We were probably in the world’s most ideologically remote country. No sooner had we hit the ground in Pyongyang, than our pre-arranged schedule was on. On the face of it, Pyongyang is a surprisingly attractive, unoppressive city, free from the grime and claustrophobia of other Asian capitals. It was of course razed during the Korean War in the early 1950’s. It has been totally rebuilt.
Kim Il Sum is the only leader North Korea has known. Ten months after his death, they appear to be having a hard time adjusting to life without his omnipotent presence. Call it deification, or even that pat Western phrase: ‘ The Cult of the Personality’ - but this happens here every day... 1000’s paying homage to a dead leader. Whether it’s indoctrination, or just an extreme form of misguided loyalty, the result is an almost religious conviction that one man had all the answers.
Government Guide Mr. Pak: There’s to be one leader who can understand what’s the collective need, right? and also there must be a leader who can lead, channel the collective efforts into something which the collective desired, otherwise the social disorder will arise. So according to our conception of society, there must be a leader and the leader is something quite different to the individual. In this respect, I strongly object to the term ‘Personality Cult’ concerning our Great Leader.
Next morning our itinerary said we were off to the Sang Wong cement factory, and off to the Sang Wong cement factory we went.
Not what you might expect, but this two million tonne a year hi tec operation is controlled by a handful of technocrats from this fully computerised base. Overseen by the Great Leader himself.
Factory manager : What did the Great Leader say when he came here?
Mr. Pak: He said we should conduct, should manage the production process in a successful way, so that we increase the production.
Later we popped into a ‘Chiong Ban Ri’ co-operative farm, the North Korean equivalent of the old Soviet Collectives. They did acknowledge that this was a model farm - so model in fact, that the immaculate paddy workers didn’t even smudge their make-up.
At the moment North Koreans are dreaming of a free trade zone to kick-start their moribund economy - but it’s a long way from reality. There was no hiding the country’s economic situation: on the one hand grand showpieces like this.. and on the other, stagnation and failed commercial and industrial projects.
This is one of the Government’s prize showpieces, the West Sea Barrage - an ambitious project on the coast west of Pyongyang aimed at harnessing fresh water at the mouth of the Tae Dong river. It was completed in 1986, but, with no more money to prop it up, the economy as a whole remains in an economic coma.
This thing, the Tower of Juche, is one of the reasons for their self confidence. It’s their symbol of self reliance. But we had to wonder if that should not be self delusion.
Q: How do you feel about the fact that almost every country in the world that was communist or socialist no longer is - and probably only Cuba and your country, The Democratic Peoples’ Republic of Korea, hold to this socialist philosophy?
Mr. Pak: Actually, in Eastern European countries socialism collapsed. But it is the socialism of the Eastern Europeans’ type, not the socialism in the true sense. So the collapse means superiority of socialism and the collapse of opportunism. They didn’t stay steadfast to the principle of socialism. First, they didn’t go among the people and they didn’t rely on the people.
This is Pyongyang’s '’Universal Studios’’ as it were. But there are those of course who would argue that this entire country is one big film set... and according to the script, this man, Kim Il Sung’s eccentric son, Kim Jong Il should have succeeded him by now. But, officially, this is yet to happen. So at this point, it is difficult to tell exactly who’s directing the show in North Korea. Behind the scenes, there’s talk of an ongoing power struggle between the old guard and a new generation of technocrats who want to open the door to the West in a bid to revive the seriously flagging economy.
And from an early age North Korean children are taught the myth. And in places like this, the children’s palace, this is reinforced over and over again. In his role as a self-styled psychologist, the Great Leader certainly put a lot of work - and money - into kids. After all, who can resist a beautiful child, let alone a beautiful smiling child, or as it seemed to us, a nation of beautiful, smiling children. But if this place was their most potent mind drug, then we were in grave danger of o-ding... they went too far - or maybe Westerners can’t tell the difference between exploitation and enthusiasm? You tell me...?
