My Holiday in North Korea (12 page)

The British tourists’ Danish guide had pulled me aside as we were walking into the classroom so he could remind me what a rare opportunity this was for me to see “real people doing normal things.” I tried to shake off the memory of yesterday’s Children’s Palace fiasco, so I could approach today’s English class with an open mind. Then Danish Guide proceeded to tell me in specific, near minute-to-minute detail what we were about to see, making his advice a bit harder to heed.

The children (mostly boys with a few girls positioned at the head of the class) were attentive and mirthful as the teacher, outfitted in a purple-polyester pantsuit, enthusiastically pointing-sticked her way through the lesson. I alternated between snapping photos and trying to read over the students’ shoulders, as I naturally contemplated how much of what I was seeing was staged.

As Danish Guide had predicted, we were next invited to take turns coming to the front of the room to field questions from the class. I chose to hang back, as I’m strangely introverted in situations like these, and I wanted to observe and take more photos instead.

With the Great Supreme dead ones smiling brightly behind them, the Brits took turns fielding predetermined, rehearsed questions from the students, who took turns raising their hands for permission to stand. They asked about who the Brits were, and where they were from, and for help with the English lesson the teacher had planned.

Although the studio-audience members (the students) were obviously plants, and their questions clearly preplanned, the answers the Brits gave and the students’ subsequent reactions could not be. I wondered how and why the powers that be would take such a risk?

Perhaps this anticipation of knowing that anything could happen because kids are kids, and even well-trained ones make mistakes and accidentally (or purposely) say the wrong (or right) thing at the wrong (or right) time, explained the nervous energy I sensed and the preponderance of handlers in the room. After all, out of the mouths of babes falls truth.

That familiar refrain was running circles in my head: What risks are they taking, anyway? If everyone in North Korea truly believes their lives are so great, and everything is so perfect, then what are they working so hard to hide? Everyone knows nowhere is perfect, so why not just let kids be kids, since most kids really are all right?

I snapped back to attention when the class burst into laughter. It seemed one of the Brits—who was, no joke, an English teacher—was having a tough time teaching the English lesson on the board. A closer look at the board showed why. Here’s what was written:

That crazy tower in Pisa

Grammar (1) She said, “The school begins at 8:20 at
our school every day (change into reported speech)

(2) My mother wanted me to write a diary every day (choose make, let, have)

(3) Rewrite using with “enough”

The food was too hot to eat

Maybe it made more sense in English?

It was during moments like these—surrounded by a plethora of minders, standing in a classroom wired with security cameras and populated with students who I believe had been media trained to within an inch of their lives—that I would wonder to myself, why couldn’t they just get that last bit right? Surely they could have kidnapped or held prisoner someone with a better grasp of the English language who could have prepared a more intelligent lesson plan? Or when mankind failed, couldn’t the Great Dear One just go there and point?

I decided to switch positions and move to the front of the room, just inside the open doorway, where I could see all the students’ faces and reactions as they followed along.

They all seemed so happy and engaged. But wasn’t this what they did every day? Perform for tourists? Did they have practice run-throughs and drills, like their Children’s Palace counterparts? Was any real learning taking place here?

I wasn’t going to let one highly polished, over-the-top performance by North Korean child prodigies ruin all NoKo children for me. These kids were belly laughing and guffawing and having so much fun, I refused to believe it was staged.

Another Brit who taught math took to the center of the room. I nearly shed a tear when he asked one of the students if he could calculate the square root of some number (which of course I could not), and the student immediately got the answer right. There was indeed hope for all of us yet.

I then noticed one student staring at me. He was sitting a few rows back on the left and was the only student wearing blue. When our eyes met, he held my gaze instead of looking down or away, and he smiled. I smiled back and gave a tiny, silent wave hello. Then I held up my camera and nodded to ask if he minded if I took his photo. He smiled back nodding that yes, it was okay, so I did, and then nodded again to say thank you.

It reminded me of a moment long ago when I was in Jaipur, India. I was sitting in the back of a car stopped at a light that was besieged by indigent children begging loudly for food and money. As they jostled one another to gain position in front of the rolled-up window where I was sitting, a tiny young girl managed to emerge in front. She stood there silently, staring at me, as the chaos continued around her. We held one another’s eyes for a moment.

