North Korea (and III)
Architecture / Bureaucracy / Korea / North Korea / Culture / Freak / Politics / Turisme
August 25, 2011 8This is the third and last post for the trip to North Korea. You can read the previous first post and second post to have a more complete overview.
“Great Leader” Kim Il Sung, “Dear Leader” Kim Jong Il and Kim Jong Suk
One of the more particular aspects of a visit to DPRK is to have a first hand experience of the love of the north Korean population for the Great Leader Kim Il Sung and the Dear Leader Kim Jong Il.
You can easily find details biographies on internet, so I will just make very brief notes to introduce the characters:
– Kim Il Sung(1912-1994) is the one who after emigrating to China at very young age came back to Korea to lead a guerrilla army that kicked out the Japanese from Korea on 1945. He also founded the Workers Party of Korea (with another name) the same year. From 1950 to 1953 he lead the North Korean army during the Korean war until the armistice was signed (note: the north Korean version omits the USA participation when on 1945 dropped two nuclear bombs in Japan, it also accuses the Americans to start the Korean war and also omit the large number of Chinese soldiers that participated on this war). Kim Il Sung died at 82 from a sudden hearth attack. He was named “eternal president of North Korea”
– Kim Jong Il (1942), according to the official biography was born in a small cabin in the cold mountains from the north. His mother, Kim Jong Suk, died on1949 while giving birth to another child and she became a martyr of the revolution and a model for all north Korean women. Always according to the official version, Kim Jong Il was educated between the army and he got involved in politics at very young age. Around 1964 he became member of the central committee. As Kim Il Sung is the “eternal president of North Korea” Kim Jong Il is actually not the president of the country.
First detail to notice is that most of the images, statues, quotes, pins, etc… depict the image of Kim Il Sung. Kim Jong Il is said to be very shy and humble and he has rejected the construction of various statues that friends offered to build. The love for the leader is defined as a paternal love and you can even find some flowers with their names, Kimilsungia and Kimjongilia.
After 5 days of being at DPRK you start to filter all these images in a unconscious way. A small collection on the following album:
Father and son
Kim Jong Il is omnipresent on the media: he’s the one having the ideas, guiding on the execution and operations and he’s always close to his people at all times. In the Asian cultures the leaders need to provide example and do things by themselves. The idea of an leader that is equal to anybody else is also important for a communist society.
This omnipresence has prompted the creation of some pages on internet to make fun of Kim Jong Il
Kim Jong Il looking at things
In all our visits the guides highlighted that the path we followed during the visit was the same that the leader followed during his visit to the place. At the entrance of the building you can see signs with the number of visits of the leader(s) and there is also a wall with a sentence that the leader pronounced while visiting the place. The leader (that know about EVERYTHING and never makes mistakes) give guidance on how to run the factory, school, farm, etc. In the picture you can see that Kim Il Sung paid 6 visits to the place and Kim Jong Il paid 3 visits.
A very important visit is the Kumsusan Memorial Palace (the Mausoleum of Kim Il Sung). This is the palace where he lived and worked and they kept the corpse mummified to be worshiped by visitors. It is completely forbidden to bring a camera inside but it is possible to take picture at the large square. You must dress very smart to visit the place.
Another highlight is the International Friendship Exhibition (3 hours from Pyongyang), this is huge museum where more than 225000 presents for Kim Il Sung and more then 66000 presents for Kim Jong Il are kept. The ladies from Basque Country offered a “txapela” from the Korean Friendship Association at the Basque Country. It will take around 2 years to classify the item and add it to the exhibition.
There are presents from Ceaucescu, Muammar al-Gaddafi, Fidel Castro (a famous crocodile), from Michael Jordan (offered by Madeleine Albright) and even a limousine that Stalin donated. On the Spanish side there are statues from Quijote and Sancho Panza (offered by Santiago Carrillo) and a fist and rose from Socialits party, both presents are from 1978.
For a north Korean that has never left the country, when visiting the museum s/he can have the impression that Great Leader and Dear Leader are really beloved all around the world.
