A military general sharing our VIP area castigated his team from the stands whenever players made mistakes. He was sitting with one foot resting on his opposite thigh, pants rolled up to his knees, revealing white tube socks that didn’t quite go with the rest of his uniform. After one particularly bad play, he took off his hat and cast it aside. I tried to catch his eye since we both seemed to be rooting for the team in green, but he wouldn’t make eye contact with me no matter how long I stared.
A lone cameraman was nearby in the stands. I spent a few minutes ruminating on what year his camera was manufactured, and whether he was actually recording or broadcasting anything. Answer: the year cameras were invented, and no.
Then during the second half of the game, like a downpour on a sunny day, a crowd suddenly materialized. A swarm of several hundred people marched in NoKo style—in close formation, in lines of five or six people across and as many deep, and all dressed in military or other uniforms or matching outfits so chronologically out of place they seemed like costumes—and took their seats. I noticed most were watching me instead of the match, as confounded by my presence as I was by their arrival.
Maybe all the local people were suddenly allowed to leave work. Or maybe all those earlier DISCUSSIONS had paid off, and the powers that be realized that a “regularly scheduled” 9 a.m. Monday-morning football match would be more convincing if there were actual fans in the stands. As usual, I had no idea.
In yet another day that will live in infamy for the American Imperialists, the team I was rooting for won.
So was this a real, previously scheduled, Monday-morning-at-9:00-a.m. football match? And had I just been super lucky to have a Monday-morning-at-9:00-a.m. slot on my schedule that needed filling? Possibly, given the damned good luck (knock wood) and propensity for remarkable coincidences I tend to have.
Or had a country just pulled together an entire football match (minus a few thousand fans) in less than twelve hours solely for my benefit? It was a thought too absurd, too egomaniacal, too lunatic, and too paranoid, to even consider…right?
That’s the paradox that is North Korea. It’s unfathomable that a country without electricity (among other things) could orchestrate a scene this way. But at the same time, the people basically belong to the government/Party, so it’s also completely feasible that some higher-up could just say, “You five thousand hoi polloi, come to the stadium now: We need a crowd to form.”
Alice had no idea what Latitude was, or Longitude either, but thought they were nice grand words to say.
—Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
Chapter 14
“Say Cheese”
The local guide, whom I’ve mistaken for a general for some reason, is explaining the “history” of the Korean War. His story is as follows: the American Imperialists started it, the American Imperialists lost it, the American Imperialists were so embarrassed they lost that they forgot their flag. Or something like that.
It hardly matters anyway. It’s not accurate, and besides, all I can think to myself is, “He’s cute. I wonder if he’s single. I should try to fix him up with Fresh Handler.”
I’m at the Korean Demilitarized Zone, or DMZ, the swath of land that has divided North from South Korea at the Thirty-Eighth Parallel since the signing of the armistice agreement in 1953. And while I don’t doubt that, as the most heavily militarized border in the world, it’s inherently dangerous (since the two countries are technically still at war with one another), I am having a little trouble taking the whole thing too seriously when there are posters for sale in the gift shop that look like this:
As someone seriously disinclined to take anything too seriously, particularly things I should probably take seriously, I try hard to stifle my laugher while a gaggle of military soldiers and my handlers go batshit when I accidentally walk to the right of some stanchion instead of the left of it, as we walk from the gift shop to the car that will take us to the actual border. It’s made all the more funny—to me at least—when I’m forced to retrace my steps on the offending side, just so I can walk the same five feet, only two feet over to the left.
I’m off to a great start.
My handlers, the aforementioned Non-General, some other soldiers, and I get into one car, while a couple of other soldiers get into cars in front of and behind us. That is an awful lot of soldiers. And everyone’s so serious. Maybe this place is dangerous? But how dangerous could it be when all the soldiers are wearing the same giant, upside-down salad bowls for helmets that they were sporting during the Korean War?
As usual, I am stuck in a self-inflicted, mental-sinkhole-generated maelstrom of doubt, surrounded by so much pomp and circumstance, and so little substance.
Unless…it’s the other way around?
As my DMZ phalanx and I begin the three-mile drive south from the gift shop to the literal Thirty-Eighth Parallel, some kind of flying North Korean insect—which heretofore had lain dormant in the fake flowers and vines decorating the inside of the back window—began violently buzzing around the car in what felt like a concerted effort to kill one of us. Neither Older Handler nor any of the soldiers even flinch. Fresh Handler and I, on the other hand, both scream. Arguably, our overwrought reaction to what was probably a big fly is a bit disproportionate, particularly when we are (supposedly) in one of the world’s most dangerous places. But that still didn’t stop me for one minute from asking if they’d pull the car over to shoo it out.
The look of disbelief crossed with annoyance on Older Handler’s face was priceless and immediately earned a spot on my “Shit I Think Might Be Real” list. Needless to say they did not pull the car over.
Older Handler resumes propaganda-talking at me (a new verb I have, by now, invented and adopted into my vocabulary, then quickly shortened to the more affectionate proptalking). She’s saying something about how the American Imperialists have filled the three-mile zone on their side of the Thirty-Eighth Parallel with weapons and bombs and all things bad, while on North Korea’s side exists “nothing for war, only the beautiful farmland,” she dreamily tells me.
