All Monsters Must Die (3 page)

AT FIRST GLANCE,
everything in the Yanggakdo Hotel is as it is in Delisle's graphic novel: the giant sea turtle lying as if in a coma within the small, sparse aquarium just inside the entrance; the gift shop behind the elevators with its limited selection, and next to it the pictures of Kim Jong-il who, according to the plaque beneath, provides “on-the-spot guidance” around the country; the restaurants on the ground floor, which are still called Restaurant No. 1, Restaurant No. 2, and Restaurant No. 3.

One difference is the jostling crowd in the spacious lobby; the hotel was more desolate when Delisle spent time here. The collected mass is connected to North Korea's sixtieth anniversary celebrations. The games, the parades, and all the other manifestations of celebration will be more intensive than usual.

Erik Cornell, Sweden's first chargé d'affaires in Pyongyang, mentions in his book
North Korea under Communism: Report of an Envoy to Paradise
that in the 1970s, just thirteen or fourteen Western adults were living in Pyongyang. Today, that group amounts to about one hundred residents. Since Cornell published his book, tourism has increased. A few thousand Western tourists visit North Korea every year, whereas around 7 million tourists will visit South Korea this year.

It's hard to say how many Chinese, Japanese, and South Koreans visit the country. During the few years of détente between South and North Korea (from approximately 2002 to 2008), South Korean visitors flooded into special, enclosed tourist areas. But in the past years the influx has been stemmed. Average North Koreans, of course, don't have the option of leaving the country.

THE HOTEL ROOM
looks like any other hotel room. We find ourselves high up in the building. We pull back the curtains and open the window. The sun is setting, dyeing the sky yellow. The smoke from the chimneys of the distant factories forms a veil with a red, glowing fringe where it meets the sun. As night falls, the skyscrapers on the other side of the river turn blue.

After unpacking we run into Elias, the North Korea enthusiast, in the elevator. He is bursting with curiosity and wants to investigate everything: the hotel, the city, and the people who live here. He has already managed to wander around the island, but when he reached the bridge leading off it he was immediately stopped. Now he's riding the elevator, trying to gain access to each floor. On some, he's sent away.

In the dining room, we get to talking with an American who married into a Japanese brewing family. He has a generic appearance and a perfect East Coast smile, like a model in a Gant ad. As an American, he's allowed to stay in North Korea for just four days. So he can't join us on the tour around the country, and has to stick to the sights in Pyongyang. He tells us about the North Korean beer Taedong, which takes its name from the mighty river that runs through Pyongyang. It tastes like a real British ale should — and for good reason. In 2000, Kim Jong-il bought an entire brewery in Trowbridge, England. As soon as the British owner was provided with a guarantee that the brewery wouldn't be used to create biological weapons, the sale was completed. The brewery was dismantled, shipped to North Korea, and put back together. Since then, the supply of beer in North Korea has been secured.

The North Korean Taepodong missiles are often mistakenly called “Taedong missiles.” Beer bottles and missiles, the shapes are indeed similar. In an ad on Korean Central Television (
KCTV
) — the North Korean state television — a tasting is conducted by laboratory personnel. The bottles float around in space and columns of foam shoot up like missiles.

After a few Taedongs, the American confides in us about his life in Japan. His stepfather has fully accepted him — he's next in line to take over the brewery — but there's one problem.

“Here's the truth,” he says. “I don't have a single Japanese friend.” He swallows a sip of beer with a quick grimace and looks around. He realizes the room has fallen silent. He quickly reinstates his smile and suggests that we continue talking in the panorama bar.

When we reach the circular restaurant, which is on the forty-seventh floor of the hotel, the American immediately starts flirting with the waitresses. They smile indulgently. The restaurant is supposed to rotate, but you don't notice. Someone places a coin on the floor and, yes, after a while we can see that the coin is farther away.

Twilight has fallen quickly. Now it's pitch dark. When we look out the window, we don't see a panoramic view. The lights across town are shut off, and the odd single point of light doesn't give the impression that Pyongyang is a big city. It is unknown how many people actually live here, but soon there'll be a census. At last count, there were 2.7 million inhabitants.