The txapela that will on display at the museum in around two years time11-Aug-2011 19:21, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP VG130,D710 , 2.8, 4.7mm, 0.033 sec, ISO 125
In general it is not difficult to trace parallelism among the adoration to Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Il i and even Kim Jong Suk (the mother) with some common religious practices (I am not the first to tell that). Just looking at images from the recent visit of Pope Benedict to Madrid, the behavior of the people is not too different from the behavior of the people in North Korea. The main difference is that North Korean don’t have access to any other source of information and they are raised with all stories and ideas to love their leaders and to believe on their quasi-god qualities. If you are educated like that for 40-50 years you will be a believer too.
Art and propaganda
We also visited some art factories and we could observe the propaganda art on the street. Art in general is very traditional and there is no abstract art concept at all. Propaganda art is very attractive from an aesthetic point of view. I even bought a small painting (that Anna will hate for sure :))
This is NOT an advert. This is propaganda about a joint project with South Korea on manufacturing a car13-Aug-2011 18:22, NIKON CORPORATION NIKON D5000, 2.0, 35.0mm, 0.002 sec, ISO 1600
The more annoying propaganda was the “mobile propaganda” that woke us up every morning (weekdays) at 07:00am. A van with huge speakers just in front of the hotel with messages to wake up and help to build DPRK future.
The “Children Palace” and alike
To continue with the creative related topics, we also visited a nursery (regular non-KFA tours don’t get to visit it I think), but let’s the lady introduce the topic by herself:
We visited various rooms (all with the portraits of Great Leader and Dear Leader) where we were presented with a variety of performances.
Almost all DPRK tours visit the so called “Children Palace” (there are various of them, the largest one in Pyongyang obviously). This is where kids go after school to learn to dance, to play traditional instruments, to learn taekwondo, swimming, etc. It is basically a show for the tourists and in various moments it feels really fake (for example a set of kids pretending to draw some objects with shadows and so on. It was clear the drawings where not from them and they were only pretending). From what I could sense there is not much room for creative freedom and the kids are expected to perform according to certain predefined rules and expectations…
United Korea12-Aug-2011 15:44, NIKON CORPORATION NIKON D5000, 5.6, 52.0mm, 0.04 sec, ISO 1600
Love their faces12-Aug-2011 15:48, NIKON CORPORATION NIKON D5000, 5.6, 52.0mm, 0.033 sec, ISO 900
DMZ and JSA
One of the last days we visited Panmunjom, where the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) and the Joint Security Area(JSA) are located. The visit from the north side is much more relaxed and friendly than from the south (Anna and I visited from south side on April 2011). Some of the guides acknowledged that this is a pantomime with no practical results. To end up the visit we could visit the building where the armistice agreement for the Korean Was was signed on 1953.
Let's go to Panmunjeom17-Aug-2011 14:25, NIKON CORPORATION NIKON D5000, 5.6, 35.0mm, 0.008 sec, ISO 400
A guy from the army joined our bus17-Aug-2011 11:22, NIKON CORPORATION NIKON D5000, 5.0, 34.0mm, 0.013 sec, ISO 400
July 7th 1194, President Kim Il Sung outlined a 3-points proposal for the reunification. Sadly he died the day after signing this roadmap document17-Aug-2011 10:55, NIKON CORPORATION NIKON D5000, 6.3, 18.0mm, 0.006 sec, ISO 200
The T-shirt design was not on purpose17-Aug-2011 11:08, NIKON CORPORATION NIKON D5000, 4.0, 18.0mm, 0.017 sec, ISO 800
If you’ve not seen it yet, I highly recommend the movie Joint Security Area. This is a south Korean movie that focus on the human part of the soldiers and their aim to do something good for the reunification, although they might need to ignore some of the rules.
One of the most honest and consistent messages across all people we talked to was the aim for reunification with South Korea. There is clearly the sentiment of a nation split into two countries. I could not sense the supposed hate towards south Koreans (north Koreans consider south Koreans just puppets from the American invaders). The current South Korean president has rolled-back some agreements and progress made by his predecessor and the relationship between north and south is very cold now. The former president of South Korea killed himself after a lot of corruption accusations (he jumped out of a cliff while hiking). North Korean people mentioned to us that it was indeed assassinated because of this politics in favor of reunification. We’ll probably never know for sure.
And the geek bit :)
We visited a digital library with all the digital rooms, projectors, wifi (no internet…). One of the lessons I took from there was that North Korea has its own flavor of Linux OS called Red Star (with Linux kernel and KDE for user interface). They don’t release the source code so they are breaching the Linux license agreement (and they know about it)…
On the other hand a lot of PCs (including the ones at the passport control) run Windows XP. I asked about the license for the software and the explanation was that Windows XP was confiscated once it entered the country and then it is made freely available to all North Korean citizens.
