TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/112690/1126006.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 8.6 KB | 181 lines

                                                                                WORLD, Page 48

NORTH KOREA

In the Land of the Single Tune


A visitor to Pyongyang discovers an eerily calm world where
radios can pick up only the official station, and the cold war
never stopped playing

By PICO IYER/PYONGYANG


    As one of the most reclusive countries in the world, North
Korea has long been closed to even the faintest whisper of an
alien idea. Yet when a British passport holder recently went
to the North Korean embassy in Beijing and expressed a desire
to visit the Hermit Kingdom, he was warmly received. London
does not have diplomatic relations with Pyongyang, he was
reminded, but he was more than welcome to come in. Not only
would the authorities take care of his visa; they would also
confirm plane tickets, provide him with a hotel and meals, set
him up with a guide. And since so many countries regard a North
Korean stamp as a stigma, they would give him a detachable
visa that he could throw away as soon as he left.

    One week later, on the aging Chosonminhang airlines plane
into Pyongyang -- the carrier runs only five flights a week,
linking the capital to Moscow, Beijing, Khabarovsk and Sofia
-- the Briton was the only sightseer in evidence. Most of the
passengers were North Koreans (easily identified by the badge
depicting President Kim Il Sung that every North Korean must
pin over his heart) and Japanese businessmen, apparently
undeterred by the fact that North Korea is the only country
that Japanese nationals are not permitted by their government
to visit.

    The fact that capitalist foreigners were visiting at all
suggests that the world's last great communist dinosaur is
beginning to stir. As national alliances have been radically
redrawn over the past year, the longest-running dictatorship
in the world has found itself increasingly abandoned by the two
patrons, Moscow and Beijing, that it has always managed to play
off against each other. Pyongyang's sense of vulnerability was
only sharpened when the Soviets, who account for 50% of North
Korea's trade, established full diplomatic relations with
South Korea in September. China, meanwhile, enjoys $3 billion
a year of trade with Seoul, at least three times more than with
its ostensible ally to the north.

    With a 10% drop in foreign trade last year and an even more
damaging cut to its almost bankrupt economy anticipated this
year, North Korea is being forced to swallow its principles and
make friends with the countries it has long loved to vilify.
September saw the first high-level meeting between North and
South Korea; a second round of talks was conducted last month.
And just days before the Moscow-Seoul accord, Pyongyang
asserted its eagerness to normalize diplomatic relations with
Japan, its bitterest enemy of all since the brutal Japanese
occupation of the peninsula from 1910 to 1945.

    The man in the Pyongyang street, however, still proceeds as
if no one has told him that the cold war is over. North Korea
seems stuck in some vanished black-and-white era of dark,
Soviet-made limousines and gray, featureless concrete blocks
(when a visitor pulls out a  camera, a local asks him, in
astonishment, "Color?"). The dominant image of the capital is
of neatly dressed people in groups walking soundlessly through
silent avenues of empty high-rises.

    Radios are fixed so they can receive only the one acceptable
station, and a loudspeaker is installed in every home. The
display case in a hotel bookstore features 114 different works,
all by Kim Il Sung or his son and heir apparent, Kim Jong Il.
Martial music is piped in throughout the country, even in the
bus taking passengers from airplane to terminal; by daybreak,
when workers march to their jobs, a fast, furious female voice
is already shouting exhortations from a hidden amplifier in the
street.

    In the midst of this rule-bound spartanism, every visiting
foreigner is taken to see the showcases of "social
construction": the Tower of the Juche (self-reliance) Idea,
embellished with carvings of the kimilsungia flower; a 70-ft.
bronze statue of the Great Leader, before which women mutter
prayers; an Arch of Triumph larger than Paris' Arc de Triomphe.
Subway stations are opulent, with fireworks-shaped chandeliers,
granite pillars, 250-ft. mosaics, and marble passageways and
platforms. Yet many of the imperial structures have a slightly
wistful, wasteful air: the enormous 150,000-seat May First
Stadium, built in the stillborn hope of a role as co-host of
the 1988 Summer Olympics, for example; or the 20,000 new
apartments along Kwangbok (liberation) Street that were built
to accommodate foreigners but remain largely uninhabited.

    For North Koreans, however, the ranks of modern towers are
a source of pride, concrete proof of how much they have
achieved since they began rebuilding their country from the
rubble of the Korean War. "New York, Paris, are better than us,
more beautiful," concedes a government guide. "But 40 years
ago, New York, Paris, were the same." The nation "so rich in
silver and in gold," as its national anthem proclaims, has
enough resources to build $500 million stadiums, but its
citizens must get by on about $50 a month. "These people have
hard currency -- they are not so hopeless as [the people in]
many other countries I deal with," says a European who is in
Pyongyang to reschedule a debt that has gone unpaid for 14
years. "But they just use it on monuments, more monuments --
unusable things."

    The visitor to Pyongyang soon grows accustomed to seeing the
world in a different light, as if gazing through the wrong end
of a telescope. On North Korean maps, there is no Demilitarized
Zone at the 38th parallel, no boundary between South and North;
guidebooks, in quoting figures for the country, often cite the
numbers for the two parts of Korea combined. In the 1,100-seat
auditorium of the Children's Palace, a 500-room extravaganza
rich with 2 1/2-ton chandeliers and 50,000 tons of marble,
groups of tiny revolutionaries put on a slick hour-long variety
show, compulsively smiling while they deliver folk songs like
Korea Is One.

    Despite such reflexive gestures, however, and ritual
references to "[South Korean President] Roh Tae Woo and his
cutthroats," Pyongyang takes pains to absolve its southern
brothers of most blame. The history books allude only to the
"war between America and North Korea," and the North Koreans
constantly repeat that theirs is a "homogeneous nation," though
nothing could be further from the raucous vivacity of Seoul
than Pyongyang's unearthly quiet. Just three years ago, North
Korean saboteurs bombed a Korean Air Lines plane in the hope of
sabotaging the Seoul Olympics and killed 115 people; now, having
seen unification come to Germany and even Yemen, Pyongyang is
talking more than ever of a "confederal republic" with two
regional governments overseen by a single central committee.

    Meanwhile, an additional 50,000 apartments are being
completed for Kim Il Sung's 80th birthday in 1992. Many Korea
watchers believe in that year, when Kim Jong Il turns 50, the
father may hand power over to the son. Though citizens in
Pyongyang still seem eager to attest to their devotion to their
leaders, some of their enthusiasm may be quickened by the fact
that theirs is one of the most militarized countries in the
world (with nearly 900,000 troops among its 21 million people).
According to the human-rights group Asia Watch, as many as
150,000 prisoners are kept in the equivalent of concentration
camps.

    For the moment, though, the long-xenophobic country prefers
to stress its openness. In Beijing, ads in the China Daily have
been singing, "You are welcome to visit Pyongyang." Since
April, charter flights have been scheduled to bring in tourists
from Hong Kong. "Tell your friends," a guide urges, "British,
American, Japanese, that they are welcome to visit! Many
Western enemies say our country is `closed,' but anyone who is
genuinely interested in Korea is welcome." Maybe North Korea
should tell the world of its new policy? "We tell," he says,
a little plaintively, "but they say, `Propaganda!'"

    Anyone who doubts that the hospitable intentions exist, at
least on paper, need look no further than the tallest building
in the skyline of Pyongyang, a 105-story pyramid under
construction. The 1,000-ft. tower is apparently to house the
Ryugyong Hotel, whose 3,000 rooms will be able to accommodate
5,000 tourists. That seems more than enough for the one tourist
who comes flying in each day.