An American sojourn into Pyongyang

An American sojourn into Pyongyang, part III

By Branson Quenzer
The last night ended with U.B. taking a bath in our room as we sat outside in the two story cottage that was given to us for the evening, the three of us in one little home. U.B. did not have a bath or shower as she was placed in the maid’s quarters on the first floor. We were the first two foreigners she had met, and yet after three days the traditional university student had no problem taking a hot mineral bath in our room.
North Korea is a traditional place that has not been spoiled by outside influence. It is open to every country in the world for tourism and increasingly business, even if only during certain times for Americans. It is not closed, but its openness is organized. Our visas were processed in under four days. But the outside has yet to breach any of their culture, traditions, and especially politics.
Barbeques are a favorite pastime and cold noodles are a much-loved treat for North Koreans. U.B. also told us that about 80 percent of female students wear traditional clothing to class if the weather is suitable - otherwise their clothing is simple, conservative and always decorated with a lapel pin of a leader. Boyfriends and girlfriends never hold hands in public. The environment is pristine and they respect their country. Being quiet and simple is still respected, and homage is always paid to the leaders.
It was lunchtime, and U.B. delivered us our meals in styrofoam boxes. Up to that point we had only eaten one meal together. As she said good-bye to eat her lunch, I asked her to stay, as friends eat lunch together. She smiled and left to ask permission.
Returning to the North Korean dining car, she and Mr. Pok agreed that we might eat together, and the others there also wanted to share the meal in friendship. U.B. came back and told us to join them in their car for lunch. Tom and I were delighted to share a meal in the back of the train with 60 ‘guides,’ telling stories, laughing, dinking and carrying on. There were no barriers. There were no walls, no censorship, no wiretaps and no secrets.
The food served to tourists is undoubtedly more nutritious and extravagant than their meals, which consist mostly of a broth-like soup and rice. It’s filling and provides sustenance. Even in the countryside people are a little plump and the soldiers are thinner than the farmers. The peasants ride large blue Chinese trucks and bikes or walk in groups to their posts with smiles and friends. They freely wave and chuckle when they see foreigners. There is no fear and no worry of reprisal.
The train arrived and Tom and I found one last souvenir shop. The processing took about two hours and consisted of the North Korean army boarding the train and searching our bags. The search was similar to the first search on arrival – not very thorough – although they did make me turn on my camera and show them four or five pictures. Out on the platform, we waited for others to be searched, the train to arrive, paperwork to be completed – and U.B. went off to add something personal to our journals.
She returned and would not relinquish our books until it was time to board the train. She said: “Read it when you get back to China.” As I boarded she shyly opened her own book to the page of my message and showed me the pressed little yellow flower I had given her from the pools of singing angels two days before. The train jerked and pulled away as everyone began to cry. I waved out the window and our friends waved until there was nothing to see. I read what U.B. wrote in my journal and smiled with tears. She had torn her address from Tom’s book.



