My Holiday in North Korea

by Wendy E. Simmons

  As we walked back to the elevator, the local guide paused at the pendulum to say, “See, the pointer moved.”

  Who in the world am I? Ah, that’s the great puzzle!

  —Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

  Chapter 19

  Clam Bake and a Hot Spa

  All week long I had been promised a trip to Nampo for a “clam bake” and a “hot spa,” but like everything else in North Korea, reality was but a sliver of itself.

  The clam bake turned out to be Driver putting a bunch of clams on a round, metal plate resembling the Con Ed ones you’re supposed to avoid stepping on in New York City, because they’ve been known to electrocute horses and unsuspecting tourists. He then soaked it in gasoline and lit it on fire as my handlers and I watched, sitting on one-foot-by-one-foot stools stationed a foot off the ground, in a parking lot crawling with giant ants that I was very afraid of.

  Older Handler would not stop chiding me as Driver was cooking: “Take a photo!” “This is very special!” “All tourists take a photo!” “Here give me camera, I take a photo!” “Why don’t you want a photo?” Because…I did not want a photo of a bunch of clams on fire in a parking lot.

  And clearly, I had become grumpy, bordering on truculent.

  I reminded myself to zip it as she incessantly bossed me around. The sooner it was over, I told myself, the sooner I could go back to my cell and take a hot spa!

  And yes, the hot spa turned out to be a lukewarm bath, in a grungy bathtub with nonworking jets, in a dingy bathroom with awful fluorescent lighting—hardly the panacea I had so naively allowed myself to believe in.

  Normally a minor setback like this would not induce tears (even while being chedah—North Korean for “let’s get drunk!”—and listening to melancholy music). I am generally an exceptionally resilient, adaptable, and low-maintenance traveler, and this bathroom was a lavish palace compared to many I’ve used throughout the world. But a hot spa it was not. And it was my seventh night traveling solo in NoKo.

  I’d been with no one except my handlers and driver—plus local guides who joined us every place I visited—who all proptalked at me for seven straight days and nights at all times (unless I ate alone, or was in my hotel room) with the singular goal of convincing me North Korea is great, and that the Party’s and Dear Great Leaders’ dogma is spot on. I hadn’t so much gone to North Korea as a tourist as I had inadvertently stumbled into a Cult of Kim indoctrination, and they were determined to convert me.

  Between their overzealous and overbearing solicitousness and their constant verbal harassment, I felt like I was part tabloid celebrity, part child with super special needs, part prisoner living in some dystopian future—surrounded at all times by people trying to control me. With no chance for any real discourse, it was suffocating and exhausting to be ceaselessly cogitating over my conflicting emotions and thoughts, while navigating the confusing and delicate relationship I had with my handlers—all while trying not to be arrested for an inane infraction such as folding an image of the Dear Great One in half.

  There were moments when Fresh Handler would subtly express doubt or disillusionment over life in North Korea, but it was only on my last day that Older Handler finally owned up to the possibility that all may not be paradise in NoKo. She asked me if I wanted to tell her anything. I looked her in the eyes and said earnestly that I could not possibly be the first tourist to tell her that some of the shit they do and say was just pure lunacy…right?

  She paused and replied, “To be honest, yes, on the last day sometimes some tourists say such things.”

  North Korea is really a metaphor for LIFE’S BIG QUESTIONS. What the fuck is going on in this country is just a hop, skip, and jump away from asking: what does it all mean anyway? What do bad and good even mean? And by whose definition? Why do people behave this way? Why is mankind so flawed? Maybe we have everything backwards. Who’s to say North Koreans aren’t happy? And why is North Korea the worst place on Earth, when there are plenty of other places on Earth giving NoKo a run for its money?

  Our clam bake is followed by the hot spa. Only it’s not. Older Handler has confused the schedule because our hotel runs the water (as in, all water) only from 9:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m., not 7:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. Silly Older Handler.

