Kim Jong-il made sure photographers documented her wearing everything he sent. Later, it surfaced that he also knew Shin Sang-ok’s shirt size and what his favourite colours were.
* * *
AFTER THE FLOWER show, the bus takes us to the Juche Tower. The 170-metre-tall monument was erected in honour of Kim Il-sung’s seventieth birthday, and each stone represents one day of his life. The guide at the site takes us up in the elevator to the observation deck. The sky is clear, and the late-afternoon light is gentle. On one side is the Taedong River. On the other, the view is incomparable: a city devoid of advertising, with very few cars and the odd bicycle like an ant on the street. Pyongyang seems like an aged, sun-bleached architectural model made of painted balsa wood and spread out as far as the eye can see. Everything looks orderly from this distance.
The guide, who is dressed in a white hanbok, is different from the others we’ve met: she’s a bit older and a bit more charming. She doesn’t deliver her talk mechanically; she doesn’t tell us where to turn our gazes. She says that her legs are tired from standing all day. Then she chats casually with us. After a while, she falls silent and goes back to pondering the view, a view she sees every day but that she now explores as if there still were nuances left to discover. We ask her about Vinalon and its daily use in North Korea today. Are the Mao suits we see people wearing on the street made from Vinalon? She replies that it’s unusual for clothes to be made of the material these days; it’s mostly just used for blankets.
She sees the cosmetics in our bags and subtly arches an eyebrow. We’ve bought the best North Korean beauty products, she assures us. She seems to know what she’s talking about.
* * *
WE HAVE EATEN dinner and are sitting on the rattan furniture on the outdoor terrace at the Yanggakdo Hotel. Our guides are exhausted. Mr. Song has imposed a collective punishment. The tumult over the course of the day has resulted in us being grounded for the night. The evening walk through the city that was promised has been cancelled.
But right now no one is sorry. Trond has ordered a round of beer for the table. He stands up like a conductor, encouraging everyone to drink. We ask Ms. Kim what she thinks about Trond.
“He’s fat,” she says.
During the day, the guides struggled to keep the group together. Oksana snuck off several times, happy and carefree. Elias was swept along, consumed with his dream of making contact with the North Korean people. Faced with children and the elderly, his propeller hand was set in motion. They treated him as if he were invisible.
Elias asks detailed questions. He wants to seem like a normal tourist, but his inquiries betray him. In spite of his youth, we think he has probably already reached the limit of what someone can learn about North Korea as an outsider. Now he wants first-hand information. It’s not that Elias sympathizes with the regime, quite the opposite in fact. He seems to want to get to the bottom of this crazy country, to witness the monstrous nature of the totalitarian regime. But he is stuck in the gap between what he sees and what he knows.
Half-seriously, half-jokingly Mr. Song asked early on if Elias was with the CIA. Now he’s tired of the detailed and endless questions. With a flaring sardonic glint, Mr. Song finally responds: “Too much information can be fatal.”
Whether this death threat was what made Elias choose not to partake in the evening’s festivities, we don’t know, but we do assume that he’s trying to uncover all of the hotel’s secrets. Among the mysteries is the non-existent fifth floor. It has simply been left out of the Yanggakdo Hotel: in the elevator, there’s a jump between buttons four and six. In South Korea, it’s the fourth floor that is usually omitted, because the number four symbolizes death.
The Bromma boys claim there’s a brothel on the seventh floor. Elias went there and found Mr. Song sitting at a desk just outside the elevator. Elias was immediately shown out. Later, he took the stairs and saw rows of men’s and women’s shoes lined up outside of the rooms. The eighth floor is also interesting. The employees from the spa, the casino, and the Egyptian-themed disco in the basement spend their free time there. They are all Chinese people from Macao. Hiring North Koreans would be too risky, because of the contact they’d have with foreigners. Ari has managed to get a glimpse of the lives of these Chinese guest workers — men wearing only underwear, stooped over portable gas stoves on the floor — but was promptly shown back to the elevator.
The Bromma boys have their own souvenir from one of the forbidden floors. They’ve taken pictures of corridors covered in propaganda images. They show us a picture of one of them wearing Ray-Bans and making a peace sign. He’s popped the collar of his polo shirt unusually high, like a sea bass flaring its gills. In the background there are pictures of soldiers standing tall, holding machine guns next to the party symbol.
