North Korea: Propaganda's faces
Happy smiling folk
delivered on cue.
Almost in eerie recreation of the film The Truman Show, foreign visitors to
Pyongyang find that their paths cross on cue with well indoctrinated
'extras' hired to personify the state's self-deluding image of a happy
people in a happy land. Japanese reporter Tadashi Tamaki describes a
surreal day out walking the streets of the North Korean capital. I recently
spent a week in Pyongyang. I landed at Sunan, the city's airport, under a
crisp, clear sky. Though the presence of uniformed soldiers initially put
me on edge, the entry formalities turned out to be surprisingly simple.
Once out of the airport, I was presented with the smiling face of a guide.
'Welcome to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea', he said. The glass
fa�ade of my hotel was polished to perfection, the sheets were impeccably
clean and hot water flowed abundantly from the taps. I could even get CNN
on the television in my room. In the restaurant, the portions were never
less than copious. Not far from the hotel, there was a nine-hole golf
course where an early morning game cost me only US$20. I even had a shot at
karaoke in the evening. It has to be said that, as a foreigner, I was
enjoying a most comfortable stay. But I quickly began to suffer from an
inexplicable sense of tiredness. First, there was the nervous fatigue that
comes with permanent surveillance. For any foreign tourist is accompanied
at all times by two minders: a 'guide' and a 'monitor'. Always smiling and
friendly, they stay at your hotel and follow you wherever you go. Even when
I got up at the crack of dawn to go for a walk, they appeared after just a
few minutes with a polite 'good morning, sir!' But what exhausted me most
were the bizarre occurrences that punctuated my stay. Whenever I spoke to
people in the street, they would reply sagely with formulas such as: 'It is
good that the great general (Kim Jong-il) has decided to improve relations
with Japan.' (A reference to the decision taken by Japan and North Korea
last September to resume talks with a view to normalising relations.) Or:
'Pyongyang is the most agreeable city to live in in the world.' And then I
noticed that all the people I met - that is, all the people who were
sufficiently near to me for me to be able to speak to them - had the same
characteristics: they were tall and good-looking, they had pale skin and
they were smiling. One day, in front of a department store, I saw two
pretty girls go by. I told my minders that I would like to take a photo of
them, and they called the girls over. When they'd gone, after a long
conversation, I thanked my 'chaperones'. And they replied, 'No problem -
they're friends'. Friends?! After they hadn't even said hello on bumping
into each other?! On another occasion, we went to visit one of the town's
parks. 'There's been a fashion for pets lately,' one of my minders told me.
And just like that, at the park gates, we saw a couple with a baby - and a
Maltese lapdog. One day a beer hall caught my attention and I insisted,
like a spoilt child, that we go in. Eventually, one of the minders went
into the establishment, and come out a quarter of an hour later, and gave
me the nod. Inside, I could feel the stares of all the clients upon me. But
it was no good trying to start a conversation: no-one wanted to answer my
questions. In fact, if you pay attention when walking in the street, it's
easy to arrange the passers-by into two categories: those who immediately
turn around or into a side-street as soon as they realise you're foreign,
and those who keep walking towards you quite happily. This lead me to
suspect that perhaps the only people with whom I'd been able to communicate
were, if you like, 'extras'. Paranoia or reality? These were the questions
that haunted my evenings at the hotel. No wonder I was exhausted.This
article first appeared in issue 1/03 of Index on Censorship: Inside the
Axis of Evil.
Comment on this article.Links:Guardian report on the expulsion on UN
inspectors from North Korea.
Official reports in English from the state news agency of the DPRK.
The Korean Studies Review provides timely reviews of the latest works in
Korean Studies. The definitive web link resource on North Korea run by
Frank Hoffman at Harvard University.
US Library of Congress online web references for North Korea.
Leonid Petrov's useful web resource on North Korea.
Aidan Foster-Carter's Pyongyang Watch webpage for the Asia Times online and
his analysis of the January 2003 situation for BBC Online."From eating rats
in North Korea to sex abuse in China" Mike Jendrzejczyk reports for the
International Herald Tribune.
Human Rights Watch on the plight of North Koreans fleeing starvation.
A BBC journalist's 2000 account of his own trip to 'Leninland (at closing
time)'.The Truman Show weblinks page.
http://www.indexonline.org/news/20030201_103_tamaki.shtml