  So instead I am escorted to our hot spa’s hotel restaurant for dinner. What this fakarant in Nampo lacks in charm, it makes up for in bad taste. It is, as are all public buildings in NoKo, overly air conditioned, underlit, butt ugly, and fucking loud. I thought the gas clams were dinner, so l had loaded up on those and already feel full. I’m tired, I’m sad, and I want to go home, or at least back to my room.

  My handlers and Driver have just started eating, so they allow me to walk back to my room alone. I am temporarily elated. But after seven days of me, myself, and I overanalyzing the shit out of everything in an environment that is a combination of The Truman Show, Nazi-occupied Germany, any sitcom from the 1950s minus the fun and funny, and what I can only imagine would be the amalgamation of solitary confinement, regular prison, and a psych ward, culminating in a lukewarm, dingy bath…I felt so inundated by observations, thoughts, feelings of amusement, sadness, confusion, and gratitude that I start to cry (not the noisy kind, just teary).

  But I don’t indulge in my sobfest for long. Within five minutes of settling into the bath, my phone rings. Startled, I stop crying but do not answer. It stops; I resume crying. The phone rings again. I transition to cry-laughing. I’ve been away from my handlers for sixteen minutes. I do not answer. The phone rings again, for the third time. Now I’m laugh-crying at the meta, meta, meta-ness of it all.

  I know it’s over when I hear knocking on my door. It’s more than a simple battle of wills; Older Handler will not stop until we’ve spoken. And while I have the will to persevere, I simply don’t care any longer. And besides, I had more cry-laugh-thinking to get back to. And the tub wasn’t getting any warmer.

  But before accepting defeat and rousing myself from the tub to answer the door, I took this self-portrait to capture the moment.

  For me, life is all about moments, and this particular one—laugh-cry-laughing in a hot-not spa somewhere in North Korea while being stalked by my handler, after eating gasoline clams in a parking lot—was too outstanding a moment not to document. It was a great fucking moment—feeling that frustrated, done, and amused at the same time. I wanted to remember always the simultaneous emotions I was experiencing: gratitude for being able to experience what I had, mixed with guilt knowing I’d leave and “betray” my handlers by talking about my experiences the way I have…although I find it very hard to believe that they believed for one second I was buying anything they were selling.

  Naked, literally and metaphorically…this moment went on my “Shit I Think Might Be Real” list.

  In the morning Older Handler took great pride in emphatically telling me no one had ever remained in the hot spa (gig’s up—it’s a tub) for more than ten minutes, due to its awesome hotness. “Foreigners” she told me, had “cried out” that the hot spa is so hot, they’d remained in for only eight minutes!

  Seeking affirmation, she cheerfully asked how long I’d stayed in. “Thirty minutes,” I shot back without missing a beat. I couldn’t help myself. It was day eight. Game, back on.

  But how CAN you talk with a person if they always say the same thing?

  —Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass

  Chapter 20

  Friends for Life

  I’m walking slowly down a long, bare hallway surrounded by my handlers and the local guide as we pass door after locked, closed door. Walking in lock-step a few feet in front of us and behind us are six or seven more local guides, each of whom is wearing—as all local guides everywhere do—a different, vibrantly colored Chosŏn-ot, the traditional Korean dress (and the most colorful things in NoKo), with more or less matching hair styles. The full-length, A-line dresses are so poufy that the guides look like they’re hovering j
ust above the floor. No one is speaking, so there’s utter silence except for the slight sound the dresses make with each seemingly regimented step. I am beyond freezing, so I bundle my arms around myself.

  As I hold myself tightly, surrounded on all sides by matching Stepford wives who leave me no chance of escape, I allow myself to imagine that I’m in a straightjacket, being led through the bowels of an insane asylum against my will. It’s not such a stretch.

  In reality I’m in the International Friendship Exhibition House in Mount Myohyang, a few hours’ drive north from Pyongyang. The antithesis of its name, the International Friendship House is basically a giant, tightly secured vault built into the side of a mountain. It holds every single gift ever given to the Kims: a bizarre, insane pantheon to the Dear Great dead Leaders, with a small nod to the new fat one.

