North Korea Journal

by Michael Palin

  ‘No, just normal farmers.’

  This sunny morning the fields and low hills look, if not idyllic, then certainly healthy. In fact the landscape is almost entirely man-made. The hills conceal anti-tank ditches, revetments, and until very recently landmines. Huge speakers used to blast propaganda and martial music at South Korea. I’m told that in the new spirit of detente these were shut down and dismantled two days ago.

  As we draw closer to Panmunjom, the village where the armistice was signed, we notice that the road is flanked by tall rectangular concrete columns some five metres high. These I’m told are not for decoration but are primed to be brought down across the road to block any invader. The road and railway links which once connected North and South remain closed.

  The North Koreans at the border are courteous and steely at the same time. The room where we all assemble is bare, apart from maps and a screen on the wall. My military guide is Lieutenant Colonel Kim. With a wide-brimmed peaked hat and broad unlined features, he could be any age. He exudes a quiet, confident authority, smiling occasionally, but with the mouth, rather than the eyes, as he begins a briefing.

  I learn that what we call the Korean War is known here as the Victorious Fatherland Liberation War. We understand it as beginning in June 1950 when 75,000 soldiers from the North Korean People’s Army crossed the 38th Parallel into South Korea. The North Koreans see it as beginning a month later when American troops invaded the North. He doesn’t mention that it was a UN force. America is seen as the big enemy, not the rest of the world.

  Accompanied by an ever-growing entourage of soldiers and minders, Lieutenant Colonel Kim walks me through some immaculately manicured gardens to a low building where the armistice was signed over sixty-five years ago.

  He is absolutely adamant in his view of history. Sitting me at the table on which the armistice was signed, he keeps up an impressive running commentary on the way in which, at every turn, the plucky North Koreans fought and defeated the American warmongers. The armistice was a triumph for Supreme Commander Kim Il Sung; the ‘little rabbit’ had fought off ‘the wolf’. When I try to suggest that the little rabbit had some much bigger rabbits helping him, like China and Russia, for instance, he fixes me with a piercing stare and brushes my comment aside.

  ‘The US Army had an atomic bomb at the time. Our side only had rifles.’

  As we move on through the gardens, Lieutenant Colonel Kim points out an impressive monument to Kim Il Sung’s signing of a document committing the North to the cause of reunification. He rattles off the statistics. ‘The monument is 9.4 metres long symbolising the year 1994; the length of his signature is 7.7 metres to symbolise the date, July 7th; and the monument is decorated with eighty-two magnolia flowers, which are the flowers of our country. They represent his age, eighty-two.’

  Symbols like this are so important in the DPRK, as I learnt at the Juche Tower. They’re a way of enshrining the Great Leaders in the very fabric of the monuments themselves.

  Finally we complete our carefully choreographed progress towards the concrete and glass building which overlooks the line of demarcation. The lieutenant colonel ushers me onto a terrace with a clear view of the narrow strip of concrete between the huts that straddle the line of demarcation. Last week it became, briefly, the most famous strip of concrete in the world, over which the leaders of the two Koreas shook hands for the first time ever.

  Of the seven huts built across the demarcation line, four are managed by the DPRK, three by the UN.

  The Americans, Lieutenant Colonel Kim assures me, were hell-bent on trying to demolish the armistice machinery. ‘There were 815,000 violations of the ceasefire from the American side until late January 1991,’ he details briskly. ‘Because the US has been threatening us with nuclear weapons, we thought we were in danger of a nuclear war.’

  As we stand on the terrace where the North Koreans still stare into the eyeballs of the enemy, I feel emboldened to suggest that the military stand-off has cost his country dear. Surprisingly he doesn’t bite my head off.

  ‘Yes, in some ways in the past,’ he admits, ‘but now our Supreme Leader has introduced a policy to improve the economy and improve the standard of living. I believe our lifestyle will be more richer in the future.’

  And the rockets and nuclear weapons? ‘It was always our policy to denuclearise the Korean peninsula, and the whole world.’