DAY 2

Can You Imagine?

THE WINDOWS IN
our hotel room are wide open. We turned off the air conditioner overnight and let the humidity flood in. Pyongyang is cloaked in a dense fog. We can hear voices on loudspeakers in the distance. We stand by the windows, and after a while we start to make out indeterminate movements on the boulevard on the other side of the Taedong River. Details become discernible: we see hundreds of tanks slowly moving forward in a line like a parade of woodlice, while a stream of people, many holding red flags, heads in the opposite direction. The people hurry along, the voices on the loudspeakers urging them on between interludes of revolutionary music.

WE EAT BREAKFAST
in Restaurant No. 1. Two omelette chefs crowned with exaggeratedly tall toques have their own table at the far end of the room. Deeply focused, they beat the eggs with slim wooden spoons. There's also a buffet displaying everything from continental breakfast to kimchi. The graphic novelist Guy Delisle had plenty of time to ponder at breakfast. He concluded that the toothpicks on the table must have been hand-carved. We don't see any of these toothpicks, but we do enjoy the omelettes. They are outstanding.

The American turns up, but avoids making eye contact. He sits at another table.

THE BUS TAKES
us through the city, where masses of people are performing tasks early this Sunday morning. One woman squats down and scrubs the cobblestones on a traffic island with a root brush and water. Other people are plucking something from the grass-covered viaducts. Members of the Korean Youth Corps wear red kerchiefs and walk in a row, and other groups move in unison too. Every other person seems to be wearing a uniform, and not only the brown Home Guard uniform. In addition to the police, the military police, and the traffic police, even those who maintain the roads wear uniforms.

The roads are wide but there are few bicycles and cars. We notice that some of the cars are Volvo 144s. They have driven here for nearly forty years. They were shipped from Sweden in 1973 together with drilling equipment from Atlas Copco. The North Koreans didn't bother paying the $503,743,731 bill for the drills, the 600 cars, and a number of other things. The Swedish Export Credit Corporation hasn't given up hope yet; they've come up with a payment plan. If they make their half-yearly payments, the North Korean government will have paid them back by 2019. But why should North Korea repay the money to Sweden? They've had gigantic debts since the start of the 1970s, when they frantically bought goods from Europe and Japan. When foreign businessmen and diplomats asked when these bills would be paid, they were met with blank looks: shouldn't the rest of the world be grateful to do business with North Korea?

WE PASS A
pyramid-like structure in the distance and are amazed at its enormous size. At 371 metres tall, with 101 floors above ground and 4 below, the Ryugyong Hotel is only ten metres shorter than the Empire State Building. Construction began in 1987 and was halted in 1992. Since then the building has been abandoned, like an epic monument to failure. Our guide Mr. Song says its slogan was: “If a newborn checks into the hotel with the intention of spending one night in each room, that person will be twenty-seven years old by the time they check out.” On second thought, this seems like an unlikely slogan.

Mr. Song also tells us that an Egyptian telephone company has invested money in the hotel, and it is hoped that renovations will be completed by the centenary of Kim Il-sung's birth in 2012.
*
In the past, Ryugyong Hotel was often Photoshopped out of official pictures of Pyongyang, but the authorities have since decided that it does indeed exist, and we can attest to the fact that the building's sheer size asserts its existence with tectonic force. The North Korean press has already started setting the tone for the reopening, calling the hotel “a phoenix ceaselessly reaching for the sky.”

At once massive and ethereal, the hotel rises up and towers over all the other buildings. It inspires fantasies, new terms, and virtual representations around the world. The Italian architect Stefano Boeri once said that the design had “forced it to reveal its icy nature, its irresistible fascination as a fragile alien meteorite.” Ryugyong Hotel is, according to Boeri, “the only built piece of science fiction in the contemporary world.” Other epithets are just as fantastic: the “white elephant,” the “Hotel of Doom,” the “ghost hotel,” and the “Death Star.”