  The House, like so many other places I’d visited in NoKo, was built with the express purpose of impressing foreigners and convincing the locals that everyone in the whole wide world thinks their Dear Leaders are great. Of course the local handler told me that their Dear Great dead One had the complex built because he loves his people so much he wanted them to have all the gifts instead of keeping the gifts for himself. Whatever its origins, the massive two-building complex totals 100,000 square meters in area and contains more than 200,000 items in 160 rooms.

  The buildings sit among verdant, lush, undulating mountains filled with moody, low-hanging clouds and picturesque streams. I want to take photos but am told it’s forbidden. “To take photos of nature?” I ask sardonically and then add as I make a sweeping gesture, “I would think your Dear Great One would be all over this.” (Obviously it’s time for me to go home.)

  Older Handler nicely tells me not to worry. She knows I love taking photos and has at times been accommodating, and she assures me that when we are inside later there will be a designated nature photo-taking spot.

  We are greeted at the car by our local handler, another beauty with a serene and kind visage. She is particularly adept at the near-silent, urgent whisper voice all the local guides employ. I imagine only the best of the best of the best are chosen for this most prestigious local-guide gig.

  When we reach the vestibule of the first building, Local Handler playfully challenges me—Older Handler translates—to try opening the front door, which is flanked by two unsmiling, emotionless, elaborately dressed guards holding automatic rifles. I try the door, but it’s like trying to move a container ship with my bare hands. The four-ton metal door does absolutely nothing. Everyone, save for the guards, has a good laugh.

  When the doors roll open as if by magic, I’m invited inside, where I’m immediately asked to don fancier-than-normal dirt-prevention shoe covers before being directed to a desk where I’m told to surrender all of my possessions. When I refuse to hand over my wallet—no frickin’ way—Local Handler warmly acquiesces. And even after I try to sneak my cell phone past the guards and through the metal detectors and baggage scanner by shoving it into my wallet, Local Handler doesn’t lose her cool. The tone of her voice connotes, “I understand your concern, but please don’t worry. Your belongings will be safe, I promise.” Older Handler reluctantly translates once again, not quite as magnanimously, that perhaps I should try leaving my things behind with the woman at the front desk. I acquiesce.

  The next two hours will constitute some of my best travel experiences in NoKo yet.

  Each building, or “exhibition” as they are called, is a labyrinth of rooms and long identical hallways punctuated by NoKo’s typically overwrought, grand marble foyers, only these are slightly more palatial. (Note: still no running water or toilet paper in the bathroom.) Each room we visit holds glass case after glass case of gifts as perfectly bizarre as North Korea itself.

  Rooms are organized by country or region, depending on how many gifts have been proffered by each. They also seem to be categorized by which leader received what gift—like they haven’t completely made up their minds which classification system works best. Many, maybe most, of the gifts are from China, “The Soviet Union/USSR,” and rogue countries of one type or another, but almost every country is represented—which the Koreans would be crushed to learn is a function of diplomatic protocol, not Great Leader love.

  The American Imperialists, I was happy (?), relieved (?), surprised (?) to see, had contributed a few gifts as well, lest I feel like the one ill-mannered guest to arrive at the party empty-handed. We had a modest but not bad showing: among other odd choices, a couple of Remington bronzes, a crystal ashtray, and a fancy pen (from whom I can’t remember), some random branded stuff from CNN, a basketball signed by Michael Jordan that Madeleine Albright bestowed upon the Great One, some more recent additions from the Globetrotters and Dennis Rodman, and a globe surrounded by doves that Billy Graham gave a Great Dear dead One, which both Local Handler and Older Handler were particularly excited about.

  I try explaining who Billy Graham was, since they have no idea when I ask, and that given his love of all things religious (including Jesus, whom they are told to disdain) and his distaste for communism (the theory of which they are told is great), I’m surprised they are so zealous about his gift in particular. Fresh Handler and Local Handler listen eagerly; I pause, waiting for Older Handler to translate.

