Around the World in 80 Trains

by Monisha Rajesh

  The decision to go was not taken lightly: conscious of UN reports of human rights violations, famine and gulags, I’d given careful consideration to how wrong it would feel to top up the coffers of a dictator by visiting. But ultimately it boiled down to human curiosity. I had no interest in gathering stories to thwart dinner-party bores, or to brag on social media; nor did I harbour any secret desire to unfurl an anti-Kim banner from a hotel window or get myself arrested in order to sell my story. What I did yearn for, though, was the opportunity to visit and observe a relatively unknown country with some semblance of objectivity. Unapproved journalists are not allowed to enter and newspapers regularly preyed upon foolish couples and American students willing to ham up tales of their visit for a tidy fee, while most documentaries featured faces filled with terror to the soundtrack of Prokofiev’s ‘Dance of the Knights’.

  In our digital age, a tap of the fingertips can produce satellite images of almost anywhere on earth – and outside it. From a sofa in Suffolk you can look down on Moscow’s Kremlin, or dive off the Great Barrier Reef while wearing an Oculus Rift headset in Glasgow, but North Korea is one of the only countries in the world to remain watertight when it comes to allowing information in and out, so that testimonies from defectors are one of the only ways to gather reliable information about the so-called ‘hermit kingdom’. But even defectors are known to embellish their stories, which makes it impossible to definitively sift out fact from fiction.

  While North Korea spins stories, the Western media is just as guilty of indulging its own agenda, painting North Koreans as one-dimensional robots serving their great leader. I was under no illusion that ten days in North Korea would uncover anything more than a stage-managed performance, but I wanted a front-row seat at the show. The country had just lifted a four-month travel ban, imposed over fears of the Ebola virus, so now was as good a time to visit as any. And more than that, I was looking forward to seeing who else would be travelling there; what kind of person chose North Korea as a holiday destination?

  It did not take long to find out. From Vancouver we flew into Beijing and arrived at the tour company’s offices for a briefing, and to meet the other thirteen travellers signed up for the tour. This included Alice, an Australian mother who hadn’t told her family where she was going; Pyotr, a red-faced Russian who would repeatedly get us all into trouble; Alan, a tech consultant from Cheltenham; Victor, a Canadian retiree on his fourth visit; Satoshi, a Japanese businessman; Nick from Notting Hill; and Tommy and Anna, newly-weds on honeymoon. Leading our group into North Korea was Sarah, a lovely Londoner in her mid-twenties with shiny bobbed hair, high-top trainers and a bright smile that masked all manner of annoyances when it came to handling our group.

  Hand-painted propaganda posters brightened the walls of the office, which was stacked with North Korean memorabilia, ranging from books, DVDs and T-shirts, to paintings, badges and postcards showing stills from the popular film Comrade Kim Goes Flying – the story of a female coal miner who wants to become a trapeze artist. It had played at the Pyongyang International Film Festival and become a hit with North Koreans, so we were given a handful of the cards to offer as gifts to the guides when we arrived. Seated at a semicircle of school desks, I skimmed over Sarah’s handout. From what I’d read, phones, computers and Kindles had to be surrendered on arrival and photography was banned; wearing jeans was illegal and men with long hair would not be granted entry. But as Sarah talked us through the rules it transpired that this was all nonsense.

  ‘While a lot of what you’ve probably heard isn’t true, there are a few things that you need to be aware of,’ she said. ‘If you have a copy of a newspaper with Marshal Kim Jong Un on the front, please do not fold it down the middle of his face. Don’t deface it or scribble anything on him. Similarly, please don’t place cups or glasses on top of his face as it’s seen as really disrespectful.’

  Alice put up her hand. ‘Are we allowed to take photographs using proper cameras or just with smartphones?’

  ‘Cameras are fine, but please ask the guides first if you’re not sure. You’ll see quite quickly that local people don’t like having their photo taken, as they don’t know who you are and they don’t know what the picture is being used for, so it’s always better to check first. And remember, if you take any photos of statues of the Kims to make sure you include their whole body from head to toe. Don’t crop them at the shoulders or waist as it’s seen as decapitating the leaders, and the photos will be deleted by the guards who check phones and cameras when we leave.’

