North Korea doesn't smile 2
- Feb 19, 2024
- 4 min read
Stone - Time - Communism
Time stands still. My sleepless night here in Pyongyang is darker than anywhere else, with wisps of fog making the river and city almost invisible outside my window. Occasionally, abandoned silhouettes of the surrounding buildings climb the starless, night-black sky. Their few points of light hardly provide any hope, they are desolate. And yet people in the capital are still doing comparatively well.
Everything is well organized: first the hard day-to-day work, then voluntary services for the country and the party. What matters is the collective. The little here is a lot, in contrast to the rest of the country. In just a few hours, our group, which is privileged in every respect, will be traveling in a coach for sightseeing through the empty streets of Pyongyang, together with the two German-speaking North Korean guides.
Our nameless, omnipresent guides are a woman and a man. Party soldiers. Watchdog. Organizers. Translator. Wardens and guards. The bus takes you through the city. Just a few meters away from us we see people on their way to work, scurrying around like ants. Unreachable. Oversized boulevards, built for ostentatious military parades, exude a surreal ambience. Ghost streets. Only officials can afford cars anyway. Unnecessary traffic lights switch from green to red and back again. Pointless.
With the huge Kim Il Sung Square, the city center buries all greenery and every life under gray concrete. The square is home to a university that releases concrete heads into a lackluster future after their studies, the party headquarters where those future-less will-o-the-wisps manage the people, and the Ministry of Foreign Trade. The Chuch'e Monument (also known as Juche Ideology), built in honor of Kim Il-sung from over 25,000 granite blocks, is also here, in front of it the three-person bronze sculpture consisting of an intellectual, a worker and a farmer. Monuments of a bygone era. Even China has now understood this. Here I feel like I'm in a communist Disneyworld made of stone and concrete. But admittedly not without nostalgia and charm for those who don't have to live in this country.
A meeting with students at the university is even arranged especially in our honor. Everyone in our group is allowed to speak to a specially assigned person. For me they chose a pimply meatball with shark eyes, which was still bearable. However, he has extreme bad breath that takes my breath away with every sentence. I just decide to hold my breath. But with his long sentences I would have had to be a Caribbean pearl diver to get through it unscathed. Gasping for air, I ask friendly questions or answer in short sentences, much to his disappointment, as he simply won't stop his thirst for knowledge. His strategy: extract as much information as possible from the class enemy, praise the regime that has no alternative but give nothing away.
The Kumsusan Palace, also known as the Palace of the Sun, was the official residence of the eternal president and founder of the state, Kim Il-Sung. It is currently being converted into the largest mausoleum. The buildings around it are what they are: plain, functional prefabricated buildings in which people live in reasonably stable conditions, countless cogs that keep the machine running.
Our media at home in Germany is noticeably moving further and further to the left. The Left, but also large parts of the Greens and the SPD, talk tirelessly about more and more justice. Even more prosperity and unfortunately - if it's right - expropriation. I am very sympathetic to the socialist and communist ideology - in terms of its approach. There's just one catch: the teaching doesn't work. Nowhere. North Korea is the real-world prime example. We constantly exchange our experiences and impressions in the tiny travel group. In unobserved conversations, of course. Outside, not inside the bugged rooms. And always out of earshot of our socialist friends.
If you want to die
I would like to ask our guides one or two questions, especially if what they (have to) talk about in their ideological delusion does not match what I see outside, beyond our panoramic windows. “All residents in North Korea are equal. We are classless, and our great leader tirelessly cares for the people day and night. Nobody has to suffer. Medical care is free. Nobody has to go hungry…” and so on. As a rule, these Kim's fairy tales are followed by a magnificent lecture about the suffering and deprivation of the South Koreans. This is very difficult to endure.
Ramona, our German tour guide, looks at me in horror, almost pleadingly, and whispers to me: "Please don't!!! Don't say anything now. Unless you want to die in a North Korean prison!" Ramona always brings a smile to my face.
The one with the hair on her teeth
Our tour guides systematically seek out one-on-one conversations with us tourists on our seemingly informal and secluded walks. With their questions they check out how we live, our marital status, our impressions and especially our professional qualifications. "Wow! Mechanical engineering, which machines?” "Interesting! Your own company! Which industry?” I immediately fail as a qualified (“Great!”) social worker (“Oh God!”) to the lady with the hair on her teeth, as I call her. Over the course of the trip, she repeatedly lets me feel her disdain. This much is clear: she is not to be trifled with. We share mutual dislike.
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