint. Each item had been carefully placed to look as though it had just been set down. The result was a little too good to be true.

As I walked through this scene, trying to block out the ceaseless flow of propaganda which accompanied every stop, it struck me that the entire setup looked suspiciously like a manger. With that thought, so many other disconnected images fell into place.

The Kim cult has co-opted Christian mythology--why reinvent the wheel when you can simply mimic a successful design? They've created their own version of the Trinity: the Father (Kim Il-Sung), the Son (Kim Jong-Il), and the Holy Spirit (the Juche philosophy). The third pillar of the Trinity is alternately formed by the mother of Kim Jong-Il as Mary figure.

The cult of the Leaders is the state religion. I wonder who taught them this? (No need to answer, it's a rhetorical question.) A rich Hong Kong businessman owned the 42-storey hotel we were staying in, but American evangelist Billy Graham reportedly owned the city's other big hotel, and he's made no secret of the fact that he's a great friend of the regime. Look it up for yourself, there are plenty of web links and photos.

It seemed the primary purpose of the visit to Kim Il-Sung's legendary birthplace was to cement the idea of the "Jesus story"--a prophet who will save the Korean people, a humble child born into obscurity but predestined for greatness.

With the foundation of the Great Leader's childhood firmly in place--the crucible of poverty that forged his iron will and his compassion for his people--we were taken to the next stage of the myth: Kim Il-Sung's defining moment, when he led his people in overthrowing the Japanese occupiers during World War Two. 

The Korean War museum (or The Victorious Fatherland Liberation War Museum, rather), like all public buildings, was an elaborate marble edifice, something you'd expect to find at the height of the Roman Empire. Its lobby was of course dominated by an enormous painting of Kim Il-Sung in military uniform, leading a group of smiling soldiers and children.

Our site guide, a stern woman dressed in military uniform and carrying a long white pointer stick, led us briskly through the museum, delivering an angry tirade about "the American imperialists and their South Korean puppet stooges", all of it in clipped one-way English--"one-way" because she could deliver her memorized propaganda clearly, but she couldn't seem to understand our questions. At least, her evasive answers made us think so. 

She spent the bulk of the tour explaining what she referred to as Phase One of the conflict. The North Korean version of history is unique, and worth repeating. At the end of WWII the Korean peninsula was divided at the 38th parallel, controlled by America in the south and Russia in the north. The two countries withdrew their forces at the agreed time, but things remained unstable. After endless provocations and cross-border skirmishes initiated by the South Koreans, North Korea was forced to invade to defend itself. The Great Leader masterminded one brilliant battle after another and quickly pushed the South Korean forces down into a little corner of the country near Pusan in the southeast. It was a brilliant and decisive military victory. 

She summed up the rest of the Korean War in about seven minutes. The Americans, hiding behind the flag of the United Nations, along with their 15 Satellite Countries, invaded in overwhelming numbers. The Great Leader decided that even the mighty Korean people would be unwise to face such numbers, and ordered a "strategic retreat" (this was repeated four times) to the Chinese border. Then, after marshalling his forces and planning strategy, he single-handedly pushed his enemies back to the 38th parallel. The Americans and their puppet stooges were forced to bow down on their knees before the might of the Korean people and to sign an armistice.

This was of course all total bullshit. When we asked specific questions the guide either didn't answer or repeatedly gave us the answer to a totally different question.

For those who don't know, in brief, the actual undisputed history of the Korean War is as follows.

After Japan was defeated in the Second World War and its overseas territories had been liberated, Russia occupied the north of the Korean peninsula and America occupied the south. When they withdrew as planned, Russia left most of its military hardware behind. America left nothing. Kim Il-Sung, placed in charge of the North by Russia, wanted to reunify Korea by force (under his leadership, of course). After repeated armed incursions into South Korean territory, he invaded with a huge army and quickly pushed the ill-equipped South Korean forces down to the area around Pusan.

In response, the United Nations forces, led by American General Douglas MacArthur, invaded at Inchon. They liberated Seoul within a week and quickly pushed the North Korean forces all the way back to--and across--the Chinese border. The Chinese entered the war on a pretext and the UN forces were in turn pushed back down to the 38th parallel, only a little farther north than where they started. And that's where things remain today. The peninsula is still divided, and a peace treaty has never been signed.

Despite the pivotal role played by Chinese forces in recapturing the North through sheer force of numbers, the North Koreans refuse to acknowledge China's help in the war. There was absolutely no mention of China in the museum or in their history books, which greatly angers China to this day--the two countries are supposed to be allies, and China lost approximately 300,000 soldiers in the conflict. China is also one of North Korea's only supporters.

The Chinese are right to be offended, but they shouldn't be surprised. North Korea also refuses to acknowledge the Pacific War between the United States and Japan. That's right. World War Two in the Pacific never really happened. Official North Korean histories state that their territory was liberated from the long Japanese occupation not when Japan surrendered to America, but when Japan surrendered to the rather insignificant Korean resistance forces. Kim Il-Sung is said to have led the resistance army, but outside sources suggest he only commanded a small group of soldiers from an insignificant faction.