  I think he’s quite impressed when I tell him that I was here twenty-two years ago (filming Full Circle for the BBC). I was on the other side, being given the American view of North Korea, which I remember as much more bellicose than anything I’ve heard today. I tell him that I fervently hope if I were to come back in another twenty-two years, this same ground would be genuinely demilitarised. A park maybe, a place where children play and people from both sides of the divide sit and eat and talk together.

  ‘I hope so too,’ he replies, and breaks into a rare smile. Maybe it’s because he knows I’d be ninety-six by then. Whatever the reason, his response sounds genuine and gives me hope.

  We drive back along the Reunification Highway. It’s 104 miles from the DMZ to Pyongyang, but only 40 miles to Seoul. So short a distance separates the capitals. So vast a distance separates the minds.

  ON THE DAY WE LEAVE TOWN WE HAVE AN UNWANTED problem of our own. While squeezing his six-foot-plus frame into a very small Pyongyang taxi to shoot the city after dark last night, our cameraman Jaimie strained his back. He then compounded the damage when he choked on a bit of apple coming down in the lift and put his back into spasm. It couldn’t have been a worse moment for it to happen as we are about to embark on the cross-country road from Pyongyang to Wonsan.

  The Reunification Highway is as smooth as an ice rink compared to the Wonsan Road – 124 miles of decomposing concrete slabs, between which gaps have opened up and been left to swell. The ride is accompanied by a symphony of bumps, bangs and jolts, uncomfortable for anybody at the best of times, but for Jaimie a slow torture. Fortunately his hard-worked assistant Jake is able to take over and film what develops into a bit of a visual treat.

  Once out of Pyongyang we pass through a landscape of spiky granite outcrops fringed with pine trees, the southern ends of dense mountain ranges that stretch all the way up to the northern border with China. Beautiful to look at, but a physical reminder of how mountainous a country North Korea is and how squeezed its arable land.

  We stop for lunch at a small hotel and restaurant beside a reservoir. The water glitters in the sun and jagged peaks rise around us, more North Italy than North Korea.

  On the last lap to Wonsan truckloads of uniformed soldiers pass us going the other way. From what I understand these are militia men and women setting off to work on the land. Which goes some way to explain the extraordinary statistic that the DPRK has the fourth-largest army in the world, comprising around a quarter of the population. Clearly they’re not all on armed alert. Not only farm labour, but much of construction and transport as well, is worked by the military.

  After what feels like four hours in a spin dryer we find ourselves in Wonsan. The Dongmyong Hotel is down by the waterfront. The lobby is sepulchrally gloomy, and heavily net-curtained against the brightness outside. The only light comes from a television screen, still playing and re-playing the meeting of the two Korean leaders.

  In theory my room has a fine view of the harbour of this port city, where fishing vessels sidle at anchor in the soft evening sunshine. The pity is that I can hardly see it. The panoramic window is so dirty that it looks as if night has already fallen. When night actually does fall the power supply is meagre. The two dim lamps in the room are shrouded in heavily tasselled Russian-style lampshades, creating the impression that everything is set for a seance.

  TODAY IS MY SEVENTY-FIFTH BIRTHDAY. AND WOULD HAVE been Karl Marx’s two hundredth. So where more appropriate to be than somewhere where socialism is still taken seriously?r />
  It’s also one of the busiest days on the shoot and we’re to meet in reception at 6.30. At six o’clock, as I’m adjusting to the sharp-angled sunlight edging through a gap in the curtains, the bedside phone rings. It’s So Hyang. She informs me that, thanks to the new, improved relations with South Korea, the half-hour time difference between Seoul and Pyongyang has just been abolished. So, it’s now half-past six, and I’m late. Turns out I’m not the only one. Even the hotel staff don’t know what the right time is, as this small but significant piece of reconciliation was only decided on at midnight.

  We head out to film in the main square, just behind the seafront, where a group of matronly women, dressed in white blouses, black skirts and black block-heel shoes are lining up to perform their morning routine.

