North Korea Journal

by Michael Palin

  PUBLISHED BY RANDOM HOUSE CANADA

  Copyright © 2019 Michael Palin

  The Recce copyright © 2019 Neil Ferguson

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Published in 2019 by Random House Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto, and simultaneously in the United Kingdom by Hutchinson, a part of the Penguin Random House group of companies, London. Distributed in Canada and the United States by Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto.

  www.penguinrandomhouse.ca

  Random House Canada and colophon are registered trademarks.

  Photographs are reproduced by kind permission of: Nick Bonner 1, 2; Doug Dreger 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26; Neil Ferguson 27, 28, 29, 30, 31; Getty Images 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37; Jaimie Gramston 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62; Jake Leland 63. All other photographs from author’s collection.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Title: North Korea journal / Michael Palin.

  Other titles: Diaries. Selections

  Names: Palin, Michael, author.

  Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20190126744 | Canadiana (ebook) 20190126779 | ISBN 9780735279827 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780735279834 (HTML)

  Subjects: LCSH: Palin, Michael—Travel—Korea (North)—Diaries. | LCSH: British—Korea (North)—Diaries. | LCSH: Korea (North)—Description and travel. | LCGFT: Diaries.

  Classification: LCC DS932.4 .P35 2019 | DDC 951.9305/2—dc23

  Jacket illustration by The Red Dress

  Jacket design by Henry Petrides

  Designer: Tim Barnes,

  www.herechickychicky.com

  Map: Darren Bennett,

  www.dkbcreative.com

  v5.3.2

  a

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Introduction: 2016

  Day 1: Thursday 26th April

  Day 2: Friday 27th April

  Day 3: Saturday 28th April

  Day 4: Sunday 29th April

  Day 5: Monday 30th April

  Day 6: Tuesday 1st May

  Day 7: Wednesday 2nd May

  Day 8: Thursday 3rd May

  Day 9: Friday 4th May

  Day 10: Saturday 5th May

  Day 11: Sunday 6th May

  Day 12: Monday 7th May

  Day 13: Tuesday 8th May

  Day 14: Wednesday 9th May

  Day 15: Thursday 10th May

  The Recce: March 2018

  INTRODUCTION

  2016

  FOR MUCH OF THE YEAR I HAD BEEN AWAITING THE go-ahead on what was potentially one of the most demanding, exhausting, but exhilarating acting roles I’d ever been offered. I had taken riding lessons, spent hours on Michel Thomas’s Spanish course, grown appropriate facial hair and even had a nose specially made. All so I could take the lead in Terry Gilliam’s latest attempt to make the film his life was leading up to, The Man Who Killed Don Quixote. But for various reasons shooting had been repeatedly delayed. It was to be July, and then it was to be October, then it was to be neither. As contractual problems confounded any progress, the explanations for my beard and moustache were becoming less and less convincing, as were my reasons for turning down other offers.

  Eventually the time came to grasp the nettle, and on an early autumn morning, with sadness and regret, I sat down, composed an email of resignation to Terry, took a deep breath and pressed ‘send’.

  No sooner had that email gone out, than another came in. It was from one Dan Grabiner at ITN Productions, and was headed, ‘I have an unusual one for you today’. I’m used to the unusual but this was very unusual. It was a request for me to consider presenting a series, for ITN and Channel 5, in North Korea.

  My philosophy of travel, such as it is, is that the more difficult somewhere is to get to, the greater the prize to be won by getting there. But when the prize was North Korea, I found that this was not a view shared by my wife, and a surprising number of my friends. To many of them, this was a step too far. The known unknowns were one thing, but the unknown unknowns were quite another.

  Not that anyone could claim North Korea is a complete unknown. There have been books written about it, and accounts from defectors aired on radio and television. Unfortunately nearly all these accounts speak of a cruel, godless, secretive state whose people live in oppression and poverty under the yoke of a ruthless, self-perpetuating dictatorship. Not an easy sell to the doubters.

  At the time ITN Productions contacted me, Kim Jong Un, the current ruler, young and eccentrically tonsured, had been in power for five years, following the death of his father Kim Jong Il who had himself, in 1994, inherited the reins of power from his father, Kim Il Sung, the founder of the DPRK – the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

  The North Koreans had few friends in the outside world. The Russians had helped them for a time, but after the collapse of communism in 1991 they backed off, leaving the Chinese to become their reluctant paymaster. Other countries viewed them with increasing suspicion when, despite limited resources, the North Koreans ramped up the stakes by pursuing Songun, a policy which put the military at the heart of the country’s existence. This led to the testing of nuclear devices and the building of ever larger intercontinental ballistic missiles. Attempts at reconciliation with the West consistently failed, ensuring that North Korea remained comfortably ensconced on President George W. Bush’s axis of evil.

  Despite this distinctly unpromising international image, I followed a gut curiosity and replied to ITN that yes, I was interested and I would like to know more.