This is a nation built on mass adulation and mass mobilisation, and we saw them in action simultaneously. This was the ostensible official reason for our being here: the International Sports and Culture Festival for Peace.. 150,000 invited locals, 50,000 performers, 20,000 foreign guests... and this motley crew, refugees from the world of modern wrestling...
For whatever reason, wrestlers, male or female, are celebrities here, sporting superstars and aside from mass gymnastics - at which the North Koreans are clearly gold medal winners - wrestling, all of it tacky, was the only sport at the sports’ festival.
And the final bout of the festival? The local hero versus the imperial warmonger, the USA... I’m sure many of the North Korean fans still think it was for real. And who wins this most brutal exchange since the confrontation over this country’s reputed nuclear capability? You guessed it...
It was impossible not to draw the analogy between this incongruous event and North Korea “wrestling” - as it were - with the realities of the post communist world.
...as a correspondent one of the handful of places in the world you wonder whether you’ll get to see is the 38th Parallel, marking the demilitarised zone between North and South Korea....
On this side - the North - there are God knows how many troops ... and literally a few decent strides away in the South, 40 000 US military personnel and behind them if the DPRK can be believed 1,000 nuclear weapons.
Kang Sung Nam Lt. Col. DPRK Armed Forces: North Korea has neither the capacity nor the intention to develop nuclear weapons - but America raised the issue of nuclear development in the North in order to introduce nuclear weapons into South Korea. We built a nuclear power plant for peaceful purposes.
The reality of the DMZ drives home that this whole “Great/Dear Leader thing” - whatever else it is - is a way of mobilising 22 million North Korean people against the threat of attack - real or imagined - from the Americans in the South.
Rightly or wrongly, since the Korean War, they believe they have been fighting for their survival.
Now slowly, almost imperceptibly, they appear to be accepting their old way of fighting like the ancient oriental martial arts has been superseded by history.
If our visit - as manipulated as is was - was any indication they may also have accepted that clinging to a superseded ideology like communism in an almost completely non-communist world, is also not very smart...
Maybe the hermit kingdom is coming out of its cave... or at least they’re thinking about it.
Kim Il Sum is the only leader North Korea has known. Ten months after his death, they appear to be having a hard time adjusting to life without his omnipotent presence. Call it deification, or even that pat Western phrase: ‘ The Cult of the Personality’ - but this happens here every day... 1000’s paying homage to a dead leader. Whether it’s indoctrination, or just an extreme form of misguided loyalty, the result is an almost religious conviction that one man had all the answers.
Government Guide Mr. Pak: There’s to be one leader who can understand what’s the collective need, right? and also there must be a leader who can lead, channel the collective efforts into something which the collective desired, otherwise the social disorder will arise. So according to our conception of society, there must be a leader and the leader is something quite different to the individual. In this respect, I strongly object to the term ‘Personality Cult’ concerning our Great Leader.
Next morning our itinerary said we were off to the Sang Wong cement factory, and off to the Sang Wong cement factory we went.
Not what you might expect, but this two million tonne a year hi tec operation is controlled by a handful of technocrats from this fully computerised base. Overseen by the Great Leader himself.
Factory manager : What did the Great Leader say when he came here?
Mr. Pak: He said we should conduct, should manage the production process in a successful way, so that we increase the production.
Later we popped into a ‘Chiong Ban Ri’ co-operative farm, the North Korean equivalent of the old Soviet Collectives. They did acknowledge that this was a model farm - so model in fact, that the immaculate paddy workers didn’t even smudge their make-up.
At the moment North Koreans are dreaming of a free trade zone to kick-start their moribund economy - but it’s a long way from reality. There was no hiding the country’s economic situation: on the one hand grand showpieces like this.. and on the other, stagnation and failed commercial and industrial projects.
