On April 25, by Kim Il Sung Square in Pyongyang, our North Korean tour guide “accidentally” chatted with us about the current situation. She looked directly at me with wide eyes and said calmly but firmly, “We have already opened up”. I was startled by this statement, but I was also pleasantly surprised. In the following days, although I could still feel the limitations, compared with my experience and impression, North Korea’s degree of openness was far beyond my expectation.
I had no idea that I would be dancing with ordinary picnickers in the hills outside Pyongyang, snapping pictures of each other with their cameras. Or in Pyongyang “Zhongguancun” night tour, shopping on the street to take pictures, in the subway to the neighboring North Korean woman to show my daughter’s video in the phone and so on. These details and the calm of the street let me see the other side of North Korea, really appreciate a realization, long-term marketization and foreign active and forced exchanges will certainly tear down the conceptual wall. North Koreans have very different perceptions and behaviors than they did 10 years ago. The feeling is more or less like that of President Bush Sr. when he first came to China – they started wearing jeans and dancing disco.
Before I came to North Korea, there was a lot of discouragement from friends and family. In order not to let my mother worry, I even just said I would stroll around Dandong. It was also a coincidence. The tour was scheduled for late April. This is probably the most tense time on the Korean Peninsula since Kim Jong-un became leader. since mid-April, the movement of a U.S. aircraft carrier and the activities at North Korea’s Punggye-ri nuclear test site have continued to rattle the nerves of outsiders. As originally planned, North Korea will hold its sixth military parade under Kim Jong-un on April 25, Military Day, which we had the possibility of visiting. In the contemporary world, few countries have such a high frequency of military parades as North Korea. Frequent parades signify the level of importance North Korea attaches to war preparations and war mobilization. This is largely how the outside world imagines the DPRK. On the road, we naturally joked about what to do in case of a war, and whether we would be like those foreign journalists waiting anxiously at the Pyongyang airport half a month ago for their return flight to be postponed indefinitely.
The first stop in North Korea was in Sinuiju. We were subjected to all kinds of searches in the train. Cell phones, cameras, and computers can be brought in. But to be on the safe side, I deleted potentially sensitive photos from my cell phone and left my computer in the country.Three years ago, I had been to the Rason Special Zone in North Korea. The customs officers took my cell phone and went through the photos one by one, which is still fresh in my mind. But this time it seemed to go much smoother.
On April 24, we arrived in Pyongyang. Paying attention to the buildings in the surrounding neighborhoods, it was just as I’d had the pre-existing impression that this was still a street scene with a military aesthetic, clean and tidy, with neat flowers but definitely no clothes hanging out to dry on the open balconies of the buildings. People dressed in black and gray tones, and women’s individuality was still largely displayed by the style of their high heels, handbags, and hairbrushes.
One of the discoveries that surprised me was that solar panels could often be seen next to the windowsills of the buildings, seemingly hinting at the lack of electricity supply in Pyongyang. However, while eating at the hotel’s top-floor restaurant that night, I realized that the lack of electricity was not as serious as I had previously thought.
Looking out the window at night from the upper floors of the hotel, there was not a complete blackout, although a closer look also revealed that the stream of light outside was noticeably dimmer. There were many tall buildings, and most of the windows in each building were permeated with light. The brightest spot was the area of Mansudai, especially the complex of buildings on Kurata Street. In fact, Kurata Street was the place I was most looking forward to in this schedule. It looks a lot like the buildings of Beijing’s SOHO construction company, consisting of rows of floor-to-ceiling windows and white walls that make up the facade, stylish and avant-garde, and would be a symbol of chic in any city in any country. In Rason Special Zone, a border city of North Korea, the photo studio there uses Kurata Street as a backdrop for taking pictures. It can be seen that foreign residents of the DPRK also regard it as a symbol of the civilized good life in the capital city.