THE BUS DRIVES
us back to the airport. It's a bit disappointing to be leaving Pyongyang so soon after we've arrived, but according to the itinerary we're supposed to fly to Chongjin in North Hamgyong Province to experience the coastal landscape near the Russian border.

The airport is completely deserted. The arrival and departure screens don't display any destinations; they are blank. Apparently, we're the only people flying out of Pyongyang today. Average North Koreans aren't allowed to travel domestically without special dispensation. And if they are given permission, then their mode of transport is a bus or train. That's why there are no regularly scheduled domestic flights in the country.

A fog hangs over the airport. The Air Koryo planes are lined up in a row on the endless runway that disappears into the haze. A Russian Antonov from the 1950s has taxied out: this is our plane.

Climbing the stairs into the aircraft, most of us look like regular tourists, wearing T-shirts and shorts and holding cameras. Bruno, the Swiss man, is as big as a house. When he speaks, he sounds like Arnold Schwarzenegger. But his isn't a gym-built body, we imagine; it's an Alpine body shaped by butter, fresh air, and mountain treks. The blond Swedish fighter pilot follows Bruno. At almost six feet, five inches tall, he towers over the rest of us. But compared to Bruno, he looks small.

Ari, the young Dutch
KLM
employee with a flat cap and a drowsy look, has a more sophisticated camera than the rest of us. He uses different lenses and is always looking for fresh angles. It was clear from the moment we landed that this group trip would include an inferno of photography. However, Mr. Song has given us strict instructions:
Photography is only permitted of approved subject matter. Do not photograph people and absolutely do not photograph military personnel. In the countryside you basically can't take a picture of anything.
Still, the group is not discouraged and we are happily taking pictures of each other. As we climb aboard, flashbulbs pop as if we were on the red carpet.

* * *

THROUGH THE WINDOW
of the plane, the North Korean landscape seems frighteningly inaccessible: barren, rippling mountains the colour of granite; clusters of brown barracks forming villages and compounds. Other images are burned in the mind's eye — satellite pictures, scenes from Google Earth, photographs from the Cold War of parachuting spies landing on the ground, never to return. The aircraft's windshield is like a monitor. The sound of the propellers intensifies this notion. You could disappear in this landscape.

But when we alight at the military airport in Orang, south of Chongjin, a pleasant, balmy wind is coursing gently over the runway. Built by the Imperial Japanese Army, the airbase is hemmed in by green fields that stretch as far as the eye can see. In the distance, we see people following paths over the terrain.

Sacks of rice and crates of beer are carried from the plane. Two small buses await us; the drivers are in the process of swabbing up fish waste in one of them. As soon as we have disembarked, Elias bends down and presses his hand to the ground. He then whips out his notebook, jots something down, and moves restlessly about on the runway.

Mr. Song is watching him with a troubled gaze. Elias doesn't know which way to turn. Everything — every bush and every person — is interesting. Everything demands his attention at once. We understand. What we're seeing has been a restricted zone for so long that the country is like a social biosphere with its own conditions for life. The idea of North Korea as a living laboratory — especially when compared to South Korea, its “twin,” separated at birth — is shared by many political researchers, economists, and sociologists. But it has been impossible to conduct any studies here.

THE NEAREST CITY,
Chongjin, is Shin Sang-ok's birthplace. Madame's husband, the famous film director, grew up here in the 1930s, when there wasn't a North or a South Korea. From 1910 until 1945, Korea was a Japanese colony. It was an unrelenting occupation, in which every tactic was used to Japanify the country.

Shin travelled to Tokyo when he was a teenager to attend art school. The country was first divided after the Second World War. He was nineteen when the Japanese were forced to leave Korea. He then returned to the South to work as a scenographer on Choi In-kyu's
Long Live Freedom
, the first Korean film made after independence. During the occupation Choi had made films that celebrated the colonial power, but the first film he made once the oppressors retreated was an epic about the resistance movement.