This is one of the Government’s prize showpieces, the West Sea Barrage - an ambitious project on the coast west of Pyongyang aimed at harnessing fresh water at the mouth of the Tae Dong river. It was completed in 1986, but, with no more money to prop it up, the economy as a whole remains in an economic coma.
This thing, the Tower of Juche, is one of the reasons for their self confidence. It’s their symbol of self reliance. But we had to wonder if that should not be self delusion.
Q: How do you feel about the fact that almost every country in the world that was communist or socialist no longer is - and probably only Cuba and your country, The Democratic Peoples’ Republic of Korea, hold to this socialist philosophy?
Mr. Pak: Actually, in Eastern European countries socialism collapsed. But it is the socialism of the Eastern Europeans’ type, not the socialism in the true sense. So the collapse means superiority of socialism and the collapse of opportunism. They didn’t stay steadfast to the principle of socialism. First, they didn’t go among the people and they didn’t rely on the people.
This is Pyongyang’s '’Universal Studios’’ as it were. But there are those of course who would argue that this entire country is one big film set... and according to the script, this man, Kim Il Sung’s eccentric son, Kim Jong Il should have succeeded him by now. But, officially, this is yet to happen. So at this point, it is difficult to tell exactly who’s directing the show in North Korea. Behind the scenes, there’s talk of an ongoing power struggle between the old guard and a new generation of technocrats who want to open the door to the West in a bid to revive the seriously flagging economy.
And from an early age North Korean children are taught the myth. And in places like this, the children’s palace, this is reinforced over and over again. In his role as a self-styled psychologist, the Great Leader certainly put a lot of work - and money - into kids. After all, who can resist a beautiful child, let alone a beautiful smiling child, or as it seemed to us, a nation of beautiful, smiling children. But if this place was their most potent mind drug, then we were in grave danger of o-ding... they went too far - or maybe Westerners can’t tell the difference between exploitation and enthusiasm? You tell me...?
This is a nation built on mass adulation and mass mobilisation, and we saw them in action simultaneously. This was the ostensible official reason for our being here: the International Sports and Culture Festival for Peace.. 150,000 invited locals, 50,000 performers, 20,000 foreign guests... and this motley crew, refugees from the world of modern wrestling...
For whatever reason, wrestlers, male or female, are celebrities here, sporting superstars and aside from mass gymnastics - at which the North Koreans are clearly gold medal winners - wrestling, all of it tacky, was the only sport at the sports’ festival.
And the final bout of the festival? The local hero versus the imperial warmonger, the USA... I’m sure many of the North Korean fans still think it was for real. And who wins this most brutal exchange since the confrontation over this country’s reputed nuclear capability? You guessed it...
It was impossible not to draw the analogy between this incongruous event and North Korea “wrestling” - as it were - with the realities of the post communist world.
...as a correspondent one of the handful of places in the world you wonder whether you’ll get to see is the 38th Parallel, marking the demilitarised zone between North and South Korea....
On this side - the North - there are God knows how many troops ... and literally a few decent strides away in the South, 40 000 US military personnel and behind them if the DPRK can be believed 1,000 nuclear weapons.
Kang Sung Nam Lt. Col. DPRK Armed Forces: North Korea has neither the capacity nor the intention to develop nuclear weapons - but America raised the issue of nuclear development in the North in order to introduce nuclear weapons into South Korea. We built a nuclear power plant for peaceful purposes.
The reality of the DMZ drives home that this whole “Great/Dear Leader thing” - whatever else it is - is a way of mobilising 22 million North Korean people against the threat of attack - real or imagined - from the Americans in the South.
Rightly or wrongly, since the Korean War, they believe they have been fighting for their survival.
Now slowly, almost imperceptibly, they appear to be accepting their old way of fighting like the ancient oriental martial arts has been superseded by history.
If our visit - as manipulated as is was - was any indication they may also have accepted that clinging to a superseded ideology like communism in an almost completely non-communist world, is also not very smart...
Maybe the hermit kingdom is coming out of its cave... or at least they’re thinking about it.