  As rousing music booms out through loudspeakers they snap into a smartly choreographed display of red-flag waving, with occasional, rather cursory, steps to left and right. It’s not accompanied by much emotion. Rather like the morning music in Pyongyang, their routine has an essentially functional purpose: to exhort the workers to greater efforts as another working day begins.

  Here in Wonsan, there are a lot of workers who need exhorting, as a major tourist development, the Wonsan Special Tourist Zone, is taking shape out on the bay. It covers 400 square kilometres and will include hotel beds for 12,000 people, beaches, pools, mineral springs and, according to the tourist brochures, ‘more than 3.3 million tons of mud with therapeutic properties for neuralgia and colitis’.

  This massive enterprise has its own airport, which local tourist officials are proud to show us. Kalma airport is every traveller’s dream: a bright, fully staffed modern terminal with no other passengers to get in the way. This is largely because there are, as yet, no flights in or out. Its future depends on attracting the Chinese (who comprise 80 per cent of North Korea’s foreign tourists) once the attractions – 681 of them, we’re told – are open. Ultimately they need the South Koreans too – a bigger potential market than even the Chinese.

  The man in charge of the Tourist Zone development sees scope for attracting visitors from even further afield. He and his planners went to resorts in Spain and to Disneyland in Paris to get the most up-to-date ideas. He’d very much like the British to come out here.

  It’s all a huge gamble, and one can understand why Kim Jong Un is now so anxious to show the smile, as well as the clenched fist. In fact, Wonsan is the face of both. Somewhere in the hills surrounding the town are not just holiday camps and ski slopes but also one of North Korea’s biggest missile bases.

  There’s a beach just behind our hotel which I won’t easily forget, because, before we leave, I find So Hyang, still dressed in her black heels and black business suit, marking out a birthday greeting in the sand.

  Today I shall have my first real glimpse of conditions in the countryside. We’re to visit a cooperative farm a few miles from the town. The further we get from the city, the more people we see, walking, cycling, or simply congregating by the roadside in front of walls covered with slogans and graphics showing the joys of greater productivity.

  After a half-hour’s drive we turn off the road and along a track that leads to the cooperative. The ubiquitous patriotic music blares out across the fields, and each plot is marked with red flags. The buildings are brightly painted and well kept. It has been, I’m sure, carefully chosen for our visit.

  The farmer I shall be talking to is Mrs Kim Hyang Li, a handsome woman, probably in her early forties. She has a head of dark curls, like so many women here. Her face is lightly weathered and there is a toughness in her stance and a wariness in her eyes.

  I’m to be filmed working with her in one of the ploughed fields, weeding and preparing the soil for a crop of corn and chilli beans. The sun is high and hot now, but before we can start there is some urgent discussion going on amongst the minders. They are worried that my being on my knees in a field will send out the wrong message about the state of North Korean agriculture. The call has gone out for some symbol of modernity, but they’re having difficulty finding one.

  Eventually a tractor is located, well used, its red paint chipped and fading. It’s moved carefully into a position where the camera can see it. The farmer and I get to work, crouched down in the furrows, scraping away at what looks like pretty poor earth.

  I’m to ask her questions as we work, but it isn’t easy as she’s more concerned with correcting my hoeing technique. She tells me they have developed new scientific methods of farming which have made it easier for them, though I can’t see any evidence to back this up. This year conditions have been good, she says. (In fact, figures for the harvest in 2018 now show a 10 per cent drop in production.) I ask her about the calamitous famines of the 1990s when North Korea’s fragile agricultural system, already reeling from the withdrawal of Russian subsidies after the collapse of the USSR, was struck by drought and floods so severe that hundreds of thousands of people perished (estimates of deaths range from 240,000 to over two million). At the time words like ‘shortage’ and ‘famine’ were considered traitorous, and the crisis was referred to as the Arduous March, an evocation of the suffering endured by Kim Il Sung and his resistance fighters during their heroic resistance against the Japanese.

  Mrs Kim remains tight-lipped.

  ‘Are things better now?’ I ask.

  ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘Things are better now.’

  The director judges that we have enough footage of us working away and we both straighten up. My farming companion is asked how it was having me as a helper. To general half-suppressed laughter her verdict is translated.

  ‘He is unnecessary.’

  Which is not really what you want to hear. Especially on your birthday.

  We tramp through the fields to her home. This cooperative consists of ten villages, comprising 650 farmers and 1,700 residents in all. Farmers work in teams, set their own targets and give a portion of their produce to the state. In return they get to own their own houses. Mrs Kim is one of the team leaders and lives in a well-kept, spacious bungalow. As we go in she shows off the vegetables growing in her garden. She’s especially proud of the thick-leaved Korean white cabbage, which, she says, makes the best kimchi. Her small plot looks to be a far more productive space than any of the co-owned land I’ve seen, and almost as well kept as the garden around the memorial to the Great Leaders that overlooks the village.

  At the door I meet her son, twelve or thirteen years old, I should think. He greets me with a winning smile. I try out my best ‘Annyonghasimnikka’ to which he replies, shyly but clearly, ‘Pleased to meet you.’

  Mrs Kim Hyang Li and her husband have three children: her elder son is an officer in the army, her daughter is a teacher. Whilst his mother works away in the kitchen, her younger son shows me a collection of family photos in a frame on the wall. Most of the men and most of the boys are in military uniform. I ask him what he wants to do when he leaves school.

  ‘Army,’ he says, smiling proudly.

  He has some English homework to do and, whilst his mother prepares the meal, I look over his shoulder at the textbook he’s using, and we try out words to match the illustrations. ‘Clock’, ‘hand’, ‘tree’. His pronunciation is spot on.

  The house is sparsely furnished and I’m served food sitting cross-legged on a patterned carpet beneath a wall that is bare, save for portraits of the Great Leaders. Hyang Li lays out half a dozen platefuls in front of me – sweet potatoes, persimmon, apples – then sets before me a brimming bowl of soup and kimchi.

  The minders hum with approval.

  She watches solicitously as I eat, giving me instructions every now and then.

  ‘You must finish the kimchi.’ ‘Now drink the soup.’ I sense that this is her way of dealing with my impertinent questions about famine and scarcity.

  Before we go, there’s one last thing she wants to show us. Leading me to the fr
amed photos she points out a picture of her, looking proud as a peacock. ‘This is a picture of me receiving fish from Kim Jong Un for doing well at my job.’ She turns to me with a radiant smile, all trace of severity gone.

  By the time we’re back in Wonsan, the sun is setting and we’ve put in a twelve-hour day. Everyone’s desperately hungry, so after a drink in the bar we walk through darkened streets to the modest restaurant we discovered last night.

  Frustratingly, the minders are taking an age to join us. Are they debriefing? Checking the material we shot today? It’s part of our agreement with them that they can look at the footage.

  Eventually they appear. But still no food. They’ve always been punctilious about making sure we’re served promptly, but tonight Mrs Kim, brow furrowed, is in deep conversation with the restaurant manager. There’s a palpable sense of crisis.

  Then all becomes clear. We are shown into a small back room where a long table is set out, decorated with balloons and tinsel. As soon as we’ve sat down the formidably dour Tall Li comes in with a huge bunch of flowers which he hands across the table to me. This is followed by what I assume must have been the reason for all the subterfuge, an enormous cake, candled and coated in thick cream and presented to me by So Hyang. Cameras flash and, with faces flushed, they all sing a rousing Anglo-Korean chorus of ‘Happy Birthday’. Mrs Kim, smiling anxiously, hands me a present.

  I give a short speech. In thanking them all I say that I never really expected to be seventy-five and never in my wildest dreams could I have expected to spend the great day digging in the soil of a farm in North Korea. This has been the most extraordinary and wonderful birthday of my life, only equalled by my thirtieth birthday performing in a Python show at the Birmingham Hippodrome, when the entire audience sang ‘Happy Birthday’ at the end of the Dead Parrot sketch.