That night, the content of the hotel TV channels struck me as somewhat absurd, with the Overseas English Channel and Phoenix TV discussing the dangerous situation on the Korean Peninsula. And one North Korean TV station, by 9 p.m., suddenly showed Let’s Study English, followed by a documentary with English subtitles in which a fish spits a water gun upward in the water, knocking bugs off leaves and eating them. The voice over sounded a lot like the old grandpa’s voice that often appears in BBC documentaries.
The next day, April 25, we went to the globally recognized Kim Il Sung Square. It was surprisingly empty, with no large gatherings or celebrations in sight. Looking at the site, the square is not very large, much smaller than the squares in China, and it doesn’t even look like it ranks well in Pyongyang. War Victory Memorial and the Sun Palace square is much larger than it. The ground of the square is marked with white dots every 1 meter to ensure that formations and performances are neatly organized.
The highway station next to the square was decorated with posters showing urban life in Pyongyang, with Kurata Street as a backdrop. Across the river from them, in the Riverside Sports Park, people were playing volleyball, cheering for each ball to be won or lost.
From time to time, middle-aged women in brightly colored traditional dresses cross the square, their destination being the Tower of the Main Idea or some other monumental building. There are wide plazas next to these buildings for hundreds of people to dance. These women and the actors who performed a comedy about sister-in-laws in front of the Mangyongdae amusement park were responsible for almost all of Pyongyang’s commemorative performances in public places on this day. And it is clear that Pyongyang’s citizens are much more interested in comedy because that is the only place where there are crowds of onlookers.
Looking around Pyongyang from the top of the Juche Idea Tower is exhilarating. The Juche Idea Tower is on the opposite bank of the Cosmos River from the square, and the line connecting the two forms the central axis of Pyongyang. There is an observation deck 150 meters above the top of the tower. Looking down from above, downtown Pyongyang is full of high-rise buildings, and the scale of the city looks not much smaller than Seoul to the south, which is more than enough to hold tens of millions of people. But our guide told us there are only about 3 million people here.
That afternoon, we ran to a theater to see a North Korean acrobatic show. Honestly, I was shocked when I entered the theater. The theater was filled with rows and rows of North Korean People’s Army soldiers. Some were in camouflage, some in green uniforms, and some in blue navy suits. The theater was filled with a smell that reminded me of my military training years in college more than ten years ago. The soldiers in the row in front of me had their hats on their laps, and one had a few cookies in it.
North Korea’s acrobatic performances are said to be among the top in the world, having won the world championship in Morocco in industry competitions. Still, for me, acrobatics itself is quite a brutal affair that challenges and squeezes the individual body. During the show, the performers fly around high in the air, showing the limits of what the human body can reach. Basically every 10 to 20 seconds, the fighters applauded the actors. There was a show that included swings, springboards, and bars. One of the actors was female, young, pretty and, most importantly, the dress was surprisingly super short.
Aside from some super thrilling shows, there was an interesting one about how an ordinary North Korean resident taunts and scares drunken American soldiers during the Korean War. The performance of the American soldiers reminded me of those old movies I saw in China when I was a kid, always bad and stupid and ugly. Naturally, the soldiers laughed and applauded.
The feeling of retiring with the KPA soldiers was honestly a bit hard to bear. The soldiers were probably under 20 years old by the looks of their faces, and were generally undersized, most likely as a result of the hard marching in the 1990s. As we were leaving in our vehicles, some of the soldiers took pictures of us in the background. We waved and smiled at each other as we left. At that moment, I thought both the war and the ideology seemed a bit absurd.
The two things that changed my perception of the whole trip were the barbecue in the hills outside Pyongyang. The first was a barbecue on a hill on the outskirts of Pyongyang, where Pyongyang citizens were drinking and dancing in time for a picnic. I ran over to an older man who held up a paper cup made of a half-empty mineral water bottle to me, and I took a sip of rice wine. When we got to the hillside, the dancing locals pulled us along, and the rhythm sounded like disco. An older man, probably quite drunk, came over and said in half-baked Chinese, “Good China, good North Korea, China, North Korea, friends. We and the North Koreans were taking pictures of each other with our cell phones, and a guy in a military uniform came up to stop us, but it seemed like not many people were listening to him.