This, she prattles on, “is because when our Great, Kind, Eternal Leader, who is our Sun and our Father, visited here, he told us he cared more about his people than about weapons, so he gave us advice about how to have the farmland for the growing of food. You see village?”
As usual, I quite literally have no idea what she is talking about. But this is turning out to be one of the greatest days of my life.
Our next stop is a small wooden stand-alone building, painted white on the inside, with low-hung blue windows where walls should be. It’s so quiet, calm, peaceful, and full of natural light, I start feeling as if there is an inverse ratio between proximity to the Thirty-Eighth Parallel and danger.
Inside, Non-General explains the history of the room as Fresh Handler translates. Older Handler calls all the shots, including who gets to translate for me when, and it’s Fresh Handler’s turn.
Fresh Handler is somewhat lacking as a translator. Her English is good enough, but she’s exceedingly nervous and doesn’t trust herself, so she’s convinced she’s making mistakes even when she’s not. But I really like her. She truly seems sweet. And on the North Korean scale of cuckoo-for-Cocoa-Puffs bullshit—with crazy, ignoramus cult member rating a ten, and The Truman Show’s Truman Burbank realizing his entire life has been a giant lie a one—I’m guessing Fresh Handler is a solid five. I often think to myself that turning her would be pretty easy, were we not in a country where extraction was anything more than a pipe dream.
So whenever it’s her turn, I try to listen encouragingly, smiling and nodding along as she speaks, doing my best to focus on what she’s saying. But it’s really no use. Garbage in, garbage out, as the saying goes, and instead I soon find myself focusing on trying to telepathically communicate everything I want her to know but can’t say: Your country’s a sham, and your Great Dear dead Leaders are neither the sun nor god, nor can they rule your c
ountry from their graves; and the only genius advice any of them are providing during their on-the-spot-guidance visits is how to point.
As she stands there proptalking and I stand there trying to listen, I feel an overwhelming need to comfort her and tell her it’s okay. That she needn’t try so hard. Older Handler is outside flirting with some military guy, and I don’t care.
When my posse exits the building for our next stop, I ask if I can take a few more photos of the room before I leave. Instead I sneak a photo of nice Non-General and a man I can’t identify, who exit before me. The man has his hands crossed behind his back, and for a few seconds Non-General takes his arm. It looks like Non-General has arrested the man and is carting him off to jail. I’m saddened by the irony…since, for all intents and purposes, the man’s already there.
I catch up to the others as we enter the Peace Museum, where the armistice agreement was signed. Non-General tells me the American Imperialists had wanted to sign the agreement in a tent, but the Great Supreme Leader insisted it be signed in a building, so there’d be a permanent monument to the NoKo victory over the United States. Non-General says the North Koreans managed to build the building the night before (of course) and something about the American Imperialists being so ashamed by their humiliating loss at the hands of the Great Supreme Leader that they got down on their knees and apologized before rushing from the room and forgetting their flag (or something like that), and some equally cockamamy explanation for why the U.N. flag is a shambles, while the NoKo flag is almost perfectly preserved.
I trust my gut implicitly, and I’m a good judge of character, so I just can’t reconcile what’s coming out of Non-General’s mouth with the intelligent, kind, and genuine man he seems to be. Does he really believe the stories he’s telling me? It’s as if the U.S. president took to the airwaves one day to warn us that apples and oranges have finally reached common ground and are staging a coup…and meant it. I’m confounded.
The retelling of history retold, our motorcade proceeds south to the Thirty-Eighth Parallel, where we pull into a sizeable parking lot—which is, of course, devoid of cars. We walk down a small slope and around a corner, past a monument with a copy of Kim Il-sung’s final signature (he died the next day). The local guide stops us so we can stare at the copy of his signature on a rock for a few minutes, in deference to the Dear Great Supreme Leader, because that’s what you do in NoKo.
Older Handler breaks the silence by saying something about NoKo’s flagpole being taller than SoKo’s flagpole, in a tone so boastful it sounds like “nah nah nah nah nah nah,” while directing my attention to one flagpole then the other. Good god, I think to myself, if we’re fighting over flagpole height at the DMZ, mankind is doomed, and then shake off the thought as we move on to the main attraction.
Save for the dozen or so NoKo soldiers escorting my gang, the Joint Security Area is a ghost town—as deserted as a suburban office park on a Sunday afternoon. There is no one there, and nothing going on. “Where is everyone?” I ask, my confusion and disappointment palpable, “I thought this would be scarier.” No one answers. Ask a stupid question, and everyone just thinks you’re an idiot.
One main blue building straddles North and South Korea. Like all other tourists to the DMZ, I enter it from the side I’m on—in my case, the North. Inside, I sit in the translator’s seat, my left side in the South, my right side in the North—a stupid, silly border, the source of so much pain and death, crossed just like that. North Korean soldiers stared at South Korean soldiers while Fresh Handler snapped photos of me shaking hands across the border with Non-General and I snapped photos of Non-General with his military friends. I’d been told that photographing anyone in the military was strictly forbidden, but for whatever reason, no one at the Thirty-Eighth Parallel seemed to care.
