Pyongyang, October 12, 2008, Sunday
Trip Start
Sep 26, 2008
1
21
31
Trip End
Oct 18, 2008
Pyongyang,
P'yŏngyang-si,
Korea Dem Peoples Rep
Thursday, July 9, 2009
And Gul. He had no tie, either. Just a shirt and a wind jacket.
„Let me stand next to you,“ he joked. „I'll be less conspicuous if I’m not by myself.“
But for all the talk and apparent fuss about the dress code in the run-up to the trip, no one seemed to care right now whether Gul and I had ties or not
1 Pyongyang
. Our Korean hosts went about their business as usual. Not a word was said about it. It turned out to be a complete non-issue. So much about it.Presently, we took our seats and the bus got us there.
Kumsusan Memorial Palace, or the Kim Il Sung Mausoleum, is basically the same thing as the Mao Mausoleum in Beijing. Only much more pompous. At one point or another, I would say it’s a must for all foreign visitors when they are in Pyongyang. On the one hand, that’s a way to pay homage to the Great Leader, and where better to do it than at the Kumsusan? On the other hand, it is a great example as to which length the ruling class of North Korean society is prepared to go to in order to preserve and upkeep this personality cult.
The day was glorious. Same as the day before at the same time, it was somewhat windy and chilly, but magnificently sunny. Whichever Gods they had in North Korea, they smiled upon us in favour.
When we arrived, though, we couldn’t go right in. For the first time since our arrival in Pyongyang we seemed to be in a spot where there was a queue
2 Pyongyang (photo by Pim Seuren)
. Or at least the queue we couldn’t jump. Not that we really saw a huge crowd around us. There was a unit of soldiers who were led inside roughly by the time we arrived and a handful of seemingly loitering local dignitaries on the square in front of the entrance gate. There was a light-blue Mercedes, a bit outdated, parked nearby and two more tourist buses, and that was all. Not exactly the football-game type of the crowd. But nevertheless, we waited. The Kumsusan Memorial Palace once upon a time allegedly served as the old Kim’s official residence and office. When he died in 1994, Kim Jr. decided to transform it into his father’s final resting place. So now, somewhere inside the palace, the old geezer was lying in permanent state inside a glass coffin. Of course, our visit clearly refuted the false claim that foreigners are not allowed to see Kim’s embalmed body. As a foreigner, you may not go in whenever you please, like I did in Beijing. But organised tours are clearly OK. After all, there was little we could do in Pyongyang at our own discretion anyway. Everything seemed to have to be sanctioned beforehand. So this was just one more in a long series of similar things.
“You are not permitted to take pictures inside the Palace," Mrs Lee informed us. “Pictures cannot be taken when we enter,” she added for a double emphasis. “You will deposit your cameras before you go in and they will be returned to you on the way out.”
After a while we were taken to the same passageway that had swallowed those soldiers short time before and there we stepped onto a thing called travelator, which was basically a long conveyor belt that for some reason was the means of transport towards the inside of the palace
3 Pyongyang
. Why this travelator thing and not just plain walking, still remains unclear to me. I detected – same as anyone else – no reason why we were not allowed to go on foot. Which we were not. And which would have been at least twice as fast as the speed of this belt. Also, we were not allowed to walk on the belt itself to speed things up. Instead, we tried to be patient and just looked through glassed windows around us.This travelator brought us to another conveyor belt, not a single bit faster, but at least now we were passing through an X-Ray room, which was pretty much along the lines of airport security rooms, only on a much larger scale. Then we went onto a platform that automatically scrubbed the bottoms of our shoes. And finally it was a wind room where powerful jets of air blew off whatever there was to blow off of your body. The way I saw it, they were at their most effective when it came down to messing up my hairdo.
Then we entered the palace proper, deposited our things, and walked the length of a very large hall, at the end of which there was another sizeable statue of Kim Il Sung, against the background of some soft music. According to the protocol, we were expected to pause in front of the statue, and true to the good form, look reverently sombre
4 Pyongyang (photo by Pim Seuren)
. After we all had adopted an air of our best gloominess for a few seconds, they finally led us to the hotspot of this whole complex, the darkened hall with a low pedestal with embalmed Kim Il Sung inside his transparent sarcophagus. It was much cooler inside than anywhere else within the palace. Whatever the reason for it. So much for the hotspot. Guards directed the line of visitors to make a complete circuit of the coffin, and as instructed beforehand, we were required to bow three times, once on each side and once at the bottom. There could be no bowing above Kim’s head. The hall was very quiet, apart from occasional sniffling by Korean female visitors. Which was, I suppose, seen as OK. And appropriate.
We lined up in threes and headed towards the coffin. My impression was that the old Kim didn’t look any healthier than Mao few days back. Well, either way, we bowed at three points as instructed, paused a bit at his feet and left the hall. That was it, more or less. And my T-shirt and jacket? Not a word from anyone.
