North Korea has few cars, plenty of slogans and soldiers
SAMIL-PO, North Korea (AP) – A lone child clutched an old, unpolished trumpet to his chest. Cheeks ruddy from sunburn, he gazed across the thick blanket of snow covering the field he must traverse to school. Behind him, smoke rose from a cluster of identical houses, flimsy low-slung structures of concrete blocks and gray tiles that blended in with the gray winter landscape. From his vantage point on a stream bank, a soldier in an olive-drab uniform – and with “a hawk’s eyes,” as one South Korean tour guide put it – stood watch over the village.
Villagers walking on a road avoided looking at the South Korean tourists riding in heated buses.
One South Korean tourist kept shouting, “We love you!” A few Northern women waved back, breaking into brief smiles. Further up the road, some Northerners dropped their bags and hid behind pine trees until the alien vehicles had passed.
“This is like Korean War days, when we ran for cover from air raids,” Oh Sung-young, a Southern tourist in her 70s, whispered at the surreal scene.
Diamond Mountain tours – run by the Hyundai conglomerate under the auspices of the South Korean government, which hopes to encourage rapprochement, and the North Korean regime, which needs hard currency – traverse routes fenced off with barbed wire and guarded by angry-looking communist soldiers.
Heading to the scenic Samil-po coastal lake, a convoy of tourist buses passed several North Korean villages, where new cinderblock walls had been erected to block the view from outside gawkers.
Still, there were ample opportunities to glimpse what the world’s most isolated, totalitarian country was like in this winter of unusually heavy snowfall:
A country in the cold
“Our country is a little short on energy,” a communist minder acknowledged.
That means you have to eat your $25 dinner wearing your overcoat on the unheated floor, watching your breath pierce the cold.
The Diamond Mountain Restaurant was unlighted when buses carrying South Korean tourists pulled up for dinner. The lights went on only after a clerk, peeking through curtains, saw the guests had arrived. Outside, the temperature was 14 degrees.
The tourists ate fish, rice and clam soup, pork and cold potato noodles – a luxury in this impoverished country. Clerks accepted only U.S. dollars.
A country of slogans
“Let’s live according to our own way!”
The slogan barked from an arch over a road, an anachronistic and paradoxical cry that defied reality in a country where people die of hunger. Yet the Stalinist regime grimly hangs onto “juche,” it’s philosophy of self-reliance.
Red-and-white slogans were everywhere, at the entrance of a village, on the wall of the only barbershop, where everyone gets a free haircut, on the gates of schools and military units, on a navy boat. They espoused loyalty to a regime built on a personality cult.
A country on foot
Early morning frost covered roadside trees like cherry blossoms. Bundled up villagers waited as the driver looked under the hood of an old truck that refused to move. A cow stood beside a cart with wooden wheels.
In North Korea, where fuel is short and cars are scarce, everyone walks.
Bicycles are luxuries and have license plates – in line with communist authorities’ tight control over the population’s movements.
Villagers walked in quick steps along a snow-swept road that stretched miles ahead. All carried knapsacks on their backs, military-style. Parents stopped, calling to children to run and catch up.
The grim scene prompted a South Korean tourist to joke: “If you walk like that, you don’t have to diet.”
A COUNTRY OF SOLDIERS
“Our military is the thorn stuck in the United States’ eye,” Chun Kyong Ok, a communist minder, said proudly.
It was clear that soldiers were the pride of North Korea. They wore fur hats, boots and greatcoats, and swaggered. At the entrance of every village, a soldier checked traffic. Military olive is the favorite school uniform color for children, said South Korean tour guide Lee Yon-sook.
One large sign said, “Military and civilians are one and the same.”
Kim Jong Il rules his country as chairman of the National Defense Commission, which oversees the North’s 1.1 million regular army and several millions of reserve forces in a country of 22 million people.
Diamond Mountain is close to the border with South Korea. Shore guns protruded from coastal cliffs. Roads were guarded by tank-traps. At a radar base surrounded by a bamboo grove, a rusty antenna spun.
“In the end, it’s the military that you can depend on. It’s our lifeline,” Chun said.