North Korea Journal

by Michael Palin

  Back at the hotel reception, European Champions League football, the first manifestation of anything from outside the DPRK, has replaced the two leaders on the television. In my room a warm wind is beating against the windows, sucking the net curtains out and then thrusting them back. It’s late, but I’m no longer tired. I arrange my birthday cards on the table, put my flowers in water, and open Mrs Kim’s present. It’s a book of photos of North Korea.

  There are some shouts out in the street, then silence.

  A RESTORATIVE NIGHT’S SLEEP. THE DONGMYONG HOTEL seems less oppressive this morning. Comfortable bed, abundant hot water and even the toilet-roll ends neatly pointed. The breakfast buffet offers a choice of dishes, among them ‘Steamed pollock entrails’. Perhaps another day.

  At 8.30 we board our minibus to drive the sixty-odd miles south to Mount Kumgang, which according to the notes I’ve been given by Koryo Tours, is ‘a most beautiful mountain landscape with deep gorges, waterfalls and lagoons which are considered a sacred source of power and spiritual renewal’ for the Korean people. There’s that word ‘sacred’ again. I’m never quite sure how it’s compatible with state atheism.

  As we leave Wonsan, we’re into patches of mist and rain. Through the window, a glimpse of children collecting stones from a river bed. A scenic drive, with a railway on one side, and green fields on the other in which I notice, for the first time, livestock in some numbers: small groups of cows, sheep and goats. Beyond them is the coastline of the East Sea, with inlets and fine beaches – tempting, but separated from the road by a barbed-wire fence.

  Mid-morning we stop at a checkpoint, not something we’ve seen much of so far. Whilst papers and permissions are being scrutinised, I wander a little way down the road to take in the sounds and smells of the countryside. I am sharply warned to return to the bus.

  Clearly they’re more paranoid about security round here. Is it the proximity to the border? Or the ocean? Or do the trees conceal a man-made forest of military installations? The thing about North Korea is that you never really know. About anything.

  We move on, passing heavily laden bicycles and carts pulled by muzzled oxen. A team of men are stripping concrete from a bridge using only hammers and chisels.

  Our bus’s progress is slow and there’s plenty of time to talk with So Hyang and Hyon Chol. So Hyang’s father is about to retire and is thinking of taking up fishing. Hyon Chol’s recently married, but So Hyang remains unattached. She’s twenty-eight and by her own admission will be considered to have real problems if she’s not married by the age of thirty. She has a tough streak of independence, and I get the feeling she won’t be pushed into anything she doesn’t want to do. I ask what kind of romantic behaviour is considered publicly acceptable. So Hyang tells me that things have changed. Holding hands used to be disapproved of but is now permitted. ‘Kissing?’ She shakes her head firmly. ‘Never. That’s private.’

  The closer we come to the DMZ, the steeper and more dramatic is the scenery. Eventually the road peters out and the mountain trail begins. It leads up to Mount Kumgang, a granite peak which glitters in the sunlight and is known as Diamond Mountain. We walk up beside a river bed which, judging by the size of the boulders along its path, must be filled with thunderous water flows when the rains come. Today, it’s just damp and cold and the torrent is reduced to a gentle stream. Not as supremely sacred as Mount Paektu, Kumgang has nevertheless always been revered, as is shown by the numerous inscriptions on the rocks we pass on our climb – some in Korean, but others in Chinese script, dating back hundreds of years.

  On either side of us are towering outcrops, eroded by rain and wind into heart-stopping, gravity-defying formations. Some stacks seem to be hanging by a thread. Others have collapsed already and we have to pick our way carefully round the scattered remnants.

  Our minders don’t look happy at all. This is not their preferred environment, and none of them is dressed for the sharply dropping temperatures as we climb higher. They’re like city boys on an Outward Bound course, still wearing dark suits and black leather shoes. They look upwards uneasily, and eventually, when they have reached a point where the path tunnels beneath a rocky outcrop, they decide to take shelter, and leave us to go ahead on our own.