Honestly, I had previously heard too many stories about not being allowed to take pictures and not being able to communicate. Basically, leaving the hotel by yourself to go out for a walk in Pyongyang was something you could come back and brag about. So, such open communication was unthinkable.
The second thing that amazed me was the night tour of Future Scientist Street, also known as Pyongyang’s Zhongguancun. The street is lit up with LED billboards flashing in front of stores. It is home to Pyongyang’s first pizzeria, which is said to be authentic but not very good. The residential buildings on the main street are said to have been built for scientists, which means that the city’s spaces are planned and designed according to occupation and function, much in the flavor of the Corbusier era. This design thinking doesn’t take into account how a specific individual chooses to live in their environment.
The main street was wide, maybe 120 meters, behind two-way lanes with sidewalks and bike lanes planned. We were surprised to see a man walking with his pet dog.
On one side of the road there was a big screen playing a TV program similar to a comedy show. Across the street, ordinary residents gather in front of the restaurant, and a quick glance at the dress code makes it easy to realize that it’s a wedding venue. The street-side bus runs until 9:30, after which locals can take cabs starting at 2 dollars. This starting price is comparable to Beijing.
The gap between this street and the streets of other cities in North Korea is at least 30 years. I wonder what foreigners who come to Pyongyang, a big city, will feel.
The price level in Pyongyang is confusing. We later went to the shopping malls and supermarkets in Pyongyang and the prices were about the same as in the capital cities of the Northeast. Of course 90% of the goods are imported, mainly from China, but also from Japan. I bought NutriQuick and a bottle of what looked like a local Coke, and when I tasted it, the strong flavor of the spice seemed to take me back to my childhood.
I very much doubt that the future Scientist Street was built as a national effort, just like Kurata Street and the newly built Dawn Street, with the residents of the capital Pyongyang as the beneficiaries, but what about the North Koreans outside of Pyongyang is unknown.
Why has Pyongyang become so open? Even if it’s relative, it’s beyond the established imagination of the outside world. I think it has a lot to do with the changes in North Korea’s economy and society a few years ago. In fact, North Korea’s socialist economic system was on the verge of collapse in the 1990s, and factories couldn’t open without raw materials and energy. Food production was insufficient and the rationing system could not guarantee supplies. The black market became a source of sustenance and even income for the vast majority of North Korea’s population. Under Kim Jong-il, the powers that be embraced the market to a limited extent, but also cracked down on it. Until currency reform failed in 2009, the path of suppression was no longer viable.
At the same time, power has been heavily infiltrated by the market. There is every indication that before 2011, North Korea was already far more market-oriented than the outside world perceived it to be, with bicycles imported from Dandong, for example, being trafficked to the east coast of the country within a month. At the end of Kim Jong-il’s reign, trade with China jumped, and the dynamism of a limited market was activated. Behind Pyongyang’s skyscrapers in recent years, there has been a steady flow of blood from the market and foreign trade.
Beyond these sights, there is a change of mindset in North Korea. On this trip, we visited various monumental buildings, bowed under the gaze of our guide, and “felt” the suffering of the Korean people during the war. But I also sensed another consensus: openness and the search for a better life. Every morning, I could see people walking on the streets, reading books and walking at the same time. Some of them walk as fast as the white-collar workers in Central, Hong Kong.
The tour guide describes along the way that they believe that peace comes at the bayonet, but her brown and red leather bag points to the desire for a better life. For Pyongyang’s power elites, they must embrace society’s desire to earn money and live more affluently, but at the same time cement the community through various grand narratives, memorial buildings, and memories of the war. Whether this task will be accomplished we do not know, and where North Korea will go from here is unknown. However, one thing is certain: the DPRK of today is completely different from the DPRK of the 1990s during the March of Suffering, and even different from the DPRK of the pre-2010 period. When we imagine and think about North Korea, we can no longer limit ourselves to the stories in We Are the Happiest.
The time has come for our understanding of North Korea to be updated.
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