All this piracy and non-compliance with license agreements made me think twice about the high moral of the society that was explained to us, but it is clear that in a communist country you can not expect to have intellectual “property” protected.
As a side note, most of the modern PC were manufactured by HP and in general a lot of the newest technology in the country was purchased from Italy, maybe Berlusconi and Kim Jong Il are good friends? :)
And yet more photos
10 days visit gives plenty of time to see a lot of things but I won’t review all of them in detail. I’ve just prepared a photo album “cul de sac” with additional pictures. Take a look at the notes for more details.
Group of young men on Sunday13-Aug-2011 18:21, NIKON CORPORATION NIKON D5000, 2.2, 35.0mm, 0.002 sec, ISO 800
Having fun14-Aug-2011 17:35, NIKON CORPORATION NIKON D5000, 5.6, 35.0mm, 0.008 sec, ISO 400
Early morning exercise for hotel employees
Traditional traffic police18-Aug-2011 16:58, NIKON CORPORATION NIKON D5000, 5.6, 22.0mm, 0.001 sec, ISO 400
Bowling15-Aug-2011 13:49, NIKON CORPORATION NIKON D5000, 2.8, 35.0mm, 0.033 sec, ISO 1000
At the fun fair (Italian technology)15-Aug-2011 18:48, NIKON CORPORATION NIKON D5000, 4.0, 35.0mm, 0.017 sec, ISO 640
Conclusions
As in many instances in life, the more you know about something the more doubts you end up having.
From a positive perspective it is fair to say that North Korean society works quite OK, not in huge abundance but also not in extreme poverty or disparity (in the recent years economy has recovered, the beginning of 21st century was a lot harder). In many capitalists countries a lot of people suffers and struggles a lot more than the average North Korean. They don’t have much but they are moderately happy with it (ex: not having a car doesn’t make you less happy). A lot of people disenchanted with ultra-liberal policies or simply those who loved communism in the past can find a little heaven in DPRK.
The dark side is that in order to keep this communist bubble the party and the rulers of the country block any information about the outside world. In my opinion that invalidates any potential benefit of the communist system. Once the link with the exterior is cut they create their own reality and messages to educate a submissive and not very active population. I don’t think the lack of creativity and entrepreneurship will benefit DPRK in any aspect. In addition the way they craft the messages (the wording, the tone, the images, etc) is extremely dramatic and it makes it not very credible to the western eyes (and I assume to some of the north Korean population too).
Once you see how using the media the population can be “easily” manipulated, you look at your own media landscape and discover that although there is a variety of media and freedom of speech, the “message” that is acceptable and accepted is quite narrow (glorification of money, economic power and endless growth). People or media groups with different views are usually tagged as minority or radical without even taking a look if any of their proposals would actually benefit the society as a whole. In my humble opinion I think the current crisis is a crisis of the capitalist society as we know it and thinks like endless growth as just plain stupid (and will slave the country and the individuals to pay endless debt) while the concept of money (money is a human agreement with human set properties and rules) will be modified in order to better serve the needs of the society and have a more egalitarian society. We’ll see :)
Back to DPRK, there are also “strange things” that you see or happen while you are visiting the country. After few days you start being suspicious about things… I assume that’s part of the experience of visiting DPRK:
- In general there is and obsession on evaluating whatever you do or say from a potentially negative perspective. All foreigners are considered potential spies or under covered journalists with the aim to find a negative image to justify bad comments about DPRK to the rest of the world. They justify themselves by the large % of “nice people” that in past, after leaving the country started saying terrible things about it and inventing stories. I think that if you are watched as a “bad guy” you are more likely to end up doing something bad at the end (just to give them a reason to watch you).
- For whatever reason I was not as closely watched as some other colleagues of the trip. Some of them had their cameras inspected and questioned about being journalist, after some people complained about potentially negative pictures. Nothing happened at the end but it does not help to create a good mood and climate.
- It seems that both CIA and South Korean Intelligence recognize to have no clue on what’s going on inside North Korea. The only way to infiltrate spies is via the NGO that work in North Korea but these are also closely monitored and they can not move freely without guides.