  A few hundred yards further on there is a narrow footbridge and below it a huddle of massive white boulders. This offers So Hyang and me a rare opportunity to talk on camera without being supervised. We scramble down onto the rocks, and having found a suitably eye-catching spot, we pose ourselves, Ruskin-like, and unpack our picnic.

  So Hyang opens a picnic box and hands me a sandwich. It feels rather an intimate moment, taking me back to my childhood, evoking memories of school trips up the steep valleys outside Sheffield.

  The interview is relaxed, but as soon as anything political is mentioned, her guard is up. She knows that the camera’s turning, and that, although the minders are absent, they will still check every foot of the recording. My hope is that if I’m open about the foibles of our leaders she will open up about her own.

  ‘Our way of life is based on freedom of speech,’ I say. ‘People can be as rude as they like about their leaders. In my country we are able to criticise our leaders if they do something wrong, and like any human beings they frequently do make mistakes.’

  So Hyang plays it straight back to me.

  ‘That’s what makes us so different,’ she replies. ‘Our leaders are very great. They are not individuals. They represent the masses, so we cannot criticise ourselves, can we?’

  I don’t really know where to go with this.

  ‘Criticising our leaders is like criticising ourselves,’ she persists.

  We fence with each other in this sublime landscape. I’m trying to break down the barriers between us which, frustratingly, are not human but ideological. I know So Hyang to be bright and intelligent. She tells me she has read Jane Austen and Charlotte Brontë and Charles Dickens, so she must know that other cultures do things differently and that Dickens of all people found much about his country to criticise. But it’s no good, she won’t be led. It’s as if the only thing she’ll criticise is criticism itself.

  We stay the night at a huge grey hulk of a hotel surrounded by wooded mountains but making not the slightest effort to blend in with them. It was built and financed by an affiliate of the South Korean giant Hyundai, who twenty years ago invested 400 million dollars in developing a resort around Kumgang. Only a few miles from the border, and regarded as an area of great natural beauty, it was seen as a place where Koreans from both sides of the peninsula could be temporarily reunited.

  This worked well, attracting over a million South Korean tourists, until the fateful morning of 11 July 2008 when one of them, a fifty-three-year-old woman, was shot dead while taking an early morning walk. The North Koreans claimed that she had entered a military area. I remembered the barbed-wire fencing by the side of the road on the way here, and how sharply I was warned to get back in the bus when, attracted by the beauty of my surroundings, I too took a walk.

  The consequence of the shooting was the immediate recall of all South Korean tourists. They have never returned. Their government has embargoed the area ever since, and the DPRK has lost a considerable source of revenue.

  The North Koreans have taken over the running of the hotel but can’t do much to make the enormous public rooms look anything other than forlorn. It so happens that tonight, however, we may not be the only guests. There are two coaches drawn up on the forecourt, believed to be a Chinese tour.

  EARLY IN THE MORNING I’M WOKEN BY WHAT SOUNDS like a riot. Raised Chinese voices. Shouts, yelps, occasional shrieks and high-pitched laughter. It’s all coming from the corridor outside my room. I check my watch. It’s 6.30. I pull the pillow over my head, but further sleep is out of the question. At around 7.00 I hear a distinctly English voice adding to the cacophony. It’s Nick Bonner, and he is not happy.

>   ‘You are the rudest people on earth!’ I hear him bellow from his bedroom door. There is a moment’s startled silence, then it all begins again.

  By the time we get down to breakfast the hotel is once more shrouded in silence. The two coaches have gone. And Anglo-Chinese relations are, presumably, at a new low.

  Around 9.30 we leave the mountains and retrace our steps towards Wonsan. There has been much discussion as to whether we can crown our North Korean journey with a visit to Mount Paektu. It’s over 300 miles to the north and there may be snow and ice to greet us, not to mention security issues. But Mrs Kim and the minders are hopeful and we drive straight to Kalma airport.

