We stop to visit a treatment room that is empty save for two paper-thin single beds that look more like examination tables. Each bed is made up with blue-and-white-striped sheets that are positively cheery in the otherwise drab and depressing room full of antiquated, chill-inducing medical equipment not seen since the start of the Cold War. Straddling the top half of either “bed” is a removable, plastic-looking contraption shaped like a half-dome, covered with the same matching sheets…a nice touch. When I ask Dr. So-and-So what the fortlike thingy is, she curtly replies, “Treat legs” and moves me along.
My love for Dr. So-and-So is beginning to fade a little.
In one “laboratory,” men and women who are dressed like pastry chefs sit dutifully staring at but not actually into microscopes that are still housed under their thick plastic covers.
It’s theater of the absurd, NoKo-hospital style.
When we stroll through the “patient” ward, door after door opens into one matching room after another, each as overflowing with antediluvian medical equipment as it is devoid of people. “The patients, they all go home,” Dr. So-and-So tells me, then adds—as if telling me one more time will somehow make it true—“Patients only come in morning.”
We take an elevator and emerge into a brightly lit hall, which I’m told is the lobby of a new hospital that’s been built adjacent to the old one next door. I feel like I’ve unwittingly entered and exited a time machine instead of an elevator. But that feeling doesn’t last for long, as it seems the upgrade is purely cosmetic.
We go down a flight of stairs, and I’m shown into a closet-size room, at the center of which is what looks like a modern mammogram machine. Dr. So-and-So tells me the machine is very expensive, more than 30,000 euros, but their Dear Great Leader wanted them to have it “for the health of our country.” Not too shabby of the big guy, I initially think, before it dawns on me: there’s only one machine to screen every woman in the country, and it’s not even plugged in.
I ask how one machine can possibly be sufficient? It’s like she’s not even trying to lie to me anymore when she blithely responds, “We do many exams.” Perhaps my concern is misplaced. After all, I haven’t seen a single female patient over the age of newly born, and I’ve been in the hospital for an hour.
While on the subject of preventing cancer, I asked Dr. So-and-So if doctors in North Korea collaborate or share research on breast cancer with doctors in other countries, since there’s been so much progress made. She has no idea what I’m talking about. I try again. “Do your doctors confer with other doctors or attend conferences, or read case studies about new treatments or results from clinical trials?”
“No cancer,” she says.
No cancer as in, “There’s no cancer in North Korea,” or perhaps, “No, cancer…” but then you decided to stop speaking? I’m feeling impatient but try to keep my mouth shut.
I can’t.
I decide to dumb things down a bit. After all, she’s an ob-gyn, not an oncologist, and I hate myself when I don’t play nice. “How many babies do you deliver per week?”
“Babies? No.” Dr. So-and-So blankly replies. I’m seriously going to fucking lose it. And now I have to go to the bathroom to boot.
“Yes. Babies. You know, the tiny little new people we just saw upstairs,” I say while making a gesture to indicate small, then up. “Did you not introduce yourself as an obstetrician/gynecologist? Obstetricians deliver babies, do they not? Therefore, how many babies do you deliver per week?”
“No,” the pretty one stubbornly repeats.
Okay…questioning over. I am choosing to remain my best self. And besides, it’s not her fault; the elevator time-machine probably erased her mind.
We’re back in the bright-white lobby—but I can’t remember how, because now I’m preoccupied by my newly shifting reality that Doctor Pretty is likely not a hot doctor at all but rather a well-played stratagem, and I her dewy-eyed fool.
I ask for the bathroom, figuring that at least there will be toilet paper and running water for a change, since we’re in a state-of-the-art hospital, after all. On the way to the bathroom, we pause in front of a staircase so Older Handler can quiz me as to whether I notice anything about it.
ME: Umm, it’s pretty?
That seemed a safe bet.
OLDER HANDLER: The center is green!
She’s right. It’s a marble staircase overlaid with green jade.
OLDER HANDLER, proudly: To be honest, green looks like waterfall flowing down because when our Dear Great Leader visited for on-the-spot guidance, he pointed and said, “The color green makes pregnant women feel all better! No more pain!”
So with that, the staircase in the brand-new hospital building was ripped out, and rebuilt with green jade. No expense spared.
ME: That’s awesome. May I please go to the bathroom now?
Older Handler took me to the VIP bathroom inside a presentation room where I would be forced to sit through a 400,000-hour-long presentation detailing everything about the same hospital I’d just toured during the past hour.
The bathroom, by the way, had lights but no running water or toilet paper. Progress!
Before leaving I was asked to write my impressions of the hospital in a guest book. I was tempted to write “Hot doctor, dimly lit” but decided this was probably funnier in my own head.
Instead I wrote “It was lovely. Thank you,” and signed a fake name, lest I do anything to personally contribute to Korea’s version of One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Then I turned and walked out of the hospital, my “sterile” lab coat and shoe covers still in place.