  After a few initial meetings the momentum slackened. The international situation worsened and the idea of a North Korea travelogue looked less and less likely. Added to this, my wife was to have a knee replacement and I needed to be at home to help with her recuperation. I therefore decided to confine myself to another project, and one which would keep me closer to home: following up my new-found enthusiasm for the extraordinary life story of a ship called HMS Erebus and turning it into a book.

  It seemed to be the right decision. The news from the Democratic People’s Republic was going from bad to horrible. Kim Jong Un was threatening the world, boasting that his country had assembled an arsenal of missiles and sixty nuclear weapons to go with them. The immediate reaction of the newly elected American President, Donald J. Trump, was hardly encouraging. Calling the North Korean leader ‘a madman’, he promised that North Korea ‘would be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen’. ‘Rocket Man is on a suicide mission,’ Trump jeered. Kim Jong Un retaliated, calling Trump ‘a mentally deranged dotard’.

  The likelihood of my ever being able to film in the Hermit Kingdom was receding by the insult. My wife was relieved, and I reconciled myself to missing out on what would have been my ninety-eighth country.

  But ITN and Channel 5 hadn’t given up. Throughout the months of belligerent name-calling, they had kept in touch with their chief contact, an English tour operator called Nick Bonner, a man who had been organising tours to the DPRK for twenty-five years and who knew the country intimately.

  At the beginning of 2018, Bonner noted more promising
signs coming out of North Korea. In his New Year speech, Kim Jong Un, whilst warning that ‘the entire US is within range of our nuclear weapons’, had extended an unprecedented olive branch to the President of South Korea, and by implication to the world outside. As I grappled with the disappearance of HMS Erebus in the Arctic ice, things seemed to be thawing in a very different part of the world.

  The DPRK, so long portrayed as the secretive grump of international politics, was embarking on what used to be called a ‘charm offensive’. Not only were they sending a team to the Winter Olympics in South Korea, but in a very canny move, they had also decided to dispatch Kim Yo Jong, the photogenic sister of Kim Jong Un, to stand behind the robotic US Vice President Mike Pence at the said Olympics, demonstrating at a stroke that the grumps were in Washington, not Pyongyang.

  Almost unbelievably, within a month of the Olympics, the White House announced a possible meeting between the Supreme Leader and the American President. A few weeks later Kim Jong Un left North Korea for the first time since he’d assumed power in 2011, taking a train to Beijing to meet the Chinese President.

  Fanned by the warm breeze of rapprochement, expectations were reviving. A production office was set up. Books on North Korea fell through the letter-box. Though I was still working flat out on Erebus, I was persuaded to meet up with a potential director, Neil Ferguson – whose own account of the pre-film preparations will be found as a postscript to the Journal. We had to be careful. The project was on such a knife edge that any advance publicity could have killed it off. In a suitably clandestine, John le Carré way we met at tables at the backs of pubs and cafés, and always referred to North Korea as North Croydon.

  One stroke of luck was a three-week hole in my Erebus production schedule, whilst my editor took a fine-tooth comb to my finished copy. Suddenly, with almost indecent haste, I was packing my bags for the flight to Beijing, assuring my wife that Kim Jong Un was about as dangerous as Father Christmas, and that everything would be fine now that North Korea was looking for friends rather than enemies. In the few quiet moments before departure I knew that I didn’t really believe that, and the one thing history told us was that the relationship between North Korea and the rest of the world could change in an instant. This was not going to be like any other journey I’d ever done.

  I WAS WARNED THAT BECAUSE THE NORTH KOREANS ARE paranoid about information entering their country, I would not be able to take the basics of all travellers – maps, guidebooks, online advice – into the DPRK. As we were hoping to film right across the country, in cities, towns and countryside, this was an irksome restriction. Along with a corresponding nervousness at being seen to wield a camera or a voice recorder, my options for recording this once-in-a-lifetime journey were confined to a small ring-backed blue notebook, chosen to be as inconspicuous as possible.

  In the event, the authorities were pretty tolerant of my iPhone camera and in the privacy of various hotel rooms (though privacy was something we remained sceptical about) I was able to add supplementary material on my voice recorder. Though I’ve tidied it up a bit and augmented the entries with memories that I never had time to write down, the bulk of this account was scribbled in the blue notebook whenever I had a moment.

  One thing I did learn is that North Korea is not a label the locals acknowledge. They know their country as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea – the DPRK.

  ABOARD B.A. FLIGHT 39 TO BEIJING. WINDOW SEAT. It’s seven in the morning as I push the shutter up after a night of patchy sleep. Craning forward I can see below me the brown, dusty, spectacularly barren Mongolian desert. This must be the Gobi. Everyone else has their shutters closed, but for me the choice of snoozing or the Gobi Desert is a no-brainer. These are the lands where invasions began. It was from this hard-baked maze of mountains that Genghis Khan led his warriors to conquer much of southern Asia. He certainly left his mark. I remember once reading that such were the great Mongol leader’s insatiable appetites, that one out of every 200 men alive today is related to him. I look around the cabin, but it’s hard to tell. They’re all asleep.