An American sojourn into Pyongyang, part II

By Branson Quenzer
After a propaganda-filled visit to the Eternal President’s gift hall, which nearly every visitor to NK sees and is filled with gifts from cultural relics and art masterpieces to televisions and bottles of brandy, our posse of six headed to a mountain nearby.
When we arrived we saw a family organized at the trailhead carrying instruments and armed with music and songs, a pastime of many North Korean families. There were no tourists, and two of our party members decided to stay at the trailhead.
North Korea is mostly mountainous, generally preserved, with the lowlands, which have been terraced by oxen or tractors into rice patties being used for farming. The mountains and rivers are pristine in the countryside, great for hiking, full of birds, frogs and squirrels, and free of pollution.
All of the contact we have had with the NK people have been more than friendly to this point and from driver, supervisor, concierge, waitress or UB there has been openness and thoughtfulness. I have always heard of the polite nature of South Korea, but heard little of the DPRK hospitality.
At a pool and waterfall halfway to the top U.B. calls me over to where she is kneeling at the river bank: “Come here!”
“What?,” I ask.
She insists, “Come here and look.”
“At what?,” bending down gazing into the crystal water she is pointing to.
She hoists a deluge of water into my face as she begins laughing and I begin thinking about my mental approach to NK.
North Korea is not grey and cold. There are problems and that can easily be seen watching the trucks roll in from the border of Dandong, China, carrying food and textiles into an unproductive country. Cars are sparse, buildings other than the capital are small and only major highways are developed as a transportation system.
The people are optimistic and seek a future of reunification with their brothers and sisters of the South. They have a firm conviction in their beliefs that their leaders are great and that imperialists should leave Korea to be a nation as a whole, and they simply want peace with the outside.
The de-militarized zone, or DMZ, carries the significant fallout of a beginning of friendship between two nations posed against each other. The DMZ is a stretch of land that has been demarcated by the U.N. as an area without heavy artillery that diagonally stretches two kilometers on each side of the 38th parallel, buffering the North from the South.
In the DMZ there are a number of significant buildings that were used by North and South for negotiations, which resulted in nothing. There are also buildings that were used for talks between the DPRK and the U.N., which resulted in a ceasefire and an end to military conflict, but not an official peace treaty. The country is still formally at war. The border is a strip of concrete. There is no wall, no barbwire and this strip of concrete demarcates the division of common Korean people.
In these buildings an army official approaches the only two Americans and says, “I am a North Korean soldier, you are an American, my government doesn’t like yours nor yours mine, but we are people, and I want to know the truth.” I move conversation along but the commander persists and follows us back to our van.
The car starts and the soldier says wait. He looks back at Tom and me and asks for the truth. U.B. is translating. I look at Tom, who nods his head to indicate that now is the time for honest answers.
After being fully assured of our safety, I begin to explain what western media tells us about the DPRK: that their leaders are hostile to the West at the expense of the people’s wellbeing; that the government allows starvation for the sake of military buildup.
U.B.’s eyes begin to swell up, and the van is totally silent. I look at her sitting to my left and place my hand on her knee as tears begin to roll down her cheeks. She remains silent. They are all waiting for her to speak as my heart becomes heavy and dark.
My words begin to come out of her mouth in Korean as tears flow. I feel for her. The soldier turns white, the driver looks forward, the faces turn to ghosts and people begin to reach for one another.

vn.vladnews.ru / Issue #578 / Special reports /


An American sojourn into Pyongyang, part I

By Branson Quenzer
A man entering the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, North Korea’s formal name, especially with the perspective of Western eyes formed by media drilled into him from birth, will likely find himself with shaky nerves.
What can he expect? What will happen? So much more is the unknown. It is said in the “Dictator’s Tour Guide” that no Korean language materials or mobile phones are allowed in, and that normal behavior may be deemed combative and punishable by expulsion or jail time.
Our first contact with the DPRK is a soldier dressed in a green uniform checking our bags for anything illegal. To many it is a surprise that the border check is a breeze, even for Americans who have built-up resistance in the political chess game.
We quickly transfer from the Chinese train to the platform and then into the old but maintained North Korean train which departs once a day. Pictures of their great leaders Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-Il stare at you.
On the platform and in the train we sit with our supervisors, there to mind our words and behavior. They are ‘officially’ tour guides. The interviews start immediately. Mr. Pok speaks, translated by the young 23-year-old university student and unprofessional translator nicknamed U.B., “You are Americans; I am North Korean. My country does not like yours nor yours mine, but we are all people and we can answer any questions you have even if they are bad.”
We politely, though skeptically, received their claims to such openness. Mr. Pok continues: “If I was in your country we could be friends; you are in my country, so we can be friends.” Questions of general life such as employment and our purpose for living in China ensue. Mr. Pok asks U.B. to translate, “What languages do you speak?” I responded that I know a little Chinese and a little Spanish. Mr. Pok spoke fluent Spanish, so for the next hour our conversations continued in Spanish, and U.B. was left out, saddened.
Ushered out of the station quickly, we meet with yet another two North Koreans who have been assigned to accompany our little group. Conversation dominates the memory of us two Americans and four North Koreans riding through the countryside in a private van.
The second of the two newest Koreans we met in Pyongyang asked, “What were your thoughts about the DPRK before you came?” The American president had already been referred to as a ‘king,’ and western state government sites advised sensitivity in political discussions. Simple and broad answers should be the best course of action. “Trying to keep an open mind to get the real DPRK is my purpose – not to think about it before, but to learn about it now.”
Without asking, their political opinions begin pouring out. What the West projected about political sensitivity was something that seemed inescapable in the DPRK. It was in them and was something inseparable, something that was a hard rock at the core of existence, and something that if it were broken would mean certain self-destruction.
Mr. Pok expressed his views saying, “The Eternal President Kim Il-Sung is in all of us.” U.B. followed later with a cute and pleasant smile, “We look at him as our grandfather.” She was happy to have such a wonderful grandfather.
They want to know and I have learned not to tell. The six of us drive into the sunset not understanding each others world.