My Holiday in North Korea (2 page)

WENDY E. SIMMONS

When I used to read fairy-tales, I fancied that kind of thing never happened, and now here I am in the middle of one! There ought to be a book written about me, that there ought! And when I grow up, I’ll write one.
—Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

FOR

Kim Jong-un, the Supreme Leader of NoKo, for being batshit crazy enough to make this book possible. And my handlers, for showing me around.

Now, HERE, you see, it takes all the running YOU can do, to keep in the same place.
—Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass

INTRODUCTION

Y
ou just know some things are wrong. Being shaken down by a Buddhist monk at a thousand-plus-year-old temple is one of those things.

It was my second-to-last day in NoKo. How anything could still surprise me by that point in my trip, I have no idea. Yet somehow, it did.

Fresh Handler, Local Handler, and I were touring the Pohynsa Temple (Older Handler had decided to sit this one out and wait with Driver near the car), an eleventh-century temple complex that Local Handler was quick to point out “had suffered extensive damage from American Imperialists during the Korean War.”

After we climbed a short set of concrete stairs to the main pagoda and went inside, I put a donation in the wooden box, lit a candle, stood in front of Buddha, and said a silent prayer. I prayed for Fresh Handler’s well-being and happiness, hoping against all hope that she would be okay, and I prayed for Older Handler and Driver, since by then I’d grown fond of both of them, too. Then I prayed for all North Korean people, because let’s face it, there but for the grace of God go I. It’s a stroke of luck, this life we lead: where we’re born, how we die. And finally I said a prayer for the Buddhist monk I’d seen standing outside. In a country that “actively discourages” all religion, I couldn’t imagine he was having a great time.

When we exited the pagoda, the monk stood waiting. I naively thought to say hello. But no, this was North Korea (silly Wendy). He wanted money for my sins:

LOCAL HANDLER,
FRESH HANDLER translating
: The monk says the last time an American Imperialist visited this temple, he felt so ashamed of himself for the damage his American Imperialist bombs caused to the temple in the war, that he gave lots of money to feel better.

ME,
to myself, feeling an improbable mix of apoplexy and apathy
: Are you fucking kidding me? (
Then out loud.
) Please let the monk know that I’m an American, not an American Imperialist, and that wasn’t my war. I wasn’t even alive. I don’t advocate violence of any kind. I don’t even kill bugs! And in all my years of traveling to dozens of Buddhist temples around the world, never has a monk tried to extort money from me. Oh, and please let the monk know I said a prayer for him inside.

Put a fork in me. I was done.

Alice started to her feet, for it flashed across her mind that she had never before seen a rabbit with either a waistcoat pocket or a watch to take out of it, and, burning with curiosity, she ran across the field after it…
—Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

PROLOGUE

I
t’s amazing how badly you want to go outside when you’re not allowed to. It was such a nice night in Pyongyang, and all I wanted to do was not be stuck inside my dim, drab, smoky, weird, empty hotel.

My handlers and I had just arrived back at the Koryo Hotel. It was only 6:00 p.m., but since foreigners aren’t allowed to leave their hotels without their handlers, I wouldn’t be allowed back outside until 7:30 a.m. the next morning, when they returned to fetch me. I felt like a dog with a shock collar on.

I moaned, “I feel like I’m being sent back to prison.”

Older Handler recovered quickly and volunteered to take me on a walk.

“Meet in the lobby at 6:55; walk from 6:55 to 7:05.”

Itineraries and meeting times are very strict in North Korea.

We walked two long blocks up and two long blocks back, with people staring at me the entire time—clearly not happy to see an American Imperialist. We stopped in front of a tiny enclosed stand. Older Handler asked me if I’d like to try a North Korean ice cream “special treat.” I declined, ruminating over the likelihood of an actual, real ice cream stand existing in the barren retail wasteland that is North Korea (
probability
: zero).

She was not having it. “You said you feel like you are in prison. Eat the ice cream!”

Her feelings, I guess, were hurt. I ate the ice cream, which tasted kind of like an orange Creamsicle, but without the cream, or the orange.

Depositing me back at the hotel at 7:05 p.m. on the dot, she turned and said to me, “There. Now you feel better,” like I was some kind of child who had been granted a magical five-minute ice cream mind-eraser furlough.

Yup, all better.

I asked (again) why the main hotel for foreigners couldn’t just put a bench right outside the front door—right by all the guards and doormen—that tourists could sit on for fresh air and not be stuck inside the hotel all the time.

She responded in typical North Korean fashion (
read
: insane), “To be honest, because naughty Americans—but not you—are using this information to create false stories about our country to make it look bad, so not until the reunification of our country.”

Right, got it.

Coincidentally, we spent the next two days in the countryside at hotels that had benches outside in small courtyards inside the hotel grounds. Older Handler was very quick to emphatically point out the benches to me, repeatedly letting me know I should sit there so I “wouldn’t have to feel like [I] was in prison.” By this point in the trip, I couldn’t tell whether she was trying to be helpful or just spiteful. I think it was a little of both.

I am and have always been a traveler. Exploring the world, meeting its people, experiencing their lives, and sharing what I see are my greatest passions. I’ve traveled to more than eighty-five countries—including

territories and colonies—many of which I’ve been to multiple times, and I’m struck more and more not by our differences but by our similarities. Beneath all the trappings of politics and religion, and apart from variations in the way we live our daily lives, I have come to understand how fundamentally the same we all are as human beings.

Then I went on holiday to North Korea. And like Alice in Wonderland, I fell through the rabbit hole.

This is my tale.

How do you know I’m mad? said Alice. You must be, said the Cat, or you wouldn’t have come here.
—Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

CHAPTER 1

ARRIVAL

I
t was June 25, 2014. China Air Flight 121 touched down at Pyongyang’s Sunan International Airport and taxied to a stop on the tarmac. The cabin door opened. I disembarked the airplane and descended the passenger boarding stairs. I was alone, a tourist in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, unaccompanied by an organized tour group or international liaison (unlike most other visitors to the country).

I had never been more excited.

Aside from our plane, twelve or so fellow passengers, the half-dozen soldiers and airline employees who’d met us at the bottom of the stairs, and a giant smiling portrait of Kim Il-sung affixed to the side of the terminal building, the area was completely empty. There were no baggage trains, no food or fuel trucks, no conveyor-belt vehicles, or vehicles of any kind for that matter. There were no ground crews doing their jobs. There were no other planes. We were it.

One of the soldiers pointed me in the direction of the terminal building. I walked to the entrance and went inside. That twenty-foot walk to the terminal’s entrance would mark the last time I was allowed outside alone for the next ten days.

The inside of the terminal was as devoid of normal airport activity as the outside was—something I would have expected had we just landed on a small island in the Philippines or a dirt runway in Uganda but not in the capital of North Korea.