  Sarah went on to detail a number of items that were banned: books about North Korea and the current political situation, including guide books; American or South Korean flags or any clothing displaying them; literature from South Korea; and clothes with political slogans that officials would demand to have translated. Lastly, taking a Bible was vehemently discouraged. Proselytising in North Korea is a serious offence and showing a Bible to North Koreans or leaving one behind would probably result in detainment.

  In 2014, Jeffrey Fowle, a father of three from Ohio, was arrested for deliberately leaving a bilingual English-Korean Bible under a bin at the seamen’s club in Chongjin, and was imprisoned for six months. He claimed at the time that it had merely fallen out of his pocket, but later confessed that he had known exactly what he was doing. ‘I thought I could do a little evangelical work on the sly and left the Bible in the restroom,’ Fowle said in a Reuters interview. ‘Having seen the plight of the people, I knew about the severe Christian persecution. I wanted to help them.’ Fowle was one of a handful of Christian missionaries who had been detained in the recent past for trying to bring in religious texts in order to ‘save’ North Koreans who grow up believing in the supremacy of their founding father, Kim Il Sung. The previous year, another American tourist, Matthew Miller, had ripped up his visa at the airport in Pyongyang and sought asylum, admitting later that his main fear was that ‘they would not arrest me’ – so desperate was his desire to be detained so he could see North Korea ‘beyond the tourist trail’. Not long after our trip, an American student named Otto Warmbier travelled out with another company and was detained and sentenced to fifteen years’ hard labour after allegedly being caught on video attempting to steal a poster from behind the reception area of the Yanggakdo Hotel, a staff area that was strictly off-limits to guests. In a horrifying turn of events, Warmbier was released after seventeen months and returned to the US in a coma with a serious brain injury, and died within days. North Korea claimed he had contracted botulism after being given a sleeping pill, but American doctors denied that he had any signs of the toxin in his system. Soon after, the US State Department issued a ban on Americans travelling to the country.

  I glanced around the room hoping there were no Bible-bashers, sociopaths or Americans in our midst. I couldn’t help but marvel at the arrogance of those who had been detained, and with the exception of Warmbier, was unsympathetic towards their fate. Observing the regulations of any country is simply good manners: if you don’t feel you can comply or you disagree with the rules, then you need not go. But it’s reckless to visit, flout the laws, then plead forgiveness having jeopardised the safety of fellow travellers and also put the North Korean guides at risk, who are likely to be punished for not properly managing their group. Fortunately, the rest of our group looked like a fun bunch, indifferent towards wilful incarceration, and I was looking forward to undertaking what was geared up to be a trip of a lifetime.

  Having decided it was safest to leave behind my laptop, notebooks and Dictaphone, I had a last-minute panic with my Kindle. On it was a book on North Korea by a Los Angeles Times journalist, Barbara Demick, called Nothing to Envy. Compiled over seven years using the stories of six defectors, it was a fascinating piece of work, and the only real reading I had done in the hope of projecting as few preconceptions as possible. However, it was one of the main texts that customs officials would search for on arrival, and it refused to vanish from the Cloud despite
having been deleted. Giving up, I chucked the Kindle to one side and decided that time would be better spent keeping my eyes open rather than fixed on a book.

  Instead of taking the train into Pyongyang, we were booked – for the sake of ease – onto a ninety-minute flight from Beijing, much to Jem’s horror. Part of the reason that he had been so keen to join me on my travels was that he had a fear of flying and was relieved to be able to globetrot without the threat of going down in flames. As the engines roared and the plane tilted up, a cold wet palm would usually find my knee and squeeze for reassurance while he blinked his way through the trauma and ordered several Bloody Marys. Normally amused by this routine, I understood his concern. Two airlines operated between Beijing and Pyongyang: Air China and Air Koryo, the latter being ranked by Skytrax – the air-transport research company – as the worst in the world, although this was largely a publicity stunt for the company, based on little more than hearsay. Sanctions imposed by the US and EU prevented Air Koryo from buying airliners from either Boeing or Airbus, leaving them little choice but to use old Russian aircraft. In 2007, in an attempt to rebrand, Air Koryo had bought two relatively modern Tupolev Tu-204 aircraft but was still left holding a one-star rating for service.