TROND WAVES IN a fresh round of beers. Ari, the flat-cap-wearing Dutchman, stands up, as if Trond will need help conducting the drinkers. We sit at the far, somewhat calmer, end of the table and try to get Ms. Kim to tell us about her life in Pyongyang. Nils, the Gothenburger who lives in Minsk, helps to interpret. It’s painfully slow going, even though Nils speaks perfect Russian.
Ms. Kim is wearing a white dress that has a discreet black stripe on the Peter Pan collar. She looks thin and fragile. Her slim wrists seem like they’re made from Meissen porcelain. Her father is among the elite. He’s been stationed in Novosibirsk, Russia, in order to establish business contacts, on government orders. She says that she likes her language studies and going on walks with her sister, her best friend, and her dog. She and her sister are musical. They both sing and play the piano. In the evenings, they socialize with people their own age at the Kim Il-sung Socialist Youth League. Ms. Kim doesn’t like pizza. A movie ticket costs the equivalent of seven pennies. Regarding marriage, everything is very strict. She says that when the time comes, women are twenty-five and the men are thirty. When we question the exact ages, she insists that’s how it is.
Farther down the table, one of the Bromma boys vents about how his parents got hit by property tax on their mansion in Stockholm. The six bathrooms were the problem. Thank god the Alliance, Sweden’s right-wing government, put a stop to this exploitation of mansion-owners. In his short-sleeved, chicken-yellow Ralph Lauren shirt, red lambswool sweater knotted over his shoulder, shorts, and deck shoes without socks, he seems to have been teleported here from a sailboat that has just docked at some exclusive yacht club.
Two bottles of vodka have materialized and Mr. Song finally starts to relax. Someone brings up the topic of gay clubs. Homosexuality doesn’t exist in North Korea, Mr. Song says, and grins at our ridiculousness. The term “gay club” doesn’t exist in North Korea. Can, then, the idea of a gay club exist or be understood? Only if it exists in a parallel universe.
One of the Bromma boys gets up, twists the metal cap off the vodka bottle, and calls out to Mr. Song: “Have you heard about Stureplan?”
But Stureplan, Stockholm’s famous nightclub area, is definitely out of the bounds of Mr. Song’s knowledge.
A light rain, like the mist from a spray bottle, has started to fall. A dark, shifting shadow crosses the light above the bar. An owl has landed on a ledge on the hotel’s façade and is quietly observing the goings-on. Then it disappears into the darkness of Pyongyang.
WE HAVE DECIDED to carry on and go to the karaoke bar in the basement, but make a stop at the men’s room first. As we are standing in front of the urinals, the door is kicked open.
“Police!” Mr. Song shouts.
The vodka has gone to his head. His face is puffy; he laughs heartily at his own joke. He’s glad to have shepherded his flock back to the hotel, where we can’t sneak off. Maybe Mr. Song is a policeman. They say one of the two guides is always a policeman. But, who knows, maybe Ms. Kim is the cop?
In the lobby we bump into Antonio Inoki, a Japanese professional wrestler and mega-celebrity whom we recognize
from Japanese beer commercials. He kindly obliges to having his picture taken by the hotel guests. He sports a camel-hair coat, a red silk scarf, and a strong jawline. His enormous chin is his calling card and has earned him the nickname “the Pelican.”
We don’t approach Inoki or ask him to punch us in the face, which in Japan is considered to be the highest honour, almost like a blessing. The whole thing started when Inoki was visiting a school and a student punched him twice in front of the cameras. Inoki smacked the student so hard it knocked him to the ground. The student dizzily clambered up to his feet, bowed, and thanked him. He was a huge, long-time Inoki fan. The incident was replayed on television again and again, and since then celebrities and members of the public alike have requested the blessing of the “Antonio Inoki bitch-slap,” as it’s called in Japan.