Back outside and in North Korea, I have the weirdest sensation of being on the wrong side of the tracks. I feel like a traitor, or a Potemkin trophy being paraded around like a hostage by his or her captors. I ask Fresh Handler what would happen if I made a break for it and ran to the other side.
“They’ll shoot you,” was all she said.
I wanted a photo of me alone in front of the infamous blue buildings that separate North from South, so I hung back a moment and gave Fresh Handler a chance to snap my photo. The soldiers and other handlers had walked at most three giant steps ahead before noticing I’d fallen eleven seconds behind, which as you can see by the soldier coming to fetch me, was eleven seconds too many. Turns out the DMZ is no joke, even though it felt like one.
Inside the austere Panmungak Hall, the main building on the North Korean side, the lights are all off, so the hallways and stairwells are dim. As in the rest of the DMZ, aside from our group there’s not another soul in sight. Maybe everyone’s downstairs in a bunker or somewhere in the building out of view, but a bustling intelligence center this is not.
Fresh Handler and I need to use the bathroom. As this is not a scheduled event, it takes them forever to decide which bathroom we should use and then forever again to find the key. The musty-smelling facility reminds me of a junior-high bathroom, only with no lights or running water. As I pass Fresh Handler my hand sanitizer, I ask her if she ever tires of never being able to wash her hands after using the toilet. She makes a face that I’ve come to understand means, “I cannot say yes,” then gratefully applies the gel like an old pro.
As we exit Panmungak Hall and head for our cars, I suddenly remember I’ve brought my instant camera with me but left it in the car. I often travel with my instant camera, especially to countries where cameras are rare or a luxury. I take many photos of people who so generously pose for me; I love returning the favor by giving them photos of themselves.
I’ve been using my instant camera as an icebreaker in North Korea. No one has ever seen anything like it before, and each person I photograph stands amazed, staring at the magic of the photo developing right before their eyes. I originally hoped to take two photos of me with each person I met—one for me, and one for the person—as a sort of a bridge-the-divide project. But that’s proven impossible, and it’s turned out to be much nicer and more fun to just watch the surprise and joy on each person’s face as they see themselves appear, without asking for anything in return.
I plead with Older Handler for just a few more minutes so I can retrieve the camera to snap photos for Non-General and a few of the soldiers. She says okay. She’s a big fan of the instant camera.
There’s a pervasive sense of nervous energy in the air as I flail around animatedly, trying to explain the mechanics of the instant camera and what I’d like to do, as the uncomprehending crowd of soldiers debates whether to shoot me. For once, Older Handler has nothing to say.
With my life on the line, I implore Older Handler to translate, which she does reluctantly, putting a welcome end to my one-woman show. Since no one seems to know if the taking of instant photos is allowed or not, the soldiers all remain at their assigned posts, and for a minute or two no one moves a muscle.
Non-General, being the stand-up guy I have suspected him to be, bravely makes the first move and steps forward to be photographed. We stand next to each other as he clutches the blank piece of film, waiting for the magic to happen. The smile that breaks across his face as we watch his image come together almost makes me weep. It definitely makes me tear. He shows the photo to the soldiers standing closest to him first and then to more soldiers a few steps away. Their excitement is unmistakable. Words are exchanged from one soldier to the next, and like that, all the soldiers—literally all of them—leave their posts and queue up, waiting for me to say “Say cheese!”
And I thought the poster in the gift shop was going to be the high point of the day.
My surreal visit to the DMZ comes to a close. I’m awash in emotions and conflicting thoughts, and the part of me seriously disinclined to take anything too seriously is not disappointed. After all, I’ve managed to disarm and distract NoKo’s entire DMZ security deta
il with a $98 instant camera.
All this she took in like a picture…and listening, in a half dream, to the melancholy music of the song.
—Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass
Chapter 15
The Day I Hit the Wall
I didn’t remember selecting “Concrete Wall” from the list I’d been given when choosing activities for my customized itinerary. And a concrete wall certainly didn’t sound like something that would normally have piqued my interest (akin to choosing “watch paint dry”). But it was on our agenda for the day after the DMZ, and quite frankly it sounded better than some of the other shit I’d been dragged around to (can you say, Victorious Fatherland Liberation War Museum?), so it felt like a win.
For a minute it seemed like Fresh Handler was trying to talk me out of visiting the Concrete Wall—not that I was dying to visit it, or even had any idea what the Concrete Wall was, aside from the obvious.
FRESH HANDLER: You want go Concrete Wall?
ME: I don’t know. What’s the Concrete Wall?
FRESH HANDLER: It’s a concrete wall.
ME: I don’t understand. It’s just a concrete wall?
FRESH HANDLER: Yes.
ME: Why would we go look at a concrete wall?
FRESH HANDLER, giggling, shrugging shoulders while making a face that says, “You got me…I don’t know why we’d go look at a concrete wall”: You can’t see wall.
My Holiday in North Korea Page 8