  As we draw closer to Beijing, a thickening cloud base obscures the magical, mysterious desert and our long descent is through a daytime darkness, which doesn’t let up until the ground appears right below us. Before we know it we’re thumping onto the tarmac.

  We’re met by Nick Bonner, who has led the way in North Korean tourism and whose company Koryo Tours has assembled our itinerary. Neither ITN, with their record of investigative journalism, nor Channel 5 must be mentioned. Both are seen as tools of the British government, therefore lackeys of the Americans etc., etc., though as I am to discover in these bewildering times, being a lackey of the Americans turns out to be not so bad after all.

  Washed and freshly clad, I walk from my hotel down the wide east–west highway that slices through the city. ‘Beijing’s Thames’, Nick Bonner calls it, except here it’s a river of traffic, poisoning the air all around it. The nearer I get to Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City the thicker the crowds become, and the heavier is the police presence. I’m beginning to feel trapped so I turn round and make my way back. Just off the main drag I find, tucked away between the tower blocks, a small park with twisted willow trees and elaborately painted pavilions with glazed tile roofs.

  In Beijing, as anywhere else in the world, there is a mass tourist route and an adventurous tourist route. This peaceful little garden encourages me to stray from the beaten track and return to the hotel through labyrinthine back streets. I’m rewarded with a series of busy little markets with food and tea shops and collections of quite surreal bric-a-brac.

  I SLEPT WELL, WITH THE HELP OF TWO MELATONIN AND general exhaustion.

  Must set the comforts of the Hyatt Hotel behind me today. Though most visitors fly into North Korea, we’re taking the slow road, by overnight train to the frontier city of Dandong, and then onto DPRK rails south to Pyongyang. Despite my fondness for trains I know that the journey ahead, particularly with a frontier crossing to negotiate, will be a test of stamina. Neil the director, Jaimie on camera, Jake his assistant, Doug our sound recordist, and I meet up mid-morning at the Koryo Tours office for a briefing. Our very first shot is my arrival. I shoulder my travel bag, wait for the cue then walk up to the door of the office as if I’d never walked up to it before. As Jaimie’s camera follows me, I am once again both traveller and travel presenter, back in that no man’s land between real life and storytelling, that I haven’t experienced since filming in Brazil seven years ago.

  Surrounded by the rich collection of socialist-realist posters and the artwork accumulated in the twenty-odd years he’s been visiting North Korea, Nick gives us a foretaste of what to expect, mixing a multitude of cautions with a lot of humour. He can’t predict everything we’ll experience, but his message is that the trip should be something to look forward to. The advice-filled brochures we’re given ratchet up the otherness of where we’re going. ‘DPRK is a conservative society. Koreans generally dress and behave modestly’; ‘Attempting to walk around DPRK without a guide accompanying you could land you and your tour company in trouble’; ‘perceived insults to, or jokes about, the DPRK political system and its leadership are severely frowned upon’; and, more reassuringly, ‘Koreans eat dog meat as a delicacy, but it is not served to tourists as a rule’.

  The only advice which really saddens me is the one which seems to strike at the very essence of travelling. ‘Remember that you could place North Koreans and their families in a difficult situation if you attempt to initiate contact with ordinary citizens.’

  Nick gives us our North Korean visas. They’re on separate folded cards. Nothing is entered in our passports, to avoid embarrassment when travelling to countries for whom the DPRK is the devil. It’s time to wheel our gear to the station. The oppressive heat is building, though the sun remains veiled by overcast skies. Nick checks his smartphone. The air-quality index is around 220. That�
�s in the ‘Very Unhealthy’ category. ‘Not bad for Beijing,’ he says chirpily.

  The first stage of our journey into North Korea begins, rather splendidly, at the multi-towered, pagoda-roofed Beijing railway terminus. A spacious forecourt is already teeming with fellow travellers. The station clock strikes three to the tune of the old Maoist anthem ‘The East is Red’, taking me back to my first visit to China in the summer of 1988, when it looked, and felt, very different from the way it does now. Gone are the Maoist overalls and the sea of bicycles, and the slogans that adorn the rooftops are more likely to be ads for toothpaste than political rallying cries.

  Escalators carry an unending stream of passengers up to the departure floor. Every seat is taken in the assembly area where we await the platform announcement. The only unoccupied seats are those in a small room off to the side, where for a few yuan you can sit in massage chairs which grip various parts of the body in different combinations and wobble them about. Cautiously, I pay my twenty minutes’ worth and sit back. It’s a weird sensation. Everyone tries to look as if they’re simply relaxing, whereas in fact they know and I know that it’s like being strapped to a sackful of live badgers.

  As I’m being pummelled by my chair, video screens on the opposite wall play live footage of today’s historic meeting between the North and South Korean leaders at the Demilitarized Zone in Panmunjom, where the armistice that partitioned Korea nearly seventy years ago was signed. The handshakes, the smiles, the slaps on the back and the coy tiptoeing across a concrete strip may look corny, but they’re evidence of an extraordinary development in inter-Korean relations. I feel, though I can’t be sure, that this will only be good for us and our access to one of the most tightly closed countries on earth.