  Today there is a buzz of activity at the terminal. The check-in desk is open and a lady, as immaculately attractive as the traffic cops in Pyongyang, or the trolley girls at Sinuiju station, is looking at visas and issuing real boarding passes. The airport manager is wielding his radio with a convincing sense of purpose. And all this because today there is a departure on the board. Koryo Airlines flight JS 7301 to Samjiyon, departing 2.30. Samjiyon is a military and civilian airport on the northern border with China, and the gateway to Mount Paektu. So there is hope.

  Whilst we wait, we eat lunch at the airport restaurant. It’s themed as an aircraft cabin. Like the yurt restaurant in Pyongyang, the design is bright and childlike, as if we’re in a nursery for grown-ups.

  I’ve plenty of time for reflections like this as we’ve now been told that the only departure of the day has run into trouble. The airport manager’s expression is fraught as he stares out onto the spotless, plane-less runways in search of our aircraft, which is coming in from Pyongyang. His radio crackles. His expression morphs from anxiety to anguish. There is fog at Pyongyang and the incoming flight has not taken off yet.

  Smooth-listening muzak — Verdi and lavish instrumental versions of pop songs — is pumped across the terminal. I hear a wordless version of ‘Sealed With a Kiss’ about twelve times. Video screens display hyperbolic loops boasting of state successes. ‘Scientists’ Holiday Park, completed in over four months!’ High on the wall a line of panels mark the time in different parts of the world – ‘Moscow’, ‘London’, ‘Beijing’, ‘Pyongyang’. One panel is significantly empty. Could it be soon filled by ‘Washington’?

  To pass the time Neil thinks it might be interesting to show So Hyang something of my previous work. He’s brought along with him the Fish Slapping Dance from Monty Python. Chin on her arm, So Hyang stares at the laptop with great concentration as John Cleese and I perform our fish slapping with a military precision that North Koreans would surely appreciate. As I’m knocked into the water she laughs loud and appreciatively, though her immediate thoughts are not for the man who’s just plunged head first into a canal.

  ‘The fish,’ she asks with concern, ‘is it alive?’

  I reassure her that the fish was dead, but the human was alive.

  Around five o’clock there is a burst of radio activity. Forty minutes later, through the clearing mist, the one flight of the day touches down. It’s a twin-engined Antonov turbo prop, built in Russia in 1967, and operated by Air Koryo, which, I’ve been assured by some insensitive soul, has one of the worst safety records in the world. This, I later learn from Nick, was an unpardonable slur. With no fatal accidents and only two emergency landings in several decades Air Koryo actually have a better safety record than almost any other airline. And I wasn’t paid a single won to say that.

  Once aboard, I feel rather at home. The cabin interior is a throwback to the old days of air travel. No long rows of rigid plastic seats here. Flight JS 7301 has carpets, mirrors and gold brocade wall coverings. The seats, more like small armchairs, have velvet-trim covers. It’s like being in a boudoir, rather than at the mercy of some accountant’s dream of maximised revenue loading.

  We fly due north for an hour. High mountains, dusted with snow, rise to meet us. It’s a world away from the beaches of Wonsan. A world of lakes and peaks and pine forests. When the plane touches down at Samjiyon we disembark into a cold and windswept night. Our minders, either macho or misinformed, have only their dark suits to protect them against the weather. After much shaking of heads, Yung Un, one of our minders, and a city boy if ever there was one, reluctantly agrees to take up the offer of a spare anorak I have with me.

  A coach has been laid on to drive us to the hotel nearest Mount Paektu. It’s a long drive on largely rough, unmade tracks with cleared snow piled up on either side. The forest cover is dense and dark. Pine, larch and fir trees hem us in.

