Kaesong, North Korea
When I told my coworkers that this weekend I went to North Korea, they laughed at me and only said it was impossible. I guess by some standards it really is,... long wait at the border for the North to be "ready", $250 for a day trip, weeks of planning so your paperwork is approved beforehand. And once you are there, you almost aren't because what you see seems to be created and edited like Disney Land (where underground tunnels take away the trash so park visitors never have to see it) or the movie Truman Show (where there never is a sad moment in life).
Walking the streets of Kaesong, North Korea, women in sparkling blouses and pleated skirts, hair perfect, walk gently down the streets to nowhere. Many people have bicycles which some ride, though most walk, all circa 1970 one-speed style. There are no old people, no screaming kids, or infants, no handicapped or infirm or weak or sad. Everone walks on the sidewalk though there are no cars. Everone seems to have a place to go, though there are no stores to buy things and no businesses for them to be going to work in. They all wait at the curb for the light to change so they can cross, but there are no lights to change and no traffic to wait for, but they do wait, and all cross together at crosswalks.
In the countryside villages, a soldier stands on each spur road to protect the citizens from our heavy traffic (6 busses of tourists with three official escort cars). No one else is seen, except in far off fields where a temporary parking lots for bicycles are improvised next to the fields of corn where workers can be seen. The houses seem so nice, with traditional Korean-style roofs, but no pictures are allowed. We might be able to figure out how many families live in each (three per house we are told). There are a few white goats down by the river. There are two stray dogs in dry corn patches. There are miles of potato fields and plenty of propaganda to convice all that potatoes are great. Like rice.
A North Korean madatory guide, complete with the great Leader's face pinned to his shirt, drifts off to sleep next to me. He is too shy to speak with me except to ask my name. I hold back the urge to sneak pictures, not because of the consequences I will face, but that others might.
But the land, minus the barren clear-cut hillsides and thirsy crops, is beautiful. The sky free of pollution, the rivers clear, the streets, wide though empty, free of the trash that litters the South. And it is so quiet, often the only sounds being the communist music playing in buildings and through outdoor speakers in parking lots.
Children poke their heads out of their windows and wave. In another building a choir is practicing. We wave from the busses and a girl sticks her tounge out at me with an air of knowing authority. Others smile, others look away.
But by far the most beautiful thing to be seen is the visitors from the South sitting at the same shaded table sharing a few words with the guides from the North. Our young South Korean guides, many of them women, join in with the all male Northern guides. They see each other every day. They are friends and it shows in their conversations and smiles and even flirting. Romeo and Juliet had nothing on these folks.
So, even though my money will go to buy bullets, not rice, being there helps make it one step closer to an open understaning between two countries (or is it one?), still officially at war.
posted by Karen at
3:33 AM
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