  Jem was seated in the middle of the row with Pyotr, his stomach spilling over the armrest into his lap, while I had the luxury of the window seat from where I could gaze at the bends and twists of the Great Wall that embroidered the crags below. It did not take long for me to tire of this, when the flight attendants, in natty blue outfits and white gloves, handed out their glossy brochures to commemorate the ‘Seventieth Anniversary of the Founding of the Workers’ Party of Korea’. It was the most delicious propaganda, showing the three generations of Kims ‘acknowledging the enthusiastically cheering crowds’, ‘giving field guidance’ at the Chongjin lubricant-oil factory and meeting the women’s national football team, who were all in tears. Beneath each photo was the date: Juche 71 (1982), or Juche 58 (1969). The year of Kim Il Sung’s birth, 1912, was deemed Juche 1 and the North Korean calendar still counts the date this way.

  While I marvelled at the sheer size of Kim Jong Un, an old-fashioned folk tune started playing through the speakers and the screens overhead displayed footage from parades and concerts, including one given by the Moranbong Band – North Korea’s popular, short-skirted troupe of around twenty young women; they sang, played violins, cellos, keyboards and drums, and were supposed to have been handpicked by Kim, not only for their musical prowess, but for their modern look, which would appeal to North Korea’s youth. Halfway through the flight, there was a buzz of excitement at the arrival of the infamous Koryo burger. Phones were whipped out amid a lot of rubber-necking to see who was going to dare sample the food item that was rumoured to contain rat, dog, and anything in between. Wrapped in cling film and plopped straight onto the table, the cold burger was a sludge grey and garnished with what looked like a wet autumn leaf. I nudged mine away while Jem munched through his, which he remarked tasted much like his great-grandmother’s fishcakes.

  As the plane began to descend, I scoured the mountains below with a mix of nausea and excitement that we were about to enter the forbidden kingdom. Approaching the runway, the plane began to lurch so hard that Jem grappled for my hand and closed his eyes as we accelerated in to land with a slam. We shot down the runway and I glanced out of the window, catching sight of five men in uniform crouched in the long grass.

  ‘Did you see them?’ I whispered.

  ‘I did. What do you think they’re looking for?’

  ‘Maybe making sure no stowaways are going to drop out of the plane? Bit like the border at El Paso.’

  ‘Surely stowaways would want to escape North Korea, not sneak in,’ Jem whispered back.

  ‘True. Maybe they’re looking for foreign journalists or somet- hing?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

  We had barely touched the ground and paranoia had already kicked in. Having a quiet word with myself to treat the next ten days with an open mind, I pulled on my satchel and followed the group through to arrivals.

  Immigration was a pain-free, pleasant experience. Officials scanned each bag, writing down the names of our books, before sending us on our way. We were out so soon that I was able to slink off to nose around the arrivals area, while the rest of the group were held up with laptops, digital SLRs and iPads. Shiny and new, Sunan International Airport seemed outsized for one that linked to only four cities: Beijing, Shanghai, Shenyang and Vladivostok. After one lap around the building, I came across a photo gallery featuring missiles, military parades and Kim Jong Un, when a tiny caption caught my eye: ‘School Children in Pyongyang with Nothing to Envy’. Nothing to envy. Demick’s book came back to me and I realised how she had come about the title. Waving me over, Jem gestured that we were ready to leave now that our four North Korean guides had arrived to escort us.