  To my surprise there are people out there: dark shapes moving in and out of the trees. Occasionally our headlights pick up figures bending low by the roadside, collecting wood. After a while we’re joined by other vehicles on the road: big trucks, pulling out of side turnings ahead of us, frequently bringing our bus to a standstill. Now I can see lights among the trees, and fires burning, and suddenly we’re in the midst of an enormous construction site. It may be 8.00 at night, bitterly cold and with darkness falling, but legions of workers are toiling out here under arc lights. They’re pushing wheelbarrows, carrying bricks, levelling roads, digging ditches, marking out the foundations of houses. Lines of workers, male and female, pass baskets of spoil from one to the other. This is organised human labour on an astonishing scale in the most unlikely of surroundings.

  The hotel we eventually arrive at is low slung and gabled, like a concrete chalet. The freezing cold lobby is dominated by an enormous mural of the Great Leaders in Paektu country, Kim Il Sung in overcoat with arm raised, his son Kim Jong Il beside him in a brown boiler suit. I notice a difference in the attitude of the hotel workers. In Pyongyang and Wonsan nobody took much notice of us. Up here they just stand and stare.

  The word goes out that there is a special potato barbecue being served this evening, but I’m advised to wear a coat and scarf, as it’s outside. Further enquiries lead me to a dark corner of the hotel grounds, where a small group of people are huddled around the glowing embers of a fire. Occasionally a scarf-wreathed figure reaches down, retrieves something from the ashes, wraps it in a piece of brown paper and hands it around.

  The night is so dark that what I’m given could be a lump of coal, or it could be a dead mouse. It’s so long since we last ate that I bite into whatever it is most gratefully. I’m rewarded with a piece of pure carbon with a soft and tasty potato at its centre. A glass of soju is thrust into my other hand.

  In the intimacy engendered by darkness and soju, I ask Yung Un what it is we passed in the forest. It’s a new city, he says, which is being built by one of the Shock Brigades, a term coined in the USSR to describe highly motivated workers with fiercely competitive productivity goals. There is no money for machinery so they have to build these massive developments by hand. These people are not forced to work in these conditions. It is an honour to be part of a Shock Brigade, he says. He himself spent four years working in one.

  Despite his reassurances I feel sure that these workers are not here out of choice, and that up here in the far north I’m seeing a glimpse, literally and figuratively, of the dark side of the Democratic People’s Republic.

  There is one advantage of being somewhere so remote on a night like this. As I tip back my glass of soju I look up into the heavens and am rewarded with one of the most piercingly clear views of the galaxy I have ever seen.

  THANKS TO THE ANCIENT WONDERS OF ONDOL, MY ROOM IS very, very warm, whilst the rest of the hotel remains very, very cold. Both bed and pillow are rock hard. There was no hot water last night. We were assured it would be available for a short time in the morning. It wasn’t. Well, not at the time we were told, but now it’s gurgling out, rather grudgingly.

  Breakfast is laid out on plates before us and mostly consists of a potato.

  It’s a peerless day of sharp, cold sunshine. Too cold, we’re told, to contemplate a pilgrimage to Mount Paektu which, at 9,000 feet, i
s the highest point on the Korean peninsula, and still capped by ice and snow. I’m a little disappointed we can’t get closer because Paektu, apart from its significance to Koreans north and south, is an active volcano – it last erupted in 1903 – and contains within its crater what I’m told is the deepest mountain lake in the world. Its summit, the highest of a cluster of peaks and ridges on the northern horizon, rises behind a soaring statue of Kim Il Sung in his prime. He gazes down on what looks like an enormous parade ground, hacked out of the surrounding forest, as if awaiting some massive demonstration of loyalty and devotion. I recall the poem which the girl recited with such passion at the school in Pyongyang, a translation of which I’d scribbled down in my notebook. I wonder if she had composed it here.

  Mount Paektu!

  That time I put on my rabbit-patterned bag

  I was drawing you with my crayons that day,

  Spreading the wings of a young mind.

  I climbed to the top.

  Oh, the longing that has been accumulating like a mountain,

  Pouring on the holy land of revolution.

  I am now at Mount Paektu.

  Climbing Mount Paektu as I so wished