Chongjin today is a stricken place. What was once a small fishing village became an industrial port city during the Japanese occupation, when a giant steelworks was erected in the area. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the factories have been in poor condition and are poisoning the city air. Some of the buildings have been abandoned and are no more than giant, dilapidated monuments of rust. In 1997 Tun Myat, one of the first senior
UN
officials to visit Chongjin, described the place as a “forest of scrap metal,” unique in its decay.

From 1995 to 1998, Chongjin was hit hard by the country's great famine. During the “Arduous March,” as the catastrophe was dubbed by officials, the region suffered one of the highest death tolls in the country. In
Nothing to Envy
, author Barbara Demick states that the population in Chongjin — which in the 1970s was North Korea's second-biggest city after Pyongyang — had nearly halved after the famine. This drop in the region's population was not only the result of severe malnourishment, but also of an organized relocation of residents to other areas of the country.

WE LEAVE THE
airport through an archway that bears a sign saying:
LET US FIGHT TO THE DEATH FOR KIM
JONG-IL
. Outside we see two gaunt boys squatting at the side of the road. They're picking something out of the grass and putting it into plastic bags.

The fish smell has seeped into the floor of the bus. The odour ripens in the warmth and will linger for hours. Along the dusty gravel roads, people are sweeping, creating small swirls of yellow clouds that are illuminated by the sun. We pass rice paddies and salt pools right next to the sea. Large letters spelling out a Kim Il-sung quote (
KOREA IS THE BEST COUNTRY
) and a nationalistic invocation (
PROCEED JOYFULLY IN SPITE OF HARDSHIP
) have been placed in the fields.

It's going to be a long trip on this bumpy road. Oksana, the Ukrainian woman, talks uninterrupted for two hours about life at the South Korean company where she works. We nod dutifully, though we'd prefer to take in the landscape. In certain places along the coast, electric fences have been erected on foundations in the water. We see villages in the distance, poor but not destitute. People walk along roads that aren't a far cry from those built in pre-industrial Europe. Even bicycles aren't a given. We pass the odd truck with its bed full of people, the occasional military vehicle, and now and then an ox-drawn cart. Mr. Song says we're not allowed to take pictures of anything here.

Toward the afternoon, as the road starts to climb, we are allowed to take our cameras out. The mountains and the pine forests remind us of Chinese landscape paintings. As we drive on, we see a number of people gathered by a stream in a small ravine. Two women are dancing on a large boulder. It's almost too idyllic. Have they been placed here on this heavily regulated route as a folkloric feature? Or are we being far too wary of falling into the propaganda trap?

In
Illusive Utopia,
the scholar Kim Suk-young recounts the story of a U.S. statesman who was studying Pyongyang's street life from his hotel window. The American realized that the same people kept coming out of the subway station outside his hotel, and he came to the conclusion that they were actors, hired by the state, who somewhere had a costume repository where they traded overcoats, bags, and umbrellas with each other. All in order to convincingly play commuters at a subway station that might even be defunct.

Defectors have spoken of actors who appear on the streets where foreign dignitaries are driven. Military personnel dress up in civilian clothes to play pedestrians, drivers, and shoppers. On these streets, a thousand people can be assembled for a performance. Kim Suk-young describes North Korea as a theatrical nation, “directing its citizens as if they were actors playing stereotypical roles found in revolutionary operas.”

This artifice may recall a childhood fantasy that everything around you is an illusion; that the world is one big set-up, carefully engineered each day so that you'll be lulled into believing in the status quo; that all the strangers you meet are instructed not to let on about the set-up, and their nonchalance is an act in the same way that nearby neighbourhoods are no more than impermanent sets. Sometimes you try to expose the trick with a sudden turn of your head, hoping to catch a glimpse of the stagehands at the edge of the set. Sometimes when you go into town you stop on a dime, tear yourself from your parent's hand so you can rush back around the corner in hope of catching out the machinery in motion.

* * *

THE BUS HAS
taken us high up in the terrain. We have stopped to admire the notable cliff formations on Mount Chilbo. We are now very close to where a nuclear weapons test was carried out on October 9, 2006 — a fact that no one in the group mentions, if they happen to be aware of it. We are told that very few tourists visit here, only around thirty people per year.