  But what is by now a well-established pattern, Older Handler is either unable or unwilling, maybe both, to translate, so my thoughtful, balanced, and well-constructed sermon sounds like she has simply said, “yes.”

  I’m reminded of one of my favorite scenes in the brilliant film Lost in Translation, when Bill Murray’s character, Bob, is on set filming a commercial for Suntory Time whiskey, and the hipster director ebulliently instructs him in Japanese about his expectations. When the director stops talking after several minutes, Bob’s reticent translator turns to him and says only, “Right side. And, uh, with intensity,” to which Bob dubiously replies, “Is that everything? It seemed like he said quite a bit more than that.”

  Undeterred, I carry on a few minutes longer about how while Billy Graham may have done some good things, his views on women, and Jews, and other religions are a bit off, and how being a TV preacher has a negative connotation, and therefore he is somewhat controversial (not to mention since I don’t subscribe to his beliefs, I am personally not the least bit impressed by him). But Older Handler is officially done with translating my dressing down of Saint Billy and his gift of Great Leader love, so she insists we move along.

  When Older Handler proudly points to the “largest ivory elephant tusk on Earth,” given to the Dear Great Leader by a country unconcerned with poaching, I launch into a diatribe about how grisly, evil, and unconscionable the practice of slaughtering elephants for their tusks is, and how resoundingly reviled a practice it’s considered all around the world. Older Handler rewards my unwelcome two cents with her most intense and longest stink eye ever. I stare back, challenging her not to translate. Local Handler’s interest is beyond piqued. She looks at me, then at Fresh Handler, who is wisely staying clear, and finally at Older Handler. Older Handler finally speaks and probably tells her I need to pee. We move along to the next room of treasures.

  There is something ironic about going toe to toe with Older Handler in a place named the International Friendship Exhibition House—and winning—that I find immensely enjoyable and satisfying. It’s not because I’m putting her in her place, or any such childish or pedestrian retribution. It’s because for the first time since arriving in North Korea, I actually know I’m right. I’ve been to many countries and have free rein to peruse all the world’s history and news. And unlike Older Handler, I know who the gift givers are. Whereas when I mentioned Michael Jackson to Older Handler the day before, she’d responded by asking, “Isn’t he the black man who tried to make himself white?” when she points to a terra-cotta Tree of Life statue and tells me what it’s not, or when she points out a gift from the Harlem Globetrotters and tells me “they are the best team in America,” the conversation
is over.

  I’m also riveted by the gifts themselves. It’s like I’m time traveling through a massive flea market. I try to decipher the meaning behind the hundreds of gifts I see—for example, why the Sandinistas of Nicaragua would have given the Great Dear dead One an upright, stuffed crocodile with a grin on its face that’s straddling an ashtray while presenting a tray full of wooden cups—but I can’t.

  And I’ve become obsessed with Local Handler, who I would swear keeps giving me the universal look hostages and other people who need rescuing have—the one when their face says nothing’s wrong, but their eyes say, “Can you please help get me out of here?” I giggle to myself as I try to decide which of the three Charlie’s Angels I, Local Handler, and Fresh Handler would play if this were a movie and not North Korea and I was actually there to bust them both free. Me: Drew Barrymore. Fresh Handler: Lucy Liu. Local Handler: Cameron Diaz. I have no doubt.

  We ride a small elevator to the top floor, and I’m guided through a large, empty, dark gift shop and onto a viewing terrace for my previously promised designated nature view and photo opportunity. Although the vista is extraordinary, truly lovely, it does not go unnoticed that by having very carefully art directed the view (the platform allows you to see only a single narrow angle), they’ve somehow managed to control how you see Mother Nature inside NoKo, too.

  The approved-for-photographing, scenic overview of nature they’ve unnecessarily reverse engineered into picture-perfect perfection is a metaphor for all that’s been wrong with this trip.