For whatever reason I held my palm to the glass, and then she held her palm up to mine and smiled. Time froze as we looked at one another, smiling, our hands held together, aligned through the glass. I burst into tears when I realized too late that the light had turned green and our car was speeding off, with no way to go back.

I remember that little girl vividly. I think about that moment to this day and wonder whether she remembers me, too. It reminded me then, as it always does now, that what I do when I travel matters.

I’ve had so many incredible life-altering moments when everything else just falls away—when all the back-and-forth in my head quiets down and all my questions and doubts recede, and I’m just there, sharing a moment. And for that moment, it’s about as real as it gets.

When the tour ended, our troop of handlers and hangers-on filed back into the hallway. Fresh Handler and I made a quick stop in the bathroom, where for once there was running water—only this time it wouldn’t stop, so the bathroom floor was a stinky, wet mess. I pretended I wasn’t wearing flip-flops and took comfort in the fact that we would be heading back that afternoon to my second home, the Koryo Hotel, where I was lucky to have running water on demand.

Later in the week we would visit two additional Children’s Palaces—a second, larger one in Pyongyang and one in Kaesong. Like the first one, these two were large, elaborate buildings; in the case of Kaesong, the largest and most beautiful building in town. And as with their predecessor, my visits to both were a sad yet weirdly entertaining reminder of what “all work and no fun” can do.

I remarked to Older Handler at one point how “funny” it was that the students we’d seen at the Kim Jong-suk High School seemed so authentically jubilant and exultant, whereas all the children in the Children’s Palace seemed so dour and grim (unless they were “on” and performing; then there were giant smiles plastered on faces). Wouldn’t one expect students in school to be sullen and bored, I asked, and children at play to be high spirited and irrepressible, not the other way around?

“The children can learn what they choose” was all she would say.

Not content with her answer, I let my standard baby-talk, Martian-style interrogation roll, “So if I was a student, you’re saying I could decide to play guitar if I wanted to?”

OLDER HANDLER: Yes, of course!

ME: And then, if after a few months I decide I no longer like the guitar and I want to switch and be a singer instead, then I can just switch? Just like that?

OLDER HANDLER: Yes! Of course!

I had my doubts.

ME: So if children are free to choose any activity they want, why would anyone choose to play the accordion? The accordion has to be for, like, the kids who can’t sing or dance, right?

FRESH HANDLER,
speaking playfully, but looking a little hurt
: Hey! I played the accordion!

Whoops. So much for diplomacy, thanks to my big mouth.

ME,
futilely trying to recover
: Really? The accordion is great!

I try to imagine adorable, pretty, smart, and I’m guessing popular Fresh Handler back in the day, stuck sitting on her chair, all smiles, legs spread, protective shoe covers with bows on, swaying back and forth as she pressed this key, then that key, of her giant squeeze box.

FRESH HANDLER: Oh, they are very popular here. All teachers must play them.

This sort of made sense, because Fresh Handler had at some point told me her mother or father was a schoolteacher.

I asked Older Handler what activity she’d participated in while growing up. She, too, had played the accordion. Nothing ever made sense.

Later in the week we visited an orphanage in Nampo. After putting on our filthy operating-theater safety-gear shoe covers, we walked through the hallways, peeking into rooms that were filled with children of different ages—from newborn to maybe three years old. It all seemed so natural and so right, in as much as any orphanage anywhere can be. There were nurses attentively watching over children as they slept or ate snacks or played freely.

But then I was led to the end of the hall and into the main playroom, where Older Handler pointed out groups of triplets and twins who I’m guessing couldn’t have been more than three. I sat on the floor to say hello, but most of the kids were too reticent to even acknowledge me. Older Handler was eager to translate for the local guide how happy they were that their Great Dear Leader had come to visit and selected the children’s uniforms all by himself. This was one on-the-spot guidance visit where pointing had seemed to make a difference, as the orphans’ uniforms
were
super cute.

As I sat there trying to make eye contact and convince any of the children to engage, I wondered what their daily lives must be like for them to be so completely disinterested in me, an American Imperialist.

And as so often in the perfectly orchestrated musical North Korea had time and again proven itself to be, my question was answered, as if on cue, when the budding young thespians broke into a perfectly choreographed “spontaneous” song-and-dance routine, its grand finale a NoKo Bellamy Nazi salute.