For she had read several nice little stories about children who had got burnt, and eaten up by wild beasts, and other unpleasant things, all because they would not remember the simple rules their friends had taught them…
—Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
Chapter 11
The Kids Are Alright
I have been traumatized by a Children’s Palace.
Once I figured out that it is not the awesome, free, “Great Leader rocks” after-school program for arts and sports that welcomes any child who feels like going (“Because our Dear Leader loves us and says the children are our future.” No, Older Handler, Whitney Houston said that) but is instead a center for extracurricular excellence to be achieved through years of mandated and rigorous study—and is restricted to the country’s most talented children and those of the Party elite—I no longer know which way is up.
I gravitate to children when I travel. It may sound overly simple, but children have always struck me as the soul of a country. There’s usually no pretense with them. No matter what’s going on in a nation politically or socially, or how focused on putting on a show for tourists everyone else is, children will show you the truth. They are who they are, and who they are is a reflection of their country.
I therefore make a point of visiting schools, orphanages, and small communities wherever I travel in the world in order to interact with children. Whether I’m able to play with them, observe their schools, or just take photos and share, it’s an extraordinary way to break down boundaries and barriers, and helps foster communication and understanding at a young age.
So I was excited when we pulled into the parking lot of the Pyongyang School Children’s Palace, the first Children’s Palace we were to visit (I had loaded up heavily on children-oriented activities when planning my itinerary). Our local guide, an adorable, well-mannered little girl who spoke no English at all, guided us up a few flights of stairs, through a long corridor, and down a short hall.
Things went North Korea immediately.
Want to know what it feels like to be ushered into a room of three rows of five young girls, seated, skirts on, legs spread, most wearing protective shoe covers with bows, and each holding a giant accordion? And who, as you enter the room, bust out a tune as if you’ve caught them by surprise?
Well, it feels fucking strange.
&nbs
p; After having the same, “Oh, you just caught us in the middle of practicing this song (or routine) perfectly” experience five or six more times, I’m starting to suspect the obvious: that they knew I was coming, that my visit’s been staged, that they’ve likely been practicing this routine for years. They’re all just waiting for tourists like me (and Party leaders) to arrive so they can perfectly perform their routines, and if there are any mistakes made, DISCUSSIONS will ensue.
When we visit a calligraphy class filled with (I was told) three- and four-year-olds whose work would put the Great Masters to shame, the gravity of the situation becomes clear.
These palaces aren’t large, splendid houses for leisurely learning; they’re extracurricular-activity jails.
Children are assigned their activity or skill in the same way they will be assigned a job later in life. He’ll be a singer, she’ll play the accordion, and they will practice every single day of their lives.
Are the children of the Palace complicit in the grand ruse, or are they just having fun? They may be slaves to arts and culture, but at least they’re saved from tilling fields. And how are their circumstances all that different from those of pageant children with their crazy moms, or budding young gymnasts who choose to forgo normal childhoods for Olympic dreams? Questions, as always…without answers, as usual.
I’m not enjoying the Children’s Palace as much as I expected.
After an interminable variety show and musical performance by the Children’s Palace’s best and brightest, I’m ready to go. North Korea is the greatest country on Earth, score one. Children are the truth of a country, score zero.
We drive to Pyongsong and spend the night in a hotel where I’m asked upon arrival to tell them what time I would like running water in my room. I think carefully before deciding, because I’m only given a half-hour window. At my appointed time, there is no water. I’m too tired to care.
The next morning, after we tour Pyongsong’s Central Square, some monuments, the Paeksong Revolutionary Site, and the Paeksong Food Factory, we drive to the Kim Jong-suk High School for an interaction I hope will resemble something closer to truth.
After we pull into the driveway and get out of the car, I spy a few young boys peeking out of various school windows at us—the brave ones, perhaps. When I wave hello and snap a photo, they all quickly jerk back inside before popping their heads out again. I am playing peekaboo, albeit with high school boys instead of toddlers. Apparently the behavior is universal. Even in North Korea.
The principal, a handsome and winsome man, was also acting as our local guide. He walked over to our car to greet us. There was something in the way he parted his hair, the blackness of his shoes, and the cut and shape of his uniform that made me keep thinking he would be better suited standing on the bow of a ship or the bridge of the Starship Enterprise.
He escorted us into the school, which was clean, and colorful in the North Korean chalky, muted way (imagine Pepto-Bismol pink as a paint color that was also available in blue, yellow, and green). But it was cheerful and encouraging, and thanks to the many windows, not terribly dark (there were no lights on anywhere), and Principal seemed genuinely proud as he showed us the school’s math wall of fame.
Next we were led upstairs to observe an English class, supposedly a normal class already in session.