Inoki’s master was the Korean Kim Sin-rak. During the occupation, Kim Sin-rak was adopted and raised by a Japanese family. At the end of the 1930s, he transformed into Rikidōzan, the first and greatest of all wrestling stars. His way of smacking down “American crooks” in show matches made him incredibly popular in Japan and also in Korea. Rikidōzan, who died young in 1963 after a fight with a yakuza at a nightclub in Tokyo, is still celebrated as one of the greatest anti-imperialist heroes in North Korea. Moreover, he still has blood ties in the country: his son-in-law is in the North Korean Ministry of Defence. In 1995, a comic book was published that explained that the wrestling star was a hero and eternally famous because Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il had embraced him. But the blessing was mutual. During his life, Rikidōzan gifted a limousine to Kim Il-sung.
The man with the giant chin in the lobby was once Rikidōzan’s apprentice. Apprentice Inoki has long since reached mastery. He’s successfully merged the theatrical pretend-fights in wrestling rings with exhibition matches against judo stars and boxers. In Iraq, Inoki was given two golden swords by Saddam Hussein after aiding the negotiation of an exchange of Japanese and Iraqi hostages shortly before the Gulf War. In 1976, he fought Muhammad Ali. To prepare, Inoki had a karate expert temper his chin with repeated blows, and it was the sight of that chin that made Ali tease him with the nickname “the Pelican.” The fight degenerated. Inoki fended off Ali’s blows by lying on his back and kicking his opponent’s shin. When the long match was deemed a draw, the crowd raged.
After paying a visit to Rikidōzan’s grave in Japan in 1995, Inoki came to Pyongyang for a highly anticipated wrestling match. The 1st of May Stadium was filled to the brim with an ecstatic crowd who were there to watch Inoki fight the American Ric “the Nature Boy” Flair. A tender assault played out between the two parties; at one point Inoki carried the ageing, platinum-blond Flair in his arms like an infant.
Since then, busts of Antonio Inoki have been sold at the Mansudae Art Studio, the state-propaganda art factory in Pyongyang. Maybe the choreographed violence of wrestling fits within the framework of North Korean propaganda — both are built on the idea of the power of performance, the selective gaze that refuses to be distracted by unwelcome realities.
WE WALK THROUGH the lobby, illuminated by crystal chandeliers, to a darker area where we find a discreet flight of stairs that leads to the underworld. The stairs take us to the Yanggakdo Hotel’s basement, which is panelled in grey marble. The ceiling is less than six feet high, and we have to crouch as we move along the corridor.
This is the hotel’s hinterland, the cellar of the temple. In the dark passageways we come across strange locales lit up by strip lighting; between them is only twilight. The tenants at each spot seem to be contracted for eternity. As we pass, they look up with expressionless faces. A souvenir store, a snack bar, a sauna, a two-lane bowling hall, a hairdresser’s, suddenly an unlit pool, a grocery store, and finally a bookstore selling tomes by the leaders. Time in these catacombs is killed by daydreaming and staring vacantly into space.
We have arrived at our destination, but we’ve lost Trond, who dematerialized somewhere along the way. Next to the bookstore, red swinging doors lead into a large, dark karaoke bar.
Songs are chosen from padded binders. One of them contains revolutionary songs. Mr. Song and Ms. Kim stick to this binder. Ari and the Bromma boys make selections from the other.
Fresh vodka bottles appear on the table. The Bromma boys stand up and start bellowing out Aqua’s “Barbie Girl.” After that, Mr. Song and Ms. Kim take the mike and sing a duet about the triumph of global socialism. Mr. Song, red in the face and flailing his arms, encourages us to sing along. Then it’s time for more bellowing. Having downed large glasses of vodka, Ari is bleating like a sheep to Duran Duran’s “A View to Kill.” He throws his head back, the microphone at his mouth, but the flat cap doesn’t budge. We’ve never seen him without it.
Ms. Kim looks happy when she gets to sing her Korean love ballads and songs of praise to the leader. When she’s done, she sits quietly on the edge of the sofa and waits her turn. The Bromma boys jump up and down on the dance floor. They tear off their polo shirts and lambswool sweaters and swing them above their heads, bare-chested.
