Day 9: Traveling to North Korea
By Randall Smith | November 13, 2007 | Korea
Sunday
As our bus headed east toward the Sea of Japan early Sunday morning, the orders came swiftly. Do you have any newspapers or books in your possession? Any cameras with long lenses? Any recording devices? We were headed to Mount Kumgang (Diamond Mountain), a series of hotels built by an offshoot of the giant South Korean car manufacturer, Hyundai, at the base of a stunning mountain range in southeastern North Korea.
The resort, the easiest place for foreigners to visit North Korea, is an experiment to see how leader Kim Jong-il will handle the economic reform that has helped transform China and Vietnam. With the reform, there is exposure to the outside world, something North Korea has tried to avoid. To get there, our bus had to go through two security checkpoints, the first at the South Korean border. It was not much different than going through normal airport security, except for the plastic bags that were passed around to store our newspapers and books until we returned.
I looked through my briefcase for other things that the North Koreans might confiscate. I found a briefing paper on four North Korean defectors met earlier in the week, and removed the pages from my notebook on that session. Too, I deleted pictures from the interviews that might be sensitive. Our bus was soon headed down a narrow, specially constructed highway through the DMZ, passing lots of South Korean soldiers, barbed wire and land mines.
First impressions of North Korea: Loud folk songs overwhelm the ears from dozens of overhead speakers. Soldiers swarm the area, dressed in Soviet-style military garb and big khaki hats. All have pistols in brown holsters, and there are no smiles.
Here are our orders: Do not to stare or point. Do not engage the soldiers in any conversation. Do not throw trash on the ground or spit, because that is viewed as defacing the motherland. Photographs are strictly forbidden, except where there is special permission. You must wear identification tags around your neck for the entire stay, and present them whenever asked. I expected a complete ransacking of my luggage. But they simply sent it through an x-ray machine.
We were instructed to stand in a line and in order of the numbers on the cards around our neck. Once through the metal detectors and a processing officer, we were walked to our bus by two Hyundai corporate employees who were assigned to be with us for the entire trip. Then I saw a soldier wave his red flag. A tourist from Taipei had taken out his camera. He was taken aside and given a stern lecture. The ride from the greeting area to the resort was strange.
All of the visiting buses, which were about 20, left the terminal at the same time, led by a military convoy up a highway that is restricted on both sides by green metal fencing. Every 500 yards or so, soldiers stand at attention with their red flags and guns, looking carefully inside the buses.
Several times, I could see places where military vehicles had been hidden in hillsides. Just inside the border, there is another curious site: a giant, unused rail station built with the anticipation of traffic that will someday wind from South Korea through North Korea to China and perhaps Russia.
But it now only a symbol of hope, adorned with a giant picture of the late Kim Il Sung, and the words: Praise our great leader, our comrade. A few miles away, the resort is beautiful. There are five hotels, and we stayed in the largest, a 12-story, first-class building with a magnificent fresh flower display each day in the entrance and impeccable cleanliness.
There is a golf course, 11 restaurants, several gift shops and a pavilion that is home to a North Korean acrobatics show. A package deal, meaning three days and two nights, can cost more than $500 per person. But you have to do things the North Korean way: Lunch is scheduled at exactly 12:10 p.m. At 1:30 p.m., you have to be on the bus to tour a nearby lake. At 4:30 p.m., there is the 90-minute acrobatics show. Dinner is at 6 p.m. sharp. Our lake trip was in an 18-bus convoy led by the military. Once there, the pathways around the lake were clogged by tourists who are trying to see the same sights at the same time.
As someone said, \"It is like taking a walk with 3,000 of your closest friends.\"
Some highlights: On each side of the lake are mountains, and tributes to current leader Kim Jung-il's parents are carved deeply into the rocks. There is a beautiful observatory that jets out into the lake at the halfway point, and an interesting hanging bridge on the way back. Headed back to the bus, I was stopped by a party worker who wanted to examine my identification tag. And then he waived me on. About 1.5 millon visitors have visited since the opening of the first hotel in 1998, but only 2,000 of them have been Americans. So I'm sure that I was a strange sight. Herded onto the bus, we went directly to the acrobatic show. Complete with a full orchestra and performers from the well-known Pyongyang troupe, it was world class entertainment. And dinner, likewise, was tasty, made from locally raised fish and vegetables. Afterwards, our group chose to take a 20-minute walk back to the hotel, hoping to engage regular North Koreans in conversation. Instead, the only thing that we saw was soldiers sitting in pill boxes and keeping a careful eye on us.
Next was the karaoke bar. Our waitress was dressed in a long, flowing red dress and wearing a red pin with a photo of Kim Jung-il. At various intervals, she and other waitresses, dressed in gowns of pink and orange, took turns singing approved North Korean folk songs that praised their leader. Nobody got up to sing anything else. James Brown, Aretha Franklin and Beyonce do not exist. Afterwards, a number of us split up. Some went outside to once again see if they could find regular North Korean citizens. They found some men barbecuing a dinner of sparrows and vegetables over a grate in a park across from the hotel. The conversation was kept light, an effort to humanize the American face in a less threatening way.
Others went to spa, where the feature that evening was tiny \"healing\" fish, which eat away the dead skin from your feet.
As for myself, I opted to go to bed. On the television, to my surprise, was Buddhist Network Television. I feel asleep as I had begun my day, listening to the chanting of Buddhist prayers.
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