DPRK - Part II

Our lunch on the Kaesong tour included many separate dishes, as you can see. It was mostly vegetables and rice, which I found disappointing at first considering how much we'd paid for the tour. Almost immediately after that thought crossed my mind though, I felt pretty guilty; I'm sure there are many North Koreans who would have been thrilled to eat that meal. I had also felt a bit guilty earlier in the day when our tour guide told us that the average N. Korean earns $60/month, much less than I had paid to take this one-day tour to Kaesong. Living in Armenia and traveling in developing nations has certainly opened my eyes to the disparity of wealth in the world and taught me to be much more appreciative of my material blessings, but soon after a trip ends and I'm back into my comfortable routine, I start to take them for granted again. Those pangs of guilt in North Korea made me think that there's definitely truth in that old saying "out of sight, out of mind."

Outside the restaurant we were able to wander around a bit; not too far, of course, but we did get a glimpse of the city. Note the traffic cop standing in the middle of the intersection, despite the complete lack of traffic. All the people on the near side of him in the photo were part of our group. He looked and acted like a traffic officer, but perhaps he's actually more of a border guard whose role is to be sure that tourists and locals do not cross into the same territory at any given time?


After lunch we visited Koryo scholar Jung Mong-ju's home-turned lecture hall. It was literally around the corner from the restaurant, but we weren't allowed to walk to it. To make absolutely certain that there would be no interaction between us and the citizens of Kaesong, we had to board our buses for the short journey. Apparently sites in the city have different opening hours for outside tourists and for locals, or maybe the locals don't go to them at all. I don't know. In the morning we'd also wondered how they manage to keep locals away from the waterfall while tourists are present, but as it was out in the country and the average North Korean doesn't have a car, I suppose it wouldn't be easy to get there. You could bike to it maybe, but then presumably you'd have to somehow sneak past all of those soldiers placed strategically along the way.

From the lecture hall, we boarded the buses again for a trip across town to a stone bridge where that same scholar was assassinated by the son of the Choseon Dynasty founder in 1392; Jung Mong-ju was "the last loyal retainer of the Koryo Dynasty," whatever that means. Basically a loyal follower of the king, I guess?

The view from the bus windows as we drove through town was actually the most interesting part of the day for me. It seemed like that was our only glimpse into anything close to the "real" North Korea. People were going about their daily business, most of them looking surprisingly content: young women walking arm in arm, boys playing soccer and volleyball, girls in school uniforms riding their bikes, kids splashing in a small stream. We also saw elderly citizens watching from their apartment windows as our bus caravan passed by, and when I saw them, I felt guilty again. Honestly, it felt a bit as if we had come to watch animals in a zoo, except that these "caged" people are of course more capable than lions or zebras of analyzing the outsiders that have come to visit. I wondered if they wonder why it is that we can come to Kaesong, but they can never cross the border, and actually probably can't even visit the capital city in their own country. I wondered if they notice that foreign tourists are colorfully, comfortably, diversely dressed, and that we all carry digital cameras (no cell phones or i-pods, though; those had to be left behind in the South). I wondered if they can even imagine what it's like to be able to read any newspaper you'd like or to worship in any place you choose or to freely discuss any thoughts you have about politics. I wondered if they really believe all the propaganda their government feeds them, and whether they're told anything about the tourists that visit Kaesong. Maybe that we come as actors that try to make the South and its Western allies look rich, but that we are actually miserable in our capitalistic societies, slaves to material possessions? Ok, there may be a grain of truth in that last bit, but you get my point.

Our final stop was the Koryo Museum, a collection of Koryo Dynasty relics housed in a former university. Our guides claimed it was the oldest university in the world, but an Italian on the bus begged to differ with that. The items on display were not particularly impressive, but the setting was beautiful - much more peaceful and colorful than the way I'd always imagined North Korea to be. I was also struck by the similarity of the buildings with so many that I've seen in South Korea - again, a reminder that though I think of them as so absolutely separate, the two nations have centuries of shared history.




Before we could cross back into the South, all of our cameras were inspected. I was allowed to keep all of my photos, but the guard who checked my friend Anna's camera zoomed in on one photo that apparently had a tiny soldier in the background. He deleted it.

I experienced an interesting mix of emotions as we crossed the border on our way home. I hadn't really been worried that anything would go wrong, so I was surprised to feel a sense of relief. Mostly though, I felt sad. In a way it was good to have seen the people in Kaesong living such normal lives - at least on the surface. But how normal can life really be when your freedoms are so curtailed?

As I write this now, months after returning from Kaesong, I'm struck again by how quickly I forget. I live less than 50 miles from the border, and yet I rarely think about the people on the other side. How is it that's what out of sight is also so easily put out of mind?