Finds Potemkin villages in Pyongyang
Epstein, Marc
We were a bit surprised when our ComradeGuide, as he insisted we call him, gave in to our demands for a department store visit. Until then, touring North Korea had been a...
...Elvis Presley...
...This time, however, she had given back the yellow sweater and was walking off...
...Was it for herself...
...Purporting to reproduce feudal costumes, the characters all donned flamboyant red dress...
...Only children's books survive the censor's pen unscathed...
...Private cars are absent, "so as to avoid the effects of pollution...
...Only one reel was moving...
...Brainwashed...
...And, probably the best of all: "We are happy...
...The official policy is "self-reliance," but rice shortages last summer forced the government to accept shipments from the South Korean "fascist puppet regime?' A few places of worship have opened in Pyongyang...
...Later on, as we left the store, I looked back and saw the same woman again...
...More important, they could facilitate a popular uprising...
...he asked...
...q FALL • 1995 • 459...
...In the port of Wonsan, by the Sea of Japan, behind the facades of the main boulevard, people live in rundown farmhouses...
...Encouraged to participate, he was naturally enchanted...
...During our visit, we were taken to see the shooting of an outdoor film scene...
...They were very helpful to us," the guide added...
...Did you climb out of the window...
...One of the biggest is fifty-threeyearold Kim Jong II, Kim Il Sung's son and apparent heir...
...Grocery stores are empty...
...Traveling abroad is forbidden (of course) and a strict pass law makes moving about the country virtually impossible...
...There was no film inside and they all knew it...
...During his stay, Gide was taken to a swimming pool, on a supposedly ordinary weekday...
...The director wore his stop-watch on a chain around his neck, the script-girl carried a clip-board, and the make-up artist stood by...
...Let us follow the polar star of humanity...
...He is said to be a connoisseur of old French cognac and young Swedish girls...
...How did you get out of your hotel room...
...Some analysts pointed to this as a sign of progress: after all, a 1960s edition of the North Korean dictionary had defined Christianity as "imperial policy that seeks to dominate people's minds...
...Couldn't say...
...In rural areas peasants toil under speakers that update them on the latest slogans: "Socialism is science...
...Herded from one scenic spot to another, hustled through public streets and hindered from talking to locals, we found that the trip seemed hopeless...
...In this land of overt lies and deception, mysteries abound...
...As the camera started rolling, I walked up for a closer inspection...
...The whole store, all five floors of it, was staffed by actors, hundreds of them, pretending to buy and sell...
...For the benefit of a few visiting tourists, they were there to perform, to pretend that they were living in a "normal" country, one with no shortages or restrictions of any kind...
...just one station broadcasts—the government's...
...Every citizen wears a lapel pin—"You must call them portraits," instructed our Comrade-Guide—with the dictator's face on it...
...Dogs from Manchuria seem to be the main source of protein...
...Books and note pads were in neat even piles, obviously untouched...
...In the Bongsu area of the capital, Li Songsuk, state employee, watches over the Protestant church...
...He is also described as the owner of the largest private video collection in the world, over twenty thousand titles...
...Action...
...Kim Il Sung is the only real God of our country...
...As a French Communist party sympathizer, he wanted to see if life under Stalin really was the workers' paradise he had been told about...
...Shakespeare's plays, for instance, have been "edited...
...In the age of the Internet and mass transportation, Kim Il Sung's regime—which has survived its founder's death, over a year ago—has successfully isolated its twenty-two million inhabitants from the rest of the world...
...Is there life after death...
...The camera was in fact empty...
...The customer paid for it and walked away...
...That was quick," I thought...
...Does paradise exist...
...More than once, I felt as if I were a spectator watching a theater production, with the backstage clearly visible...
...The customers seemed to file out of the subway and into the store, like an army of toy soldiers...
...No haggling over price, size, or color...
...Those perceived as unhappy might end up in a labor camp...
...Andre Gide, the gay French writer, visited Russia in the 1930s...
...Paradise is the name of a Pyongyang suburb...
...Local propaganda never stops...
...I'd like a yellow sweater," she said in a flat tone...
...But there was something wrong with this place...
...Would it even fit...
...Even prices were bizarre: why pay over two thousand North Korean won for an accordion if a bicycle costs less than two hundred...
...Personally, I believe in God and Kim Il Sung...
...Guides encourage foreigners to "go anywhere" and to "talk to anyone...
...Until a few years ago, bicycles were condemned as "signs of backwardness...
...And it's here...
...On the black market, peasants are rumored to sell items at forty times the fixed price...
...Is that not a contradiction...
...Radios are not equipped with dials, only on/off buttons...
...But this is a sign of weakness on my part...
...But of course...
...Here we were, a group of foreign joumalists acting as tourists, watching actors act like actors...
...North Korea's propaganda efforts may not be out of the ordinary for a totalitarian state, but they are remarkable in their total lack of credibility...
...And yet, even these churches, touted as signposts of a supposed opening, are staged...
...Yet no one seemed to know what to do...
...Yet as I walked back to my hotel one morning, a policeman in civilian clothes came running up to me...
...A short stroll through poor neighborhoods (that is, ordinary ones) easily justifies his concern...
...We made our way through the crowd in Department Store Number 1, surrounded, or so we thought, by those "brainwashed citizens of the last Stalinist State" we had read about...
...Their miserable condition is reminiscent of Ceaucescu's Romania, Hoxha's Albania, and Orwell's 1984...
...Inside, cigarette lighters lay painstakingly arranged on a shelf, undisturbed, as if none had ever been bought...
...Was it for her son...
...This would be fine as an artistic statement, but coming from a police state, it is simply odd...
...A couple of hours later, as Gide drove away, he suddenly realized that he had forgotten his shawl and rushed back to get it...
...He found dozens of athletic young men bathing in the water, laughing, and playing games...
...The Beatles...
...And why were all the men wearing ties...
...At last, then, our group—journalists pretending we were tourists—had arrived, a sunny afternoon in downtown Pyongyang...
...Long live our Dear Leader Kim Jong-Il...
...The same is true for films...
...Yes...
...Residents have no way of turning them off...
...There is nothing normal about North Korea...
...On the street outside, there was not a single pedestrian in sight...
...When we visited the Korean Film Studios, the local equivalent of Hollywood, a guide explained that the Dear Leader, as he is known, had visited the studios 341 times and given over 2,500 in458 • DISSENT Politics Abroad structions to the workers...
...Until then, touring North Korea had been a frustrating experience...
...There are said to be two hundred thousand political prisoners behind bars-1 percent of the total population...
...A middleaged woman approached a sales clerk...
...To his surprise, all the boys were out of the water, getting dressed . . . in Red Army uniforms...
...Even foreign-language students are deprived of books in other languages...
...Never before had I been to a place where, as night falls and you go to bed, your dreams simply replay the fantasies you live during the day...
...Without hesitating, the assistant reached behind her and picked up the sweater, already waiting...
...Michael Jackson...
...For generations of students of English, Captain Nemo and Treasure Island are the two classics of the American movie-making industry...
...I believe in paradise before death," she replied with a smile...
...Some apartments have built-in radios, wired directly into the electrical supply...
...course, there is nothing new about this sort of masquerade...
...Never heard of them...
...Indeed, he enjoys movies so much that he arranged for the 1978 kidnapping of a South Korean director and his actress wife...
Vol. 42 • September 1995 • No. 4
