My Holiday in North Korea (7 page)

But the thing that really caught my eye was the individually wrapped towelette packets included at every place setting. Aside from the fact they were even using individually wrapped towelette packets as part of the place settings at a wedding (although the etiquette rules on this may be more lax for weekday daytime weddings), they seem to have been taken from China Air, or so the labeling led me to believe. Perhaps tourists who failed to use theirs on their flights casually gave them to their handlers, who amassed them over time, and they found themselves at a wedding.

We’d long ago finished lunch and had been sitting there for a while. The reception was delayed. My handlers were bored to pieces, yet I’m still riveted by the simple machinations of table setting and party preparation going on.

By now my handlers are slacking off a bit—a combination of being tired from a very busy morning, boredom at sitting waiting, and a shared Large Beer at lunch. Their lack of attention emboldens me to take more photos of more things without worrying about getting caught.

The photo I sneak of a waitress standing casually in the kitchen, with her left leg bent just a touch, waiting for something at the counter, is the photo that breaks the camel’s back. First I get into trouble…no more photos (now I’m bored), then the waitress does (unfair rebuke…I’m the one with the camera, after all).

Several people enter the restaurant and DISCUSSIONS take place. It prompts me to wonder if and how many DISCUSSIONS must have taken place for me to be sitting there bored in the first place.

Older Handler keeps me updated: bride and groom delayed, bride and groom arriving. Then she tells me to stay standing at the back of the room.

The guests begin arriving, both men and women (Older Handler explains that some wedding receptions are male- or female-only), and they are all dressed in their regular NoKo attire. That is, whatever they would have been wearing five minutes ago if they were
not
going to a wedding was what they were all wearing now. Men dressed in military uniforms? Check! Men dressed in short-sleeve work shirts and pants? Check! Ladies in their
Mad Men
costumes? Check! Children in school uniforms? Check! The only thing missing was semiformal, formal, or cocktail attire. Unfortunately Older Handler has also informed me that I’m not allowed to take any photos of the guests.

So I’m hanging back, trying to look casual and be as unobtrusive as an American Imperialist can be while crashing a wedding in North Korea.Older Handler tells me to get ready, that the bride and groom are on their way! I feel like a paparazzo waiting for the money shot. But I’m a little confused about how I’m supposed to take a photo from the back of the room.

When the bride and groom cross the threshold, the logistics are made clear: Older Handler drag-pushes me straight through the middle of the crowded room, (conveniently) making it impossible for me to take photos of any guests, before depositing me directly in front of the bride and groom, who are standing behind the bridal table.

I may be struggling to find true north in this land of uncertainty, ambiguity, and doubt, but the bride’s unmistakable glare upon seeing me—a clearly unwelcome and uninvited American Imperialist with a camera in her hands—proudly earned the first spot on my “Shit I Think Might Be Real” list. Followed second by the wedding reception…I think.

I am allowed perhaps five seconds to snap this photo of the happy couple before being ushered out of the fakarant faster than a president is pushed out of harm’s way during an assassination attempt.

Alice laughed. There’s no use trying, she said: one CAN’T believe impossible things. I daresay you haven’t had much practice, said the Queen.
—Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass

CHAPTER 6

AND THEN THERE WERE TWO

W
e pull up to the front gate of the Paeksong Food Factory in Pyongsong for my scheduled tour. When no one meets our car, Driver begins to honk with ever-increasing urgency and yells furiously until the military chick meant to be guarding the entrance stumbles out of her booth, disheveled and abashed.

It quickly becomes clear she is both out of uniform
and
has been sleeping. I am beyond entertained as I watch her hurriedly try to pull herself together (hat on, shirt buttoned up and tucked in, halter/belt thing on, etc.) while she frantically runs back and forth from the gate to the factory. I’m no expert on the NoKo system of rule, but I’m pretty certain that being out of uniform is bad, and being asleep even worse, but
both
? Ouch. Her cartoonlike scrambling is amazing and immediately makes my “Shit I Think Might Be Real” list.

After three or four sprints to the inside of the factory and back, she enters and exits her booth one last time, then lifts the gate and motions us inside. As we step out of our car to an empty parking lot, we are met by the local guides and the factory manager. It’s then that Older Handler tells me the shocking news: A mere
five minutes
earlier, the factory unexpectedly lost power, forcing it to close and send all 5,000 employees home. We will still be allowed inside, but there will be no people to see and nothing working.

A group of Brits who happen to be visiting the factory at the same time seem to enjoy peppering their handlers with questions they must know will result in inane answers:

BRIT: So, all 5,000 people have just left the building five minutes ago and gone home then, or are they all waiting in the lunchroom for the power to come back on?

LOCAL GUIDE: Yes.

Having spent some time in factories (and not being a complete idiot), I, too, can smell a ruse. All the surfaces, machines, and equipment are pristine. It seems unlikely—nay, impossible—to manufacture the purported plethora of products on the same two lines with just a few different machines. And all 5,000 people left mere minutes ago, and there isn’t a single shred of physical evidence that even
one
human has ever worked here? Except for, of course, the napping guard.

But more importantly, I’m pretty sure if the factory she is single-handedly tasked with guarding
did
just lose power one- to four-and-a-half minutes ago, causing it to unexpectedly close down and send 5,000 workers home (or be held in the lunchroom), she would be fully clothed, or at least awake, if not both.

Lest you think I doubt the veracity of Older Handler’s claim based on the actions of one unkempt, napping guard and solid housekeeping, on our approach to the factory on the only road in, we hadn’t seen a single person coming the other way. Certainly there had to be a straggler or two. Someone with a limp?

My bewilderment grows once our tour of the factory begins. I am so stupefied by the factory’s “control room” that I forget to take a photo of it. First, there are no electronic displays or control panels of any kind
anywhere in the room. Second,
there are no electronic displays or control panels of any kind anywhere in the room
. There are: two barren desks; four chairs; and three dormant “monitors” affixed to the wall that I would swear aren’t real but rather are those fake molded plastic-prop flat-screen monitors used by home stagers, realtors, and furniture stores. That’s it. There aren’t even pencils in the room. I don’t believe anyone’s ever
been
in
this room, let alone controlled factory operations from it only minutes ago.

Next comes the Showcase of Products Room, which begged the question I kept finding myself asking of NoKo: If you’re going to go to all the effort to put your “best foot forward,” why not try a little harder to make it look better? Which is not to say the white-lacquer bookshelf-cabinet all-in-ones lined up next to each other along the wall and the bevy of beverages in clashing packaging didn’t look pleasing; it just could’ve looked better.

Unexpectedly we come upon two workers who have, for some reason, stayed behind to finish making the biscuits after their 4,998 coworkers so quickly departed. The local guide or factory manager (I can’t remember who) declares these workers “heroes.”

We watch them—their heads down, doing nothing—for a few minutes, and then my group moves on. As usual, I stay behind watching, wondering what it all means. And as usual, Fresh Handler, always patient during my extended reveries—stays with me. Eventually one of the workers looks up and stares right back at me, and then she gives me the stink eye—my second stink eye in as many days. But it’s also one of the few genuine things I’ve encountered. So I snap her photo, adding it to my “Shit I Think Might Be Real” list. And to Fresh Handler’s great pleasure, we move along.