- North Korea always try to present an image of perfect country and because of that it ends up being fake at some extend (kids that pretend to be drawing, nobody on the street has physical or mental problems, etc.). In some moment you feel like being inside “The Truman Show” where you are surrounded by actors and everything is staged just because you are there. Not being able to move freely around the city just makes this sensation worst. By providing a less ideal more down to earth image of the country (with mistakes and not so beautiful people) would help to have a better international image.
- And let’s finish with the “lies” (or at least looked like lies to me) that the regime insists on keeping for many years. That only undermines the credibility of the rest of the things that you visit, which is a pity. For me the most prominent lie was the “concrete Korean wall”. Alejandro explained to use that we would visit the wall after lunch the same day we visited DMZ/JSA in the morning. According to North Korea there is a giant concrete wall that divides the Korean peninsula. It is not visible from the south because they’ve arranged it to look like a mountain. USA has always denied the existence of such wall. As it happens with all the tours, the visit is canceled at the last minute. In our case very heavy rain damaged the small road that leads to the wall and it was impossible to go. The problem is that the guide said that in a very mechanical way (zero credibility) and also that the Russian lady who has been to North Korea 3 times has never managed to see the wall in any of her visits.KFA website still explains that the wall exists but to me is not convincing enough. If I don’t see it I don’t believe it…. and that just makes me doubt about a lot of other things :(
A colleague of the trip and myself planned to go back to Beijing by train (24 hours ride) but from the second day we were already told that it would not be possible because of overbooking on the Chinese train (kind of strange, but OK). We had to fly back to Beijing with the rest of the group and once there we saw that actually that very same morning Kim Jong Il departed by train to Russia for some business..
I firmly believe that joining KFA delegation (instead of a regular tour) and being able to discuss with Alejandro (in Catalan and Spanish) allowed me to have the official North Korean vision but from a perspective close enough to my own education. I suspect that joining a regular tour might make the experience more extreme (in terms of official message, not being able to take pictures, etc.) and more limited (in terms of the range of topics to be discussed).
To know more
If you’ve managed to read all 3 posts you’ve my vision, but it is a complicated topic so I encourage to take a look at additional resources:
- The famous video from Afers Exteriors(TV3). Well done and neutral documentary, in Catalan.
- Corea del nord: la gran il·lusió, 30 minuts documentary also from TV3 and in Catalan.
- Friends of Kim, 8 parts of 10 minutes at YouTube. Quite balanced and highly recommended. English.
- A State of Mind, BBC documentary about two girls that take part in Mass Games (recommended by Nick, thanks!)
- Welcome to North Korea, winner of the Emmy Award for Best Documentary on 2011. The image of DPRK is the one of a very poor country that does not match the one I saw, but the beginning of the century was very complicated at DPRK
- Amaras al lider sobre todas las cosas, from Cuatro. A little bit too extreme and not very precise in some some the comments. L’Alejandro replies to the documentary on his blog.
- North Korea by Monkeetime, a strange documentary that is goes a little bit too far on provocations sometimes. On the other hand it has a lot of explanations about the historical details and iconography of the regime.
- , an excellent blog about DPRK economy
- A complete trave guide
- La KFA Website
- Official news agency from DPRK, Naenara
Molt interessant el reportatge, Albert ;) Me l’he llegit tot hehe.
Una abraçada
Continuo pensant que no els aniria malament una mica de diversitat a aquesta gent,i mirar més enllà.
PS: un quadre?!
Jeje, un quadre? :)
Mil gracias por tomarte la molestia en escribir los tres posts, me han encantado :)
¿Y de la comida del país, algo que mencionar?
Un abrazo
Jorge
@Carles , dilluns examen :)
@Anna, una petita pintura… ja la veuras quan tornis per aquí segur que queda mona quan tinguem una casa
@Jorge, la comida era en el hotel… muy “western”. En todo caso mejor ir a Corea del Sur para la comida coreana
Gracias por leer!
Marevellòs reportatge nois!
Also, thanks for having written it in english! It took me a long time to read everything, but this is really an adventure… and i agree on the comments for capitalism ^^
M’ha agradat molt el teu post (els 3)… Molt ben escrit i divulgatiu
Hola Albert. Molt bon reportatge!! M’agradaria contactar amb tu, ja que estic pensant en fer aquest viatge. Sisplau em podries escriure al mail que t’he deixat. Gràcies!! PAU