  The guides worked for one of the state-owned tourism companies and were occasionally the children of diplomats, who spoke excellent English, and had often lived abroad for significant chunks of their youth. It was assumed that they were there to control – rather than host – tour groups, and while I didn’t doubt that the former was probably true, they certainly livened up the trip. Whether they were guides or minders, Mr Lee and Mr Pak were old hands who often worked with Sarah and greeted her like two big brothers. They were mentoring two new guides, Mr Song, a pale, nervous-looking man, and Miss Kim, a princess with a perm, wearing a white fur-trimmed jacket. She looked distinctly unimpressed by our group and was more interested in taking selfies, which she then whitened with a special app. Pyotr had managed to get lost between the exit and the coach, so once the rest of us were on board, Lee took the mic to kill time while Pak was dispatched to look for Pyotr:

  ‘ “Annyong hashimnikka!” This is a respectful way to say: “Hello, how are you?” in Korean.’ He paused and beamed at all of us. ‘We know that you are used to saying “North Korea”, but we do not believe in north and south,’ he said. ‘We are the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, or the DPRK, so please remember that while you are here. And this …’ he added, having spotted Pyotr being herded up the steps, ‘will be useful for the next ten days, “Bballi kapsida!” means “Let’s go quickly!” ’

  Lee had the japes and jollity of a Butlin’s Redcoat and knew how to engage an audience, but as we set off into the city his voice faded to white noise as I became magnetised by the view from the window. We were really here, in North Korea.

  Pyongyang’s roads were tank-wide and newly surfaced, with few other cars in sight. One tractor bobbed along the edge of the road and a couple of cyclists rode on the pavement wearing khaki clothes, but there were no pedestrians. A tram packed with grey-clothed passengers went past in the opposite direction and I craned my neck to get a proper look, while the rest of the group had cameras up against the glass and were photographing every tree, every car, every sign. No wonder the local people became suspicious and annoyed. A white, listless sky deepened the absence of colour and energy, two things I most associated with Asian cities, but as we neared the centre, reds, yellow and blues flashed from revolutionary billboards bellowing messages of pride and glory. Strong-faced young men in dungarees held aloft scythes in one fist and the national flag in the other, as a missile rose in the background. Another depicted Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il among a field of flowers and children. Apartment blocks were no more than four-storeys high and painted an anaemic peach with pots of red flowers perched on the edge of each balcony.  A Mercedes 190E pulled up at the traffic lights alongside us, a model that my parents had driven in 1991, capping off the feeling of having travelled back in time. We soon slowed and Lee gestured outside: ‘We have now arrived at the Mansudae Grand Monument, so you may bring your cameras.’

  Even from the bottom of the hill, the tops of the two Kim statues were visible through the trees. Standing at around twenty-two metres high, the bronze monuments that overlooked the city
marked one of Pyongyang’s most sacred spots, drawing both tourists and North Koreans who gathered to pay their respects. Surrounding the statues was a well-tended lawn, upon which crouched more than fifty middle-aged women wearing long shirts and identical rubber-soled shoes, and who appeared to be hand-picking weeds, even though the grass looked immaculate. They turned away from the cameras, putting up their hands to shield their faces. Lee ordered us to form one long line, tuck in shirts and zip up jackets. Sarah was holding a large bunch of flowers, which she then handed to Victor, who was selected to walk alone to the foot of the statues, bow, lay down the flowers and then turn and walk back to the line. Meanwhile, the women had vanished. Tommy sidled up to me in his cagoule.

  ‘Do you think they were actually gardening or just put here to spy on us?’ he whispered.

  ‘Who knows? They probably just didn’t want to be in any of the photos.’

  ‘Maybe, but don’t you think it’s a bit weird that they’ve completely gone in less than two minutes of us arriving?’

  ‘No talking please,’ said Lee, standing a little in front of us before taking a deep bow.  We followed in sync. As I looked down at my shoes I felt unease. I certainly did not respect the leaders and was disappointed in myself. Later I was told that North Korean officials use photos of tourists bowing before the statues to tell their people that foreigners come on special pilgrimage from all over the world just to offer their respects, so greatly revered are their leaders. If this was indeed true, then I felt even worse for being complicit in the deception. Then again, I had made the decision to come and could have stayed on the bus if I did not want to abide by their rules. And placing flowers at their feet was no different from the servitude expected at most places of worship.