My Holiday in North Korea (19 page)

You ought to be ashamed of yourself for asking such a simple question…
—Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

CHAPTER 18

AND THE EARTH GOES ’ROUND THE SUN

O
n my second-to-last day in NoKo, I was taken to Pyongyang’s answer to Washington DC’s Smithsonian, the Three Rivers Exhibition.

The Three Rivers Exhibition details the “three revolutions: ideological, technical, and cultural” accomplished by the Supreme Great Leader in postwar Korea.

This translates to a sprawling, drab campus comprised of six different architecturally uninspired buildings. The only exception was the planetarium, which I think is shaped like Saturn minus two rings, or Earth plus one ring. Each purportedly showcased Korea’s respective advances in technology, manufacturing, heavy industry, light industry, agriculture, or electronics.

As we strolled through the empty, dimly lit, freezing-cold, enormous hall showcasing light industry, I felt like a character on the TV show
Lost
who had just discovered the camp where the Others lived.

Glass case after glass case meant to showcase Korea’s engineering and manufacturing prowess displayed objects so mind-numbingly boring, anachronistic, and quotidian, I truly felt like they were fucking with me. Polyester brown pants with a matching brown shirt hung proudly in one case. Another case held a few cans of food, and another housed electronics so old, I honestly had to ask what some were (one answer, “to make light shine on wall,” did little to clarify).

I kept having the same thought I’d had so many times before during my visit: Is this really the best they can do? If a stuffed animal behind glass is NoKo putting its best foot forward to impress foreigners, then they really need to rethink their strategy. Understand, too, that in this same hall of manufacturing masterpieces, there is no running water in the bathroom.

But the 
pièce de résistance
for me was the planetarium, which I believe is inside the technology building. We took a disproportionately long ride in a 300-year-old elevator to the second floor, where the doors opened on complete darkness. Everyone pretended not to notice as the elevator operator escorted us into the abyss. My handlers, the local handlers, the elevator operator, and I stood waiting in the dark for anything to happen. I joked that maybe the Dear Great Leader needed to come give some of the on-the-spot guidance he’s so famous for to get the lights to come on. Predictably, no one laughed at my joke but me.

A light came on, and we walked over to the first exhibit, a pendulum.

I think it’s crucial to take a moment here to again highlight the fact that we were in a building on a campus dedicated to showcasing Korea’s achievements in technology, science, and engineering, built for the express purpose of impressing foreigners and convincing the Korean people their Great Leader is a genius. 

As we stood around what looked like a card table with a large sheet of peeling white paper laid over the top and a motionless, weighted wire cable hanging above, the local guide earnestly explained, “This shows the world goes ’round.”

“It’s a pendulum,” I sheepishly offered, not wanting to steal her thunder.

Then she added, “You can see it’s divided into twenty-four sections.” I couldn’t, but this seemed beside the point. “Do you know why?” So while I of course know the answer, I’m starting to doubt myself, because between the cans of food, the absence of lights, and the barely functioning elevator, this shit is just all so unreal that maybe here in NoKo, the Earth
doesn’t
rotate around the Sun. 

“Because it takes twenty-four hours for the Earth to rotate around the Sun?” I offered. Correct! Score one for America.

“Look where the pointer is now,” she continued. “When we finish our visit, the pointer will have moved one section,” she explained. Feeling confident after my last correct response, I countered, “or because the Earth is rotating.” Fresh Handler giggled, earning a spot on my “Shit I Think Might Be Real” list.

The local guide then walked me through an interminable series of rudimentary graphics akin to what one might find in a high-school astronomy classroom circa 1970, with blurry photographs explaining North Korea’s space program, model rockets (which they mistakenly—or not—kept calling missiles), and a detailed account of every satellite they’ve ever launched. I felt like I should be taking notes but figured the CIA or NSA was probably on it. Nevertheless I started listening for contradictions and inconsistencies and committed to memory what salient facts I could, mainly out of boredom.

Last, my handlers and I were invited to sit for an astronomy presentation, which turned out to be a bunch of white spots on the ceiling that I could not discern one from another, even with the help of a red laser that they seemed to point arbitrarily at things that were not actually illuminated. I wondered whether they were doing this on purpose to make me feel stupid, or if they were just really bad at pointing.

The high-pitched, rousing, urgent, warbling commentary heard everywhere in NoKo, including outside, carried on and on, mispronouncing word after word as it described the universe in terms so basic I couldn’t understand a word of it.

I was bored to tears and on the verge of falling asleep when I heard/felt/saw Fresh Handler and Older Handler stand up and walk away. This was highly unusual—one, because my handlers never left me alone anywhere, and two, because I couldn’t sort out how they managed to stand up and walk away in a room so dark I couldn’t even see my own hands.

After eight days alone in NoKo with no one to
really
talk to but myself, I became momentarily paranoid at being left alone in pitch blackness. There must be a reason, I kept telling myself. What reason I couldn’t say to me, but I spent the next few minutes alternating between thoughts of being stuck in North Korea for the rest of my life, and the sad realization that I may have indeed finally lost the plot.

I quelled my fear by mentally devising an “Escape from the Planetarium” plan, using my cell phone as a flashlight, and told myself that if the lights didn’t come back on and my handlers weren’t back in five minutes…

And just like that the voice stopped, and the one not-burned-out light in the planetarium came back on. I can’t remember if my handlers were sitting next to me or not. I was just happy I wasn’t going to have to Muay Thai my way out of there using my phone.