I was ushered into the back of the classroom, along with quite a crew: Fresh Handler, Older Handler, and Driver; the same three British tourists from the factory, who happened to be teachers themselves; their Danish liaison/international guide, their two North Korean guides, and their driver; three to five other teachers (supervisors?); and the principal. The students were completely undisturbed by all the people and commotion. Guess they’d been part of this goat rodeo before.
The British tourists’ Danish guide had pulled me aside as we were walking into the classroom so he could remind me what a rare opportunity this was for me to see “real people doing normal things.” I tried to shake off the memory of yesterday’s Children’s Palace fiasco, so I could approach today’s English class with an open mind. Then Danish Guide proceeded to tell me in specific, near minute-to-minute detail what we were about to see, making his advice a bit harder to heed.
The children (mostly boys with a few girls positioned at the head of the class) were attentive and mirthful as the teacher, outfitted in a purple-polyester pantsuit, enthusiastically pointing-sticked her way through the lesson. I alternated between snapping photos and trying to read over the students’ shoulders, as I naturally contemplated how much of what I was seeing was staged.
As Danish Guide had predicted, we were next invited to take turns coming to the front of the room to field questions from the class. I chose to hang back, as I’m strangely introverted in situations like these, and I wanted to observe and take more photos instead.
With the Great Supreme dead ones smiling brightly behind them, the Brits took turns fielding predetermined, rehearsed questions from the students, who took turns raising their hands for permission to stand. They asked about who the Brits were, and where they were from, and for help with the English lesson the teacher had planned.
Although the studio-audience members (the students) were obviously plants, and their questions clearly preplanned, the answers the Brits gave and the students’ subsequent reactions could not be. I wondered how and why the powers that be would take such a risk?
Perhaps this anticipation of knowing that anything could happen because kids are kids, and even well-trained ones make mistakes and accidentally (or purposely) say the wrong (or right) thing at the wrong (or right) time, explained the nervous energy I sensed and the preponderance of handlers in the room. After all, out of the mouths of babes falls truth.
That familiar refrain was running circles in my head: What risks are they taking, anyway? If everyone in North Korea truly believes their lives are so great, and everything is so perfect, then what are they working so hard to hide? Everyone knows nowhere is perfect, so why not just let kids be kids, since most kids really are all right?
I snapped back to attention when the class burst into laughter. It seemed one of the Brits—who was, no joke, an English teacher—was having a tough time teaching the English lesson on the board. A closer look at the board showed why. Here’s what was written:
That crazy tower in Pisa
Grammar (1) She said, “The school begins at 8:20 at our school every day (change into reported speech)
(2) My mother wanted me to write a diary every day (choose make, let, have)
(3) Rewrite using with “enough”
The food was too hot to eat
Maybe it made more sense in English?
It was during moments like these—surrounded by a plethora of minders, standing in a classroom wired with security cameras and populated with students who I believe had been media trained to within an inch of their lives—that I would wonder to myself, why couldn’t they just get that last bit right? Surely they could have kidnapped or held prisoner someone with a better grasp of the English language who could have prepared a more intelligent lesson plan? Or when mankind failed, couldn’t the Great Dear One just go there and point?
I decided to switch positions and move to the front of the room, just inside the open doorway, where I could see all the students’ faces and reactions as they followed along.
They all seemed so happy and engaged. But wasn’t this what they did every day? Perform for tourists? Did they have practice run-throughs and drills, like their Children’s Palace counterparts? Was any real learning taking place here?
I wasn’t going to let one highly polished, over-the-top performance by North Korean child prodigies ruin all NoKo children for me. These kids were belly laughing and guffawing and having so much fun, I refused to believe it was staged.
Another Brit who taught math took to the center of the room. I nearly shed a tear when he asked one of the students if he could calculate the square root of some number (which of course I could
not), and the student immediately got the answer right. There was indeed hope for all of us yet.
I then noticed one student staring at me. He was sitting a few rows back on the left and was the only student wearing blue. When our eyes met, he held my gaze instead of looking down or away, and he smiled. I smiled back and gave a tiny, silent wave hello. Then I held up my camera and nodded to ask if he minded if I took his photo. He smiled back nodding that yes, it was okay, so I did, and then nodded again to say thank you.
It reminded me of a moment long ago when I was in Jaipur, India. I was sitting in the back of a car stopped at a light that was besieged by indigent children begging loudly for food and money. As they jostled one another to gain position in front of the rolled-up window where I was sitting, a tiny young girl managed to emerge in front. She stood there silently, staring at me, as the chaos continued around her. We held one another’s eyes for a moment.
For whatever reason I held my palm to the glass, and then she held her palm up to mine and smiled. Time froze as we looked at one another, smiling, our hands held together, aligned through the glass. I burst into tears when I realized too late that the light had turned green and our car was speeding off, with no way to go back.
I remember that little girl vividly. I think about that moment to this day and wonder whether she remembers me, too. It reminded me then, as it always does now, that what I do when I travel matters.
My Holiday in North Korea Page 6