DAY 6
The Perfect Film
IN A 2006 article, the Swedish journalist and author Richard Swartz asked why dictators are so hard to prosecute. Dictators never seem to leave any tracks: no signatures on documents, no records of commands, no protocol. A dictator’s political duty seems to be doing nothing. Mostly, he eats, sleeps, “dances with young girls” (Mao), and sinks into his dreams. Kim Jong-il rarely appears in public and has actually never addressed a large crowd in person.
Sequestered within the high walls of their palaces and hidden from peering eyes are personal infotainment centres and orgiastic amusement parks. Here, dictators live out their comfortable lives and let their underlings handle the executive duties. In these protected worlds, attendants try to interpret every clearing of the throat and every sigh. Given the capricious nature of the dictator, it’s no easy job. When anything goes wrong, subordinates are blamed immediately for their misreading, and in this way the leader satisfies his need for traitors.
Swartz thinks that the idle behaviour of dictators is a conscious choice: “The dictator avoids the finality of paper and ink which would make him responsible for his actions.” But another reason for this untethered existence could be that the dictator realizes that the true display of power happens on an incorporeal level — that one first and foremost rules through a collection of ideas held by the people themselves, ideas that are maintained with iconography. And so it is best to keep as low a profile as possible. As the playwright Jean Racine wrote: “One might say that the respect we have for heroes increases in proportion to their distance from us.” The dictator lets the symbols do their job, symbols that follow people like shadows, that descend on their consciousnesses and keep vigil over their thoughts.
The widely disseminated official portraits, the gigantic banners, Mao’s face on Tiananmen Square — these symbolic representations transform the leader into an icon at an incorporeal level. The same goes for monuments. In What Am I Doing Here? British author Bruce Chatwin says that all nations fixate on a ceremonial centre, which almost invariably carries celestial overtones. These places invoke the divine in order to sanction a ruler’s authority on earth: the Temple of Heaven in Beijing, Red Square, St. Peter’s Basilica, the Versailles of the Sun King, and the Great Pyramid, “to say nothing of the installations at Cape Kennedy.” The symbolic centre replaces the leader’s name.
The leader’s face is transformed into a symbol that belongs to a superhuman sphere. In Mao’s case, this is a soft, rolling landscape with a pleasing elevation, a perfectly circular birthmark between his lower lip and his chin, accenting the smooth, powdered hills of his cheeks and his thin, sensitive lips. It is the face of an innocent child and a wise old man. It is both masculine and feminine. The day that the portrait is removed from the entrance of the Forbidden City is the day that China’s total transformation into a capitalist sup
erpower will have been openly acknowledged.
THE DESIRES OF a dictator’s physical body must be kept secret. Most importantly, his ailments and physical atrophy can never be acknowledged. Ideally, he will travel with a large number of doppelgangers so as to be everywhere and nowhere at once, and always beyond the reach of assassins. In a 2006 article titled “Military-First Teletransporting,” the North Korean newspaper Rodong Sinmun claimed that Kim Jong-il has the ability to be in several places at once. It stated that Kim Jong-il, “the extraordinary master commander who has been chosen by the heavens,” appears in one place only to then suddenly appear at another, “like a flash of lightning.”
The locus of power must be untouchable, information has to be censored, and any leaks must be prevented. Of course it’s not a given that the dictator engages in orgies of food and drink. He may simply — like Hitler — make endless offers of tea and cake and small talk, as Albert Speer recalled in an interview with Gitta Sereny.
Whatever the degree of debauchery, the dictator’s palace is still just home to a withered old man’s body. Think of the ageing astronaut in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, who is revealed after the viewer travels through the many passages and barriers of time and space. On a white rococo bed in a room bathed in greenish light lies a shrunken figure, as dry and lifeless as a mummy.
* * *
WE’VE BEEN WAITING for the bus in the parking lot at the Yanggakdo Hotel for half an hour. We received advance instructions about today’s dress code: a collared shirt and long pants. We’re going to visit Kim Il-sung’s mausoleum and have therefore been asked to dress with dignity. Some of the group are wearing suits and ties. The only one who stands out is Trond, who didn’t bring any long pants with him. One of us is wearing a collarless, velvet Hollington jacket, and the other a vintage 1970s blue safari jacket made from synthetic material. It’s the closest we have to Maoist suits in the West.
All Monsters Must Die Page 11