As we walked back to the elevator, the local guide paused at the pendulum to say, “See, the pointer moved.”

Who in the world am I? Ah, that’s the great puzzle!
—Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

CHAPTER 19

CLAM BAKE AND A HOT SPA

A
ll week long I had been promised a trip to Nampo for a “clam bake” and a “hot spa,” but like everything else in North Korea, reality was but a sliver of itself.

The clam bake turned out to be Driver putting a bunch of clams on a round, metal plate resembling the Con Ed ones you’re supposed to avoid stepping on in New York City, because they’ve been known to electrocute horses and unsuspecting tourists. He then soaked it in gasoline and lit it on fire as my handlers and I watched, sitting on one-foot-by-one-foot stools stationed a foot off the ground, in a parking lot crawling with giant ants that I was very afraid of.

Older Handler would not stop chiding me as Driver was cooking: “Take a photo!” “This is very special!” “All tourists take a photo!” “Here give me camera, I take a photo!” “Why don’t you want a photo?” Because…I did not want a photo of a bunch of clams on fire in a parking lot.

And clearly, I had become grumpy, bordering on truculent.

I reminded myself to zip it as she incessantly bossed me around. The sooner it was over, I told myself, the sooner I could go back to my cell and take a hot spa!

And yes, the hot spa turned out to be a lukewarm bath, in a grungy bathtub with nonworking jets, in a dingy bathroom with awful fluorescent lighting—hardly the panacea I had so naively allowed myself to believe in.

Normally a minor setback like this would not induce tears (even while being chedah—North Korean for “let’s get drunk!”—and listening to melancholy music). I am generally an exceptionally resilient, adaptable, and low-maintenance traveler, and this bathroom was a lavish palace compared to many I’ve used throughout the world. But a hot spa it was not. And it was my seventh night traveling solo in NoKo.

I’d been with no one except my handlers and driver—plus local guides who joined us every place I visited—who all proptalked at me for seven straight days and nights at all times (unless I ate alone, or was in my hotel room) with the singular goal of convincing me North Korea is great, and that the Party’s and Dear Great Leaders’ dogma is spot on. I hadn’t so much gone to North Korea as a tourist as I had inadvertently stumbled into a Cult of Kim indoctrination, and they were determined to convert me.

Between their overzealous and overbearing solicitousness and their constant verbal harassment, I felt like I was part tabloid celebrity, part child with super special needs, part prisoner living in some dystopian future—surrounded at all times by people trying to control me. With no chance for any real discourse, it was suffocating and exhausting to be ceaselessly cogitating over my conflicting emotions and thoughts, while navigating the confusing and delicate relationship I had with my handlers—all while trying not to be arrested for an inane infraction such as folding an image of the Dear Great One in half.

There were moments when Fresh Handler would subtly express doubt or disillusionment over life in North Korea, but it was only on my last day that Older Handler finally owned up to the possibility that all may not be paradise in NoKo. She asked me if I wanted to tell her anything. I looked her in the eyes and said earnestly that I could not possibly be the first tourist to tell her that some of the shit they do and say was just pure lunacy…right?

She paused and replied, “To be honest, yes, on the last day sometimes some tourists say such things.”

North Korea is really a metaphor for LIFE’S BIG QUESTIONS. What the fuck is going on in this country is just a hop, skip, and jump away from asking: what does it all mean anyway? What do bad and good even mean? And by whose definition? Why do people behave this way? Why is mankind so flawed? Maybe we have everything backwards. Who’s to say North Koreans aren’t happy? And why is North Korea the worst place on Earth, when there are plenty of other places on Earth giving NoKo a run for its money?

Our clam bake is followed by the hot spa. Only it’s not. Older Handler has confused the schedule because our hotel runs the water (as in,
all water
) only from 9:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m., not 7:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. Silly Older Handler.

So instead I am escorted to our hot spa’s hotel restaurant for dinner. What this fakarant in Nampo lacks in charm, it makes up for in bad taste. It is, as are all public buildings in NoKo, overly air conditioned, underlit, butt ugly, and fucking loud. I thought the gas clams were dinner, so l had loaded up on those and already feel full. I’m tired, I’m sad, and I want to go home, or at least back to my room.

My handlers and Driver have just started eating, so they allow me to walk back to my room alone. I am temporarily elated. But after seven days of me, myself, and I overanalyzing the shit out of everything in an environment that is a combination of
The Truman Show
, Nazi-occupied Germany, any sitcom from the 1950s minus the fun and funny, and what I can only imagine would be the amalgamation of solitary confinement, regular prison, and a psych ward, culminating in a lukewarm, dingy bath…I felt so inundated by observations, thoughts, feelings of amusement, sadness, confusion, and gratitude that I start to cry (not the noisy kind, just teary).

But I don’t indulge in my sobfest for long. Within five minutes of settling into the bath, my phone rings. Startled, I stop crying but do not answer. It stops; I resume crying. The phone rings again. I transition to cry-laughing. I’ve been away from my handlers for sixteen minutes. I do not answer. The phone rings again, for the third time. Now I’m laugh-crying at the meta, meta, meta-ness of it all.

I know it’s over when I hear knocking on my door. It’s more than a simple battle of wills; Older Handler will not stop until we’ve spoken. And while I have the will to persevere, I simply don’t care any longer. And besides, I had more cry-laugh-thinking to get back to. And the tub wasn’t getting any warmer.

But before accepting defeat and rousing myself from the tub to answer the door, I took this self-portrait to capture the moment.