From then on we entered a huge room with the Mercedes, or maybe just one of them, used by Kim during his life and that was the official end to it
5 Pyongyang (photo by Pim Seuren)
. After that we were ushered out, picked up our things, our gloominess duly dissipated, and another dawdling belt got us out of the building.The visit to the Kumsusan Memorial Palace ended with ten or fifteen minutes on the huge square, surrounded by a low wall and a moat, in front of the Palace. Of course, the Palace sported another Kim’s portrait and North Korean flag on the roof on top of it. This was basically a photo-op to wrap this visit up. It seemed that it was not a routine only for us foreigners, but also for locals. There was a three-row low makeshift stand there, like beamed over from your neighbourhood football pitch, where everyone sooner or later took a group photo. We took pictures of whatever looked interesting in sight, including locals taking their own group pictures. And when everyone else finished with that, and the stand was finally empty, we lined up there ourselves. This time it was Gul’s camera, a canon-like beast, easily the best rig in town at the moment. Our Korean hosts joined us again and once more Simon took over as photographer. When the picture was taken, it was time to move on.
Once in the bus, obviously impatient and feeling strangled, Matthew asked Simon:
„Can we ditch the ties now?“
„Yes, you can ditch your ties now,“ he shouted back from across the bus
6 Pyongyang
.Our next destination was Revolutionary Martyrs Cemetery. However, the talk in the bus still centred on Kim and his embalmed body. Some people claimed they were not sure the body was genuine.
„I guess it is. This one is. But Mao is a fake,“ Simon claimed with an air of authority.
„A fake?“ someone asked.
„Yes,“ Simon repeated.
„Do they know it in China?“ I asked. „I mean, the people?“
It turned out, at least according to what Simon was saying, that the fake Mao was supposed to be a secret. At least officially. But was it possible to keep such a fact a secret for real? We could only guess. I made a mental note to remember to ask PingPing once back in Beijing.
7 Pyongyang
And then it was a ride to the Revolutionary Martyrs Cemetery. That place, another one of those holy ones, was a bit out of town. Like ten or twelve kilometres or so. There’s this hill at the outskirts of Pyongyang, rather pompously called Mount Taesong, whose summit reaches up to enviable 225 meters above the mean sea level. And on that hill – or mountain, if you will – they set up this cemetery.
On our way to the cemetery we passed through some of those deserted-looking suburbs, with ubiquitous residential tower blocks and hardly any people outside. In front of one of them, a small, lone car caught my eye, quite unlike most of those big and expensive ones you could usually see, if you saw any. Parked all alone, it had yellow licence plates. Whatever that meant.
The bus eventually brought us to another one of those huge paved clearings, this time in front of a monumental gate with green-tiled multi-level roof and upturned eaves. That was the entrance to the Revolutionary Martyrs Cemetery.
We passed through the gate and up we went, climbing the wide and long stairway
8 Pyongyang
. It led us up to the row upon row of memorial pillars, bearing bronze busts of war heroes, most of whom had given their lives in the anti-Japanese struggle. At the upper end of the complex there was a large red granite flag with a bust of Kim Jong Suk, the wife of Kim Il Sung. Nearby they had another monument, this one with something or other allegedly written by the old Kim himself and as such simply – and faithfully in order to preserve his handwriting – transferred onto the monument’s wall.At one point Simon, again acting as a representative of our group, laid some flowers and that was basically the end of the visit to the cemetery. The rest was about taking pictures and taking in the panorama of the city with the May Day Stadium as the main feature of the view.
I saw another car there, a 4x4 brand called „Pyeonghwa“, which I happened to know in Korean means „peace“. The car looked both pretty sturdy, as any decent 4x4 should, and well-designed, as any „Toyota“ or „Hyundai“ would be. I first checked with Mrs Lee if I had got the name right:
„Yes,“ she said
9 Pyongyang
. „It’s called 'Pyeonghwa’.“„Is it North Korean?“
„Yes, it is North Korean.“
„But tell me, it’s got white licence plates. And on our way here I saw a car with yellow plates. What’s the difference?“
„Cars with white plates belong to an organisation, university, enterprise or so. If a car has black plates, then it is a police or army car. And if it has yellow plates, then it is a private car,“ she explained.
„Ah, I see,“ I realised enlightened. So it meant that on our way to the Revolutionary Martyrs Cemetery I had seen my first private car in North Korea. I said so to Mrs Lee.
„Yes,“ she confirmed. „If it had yellow plates, then it belongs to a private person.“
Now I knew one thing more about North Korea. And with this newly acquired knowledge, our visit to the Revolutionary Martyrs Cemetery ended. We climbed back down to the bus and returned to the hotel. We had a lunch there and then it was time to leave Pyeongyang. Our programme in the North Korean capital ended for today. This evening we were going to stay in Kaesong, near the border with South Korea.
On our way out of Pyongyang, we finally had an opportunity to pass through some suburbs off the usual tourist routes. On this by now hot early afternoon hardly a soul was in the street. At least outside of downtown. Through the bus window at one point in one of the side-streets I saw a two-wheel cart parked by the wayside with a few meagre pieces of fruit, probably for sale. No one was around, neither a vendor nor any buyers, so I had no idea who were the people selling and buying. I wanted to take a picture of it. That was one of those missing pieces our hosts made sure we wouldn’t see if possible. I saw it. But by the time I reacted, the cart was already out of sight.
And soon we were on our way south.
