Jem was snoozing on the train to Hamhung, so I stationed myself by the windows. Overwhelmed and drained from keeping up with the Kims, I felt most at home on the train, where I could stand at the window alone and take in the sounds and sights without being told what to see and how to feel. This was one of the most remote regions on the east coast and one of the most scenic. Sand-coloured mountains dipped softly in the distance, curtained off by a haze of light. Villages of white stone houses were scattered around the foreground. Their roofs were tiled with curved red slabs fitted together like fish scales, or lined with dried wooden logs. Behind each house was an allotment of cabbages and potatoes, which completed the scene of bucolic prosperity. I thought back to my earlier conversation with Geoff and wondered what the rest of the country looked like. A series of hoots and yells came from the guides’ compartment and Miss Kim appeared, slamming the door behind her, her cheeks the colour of pomegranate. She linked arms with me again. After a few moments, she asked where Jem was and I told her he was having a pre-lunch nap.
‘I like your boyfriend’s face,’ she said.
‘Oh. Okay, that’s nice, thank you.’
‘He reminds me of my own boyfriend. He has the same shaped face. He has big eyes and a soft mouth, just like a girl.’
Unsure where this conversation was going, I picked up the thread nonetheless.
‘How often do you get to see him with your work?’
‘We don’t see each other any more. He had to move after university to live in Paris with his family.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that, when will he be back?’
‘I don’t know, but we never broke up, so I hope one day I will see him again.’
‘Can you call or write?’
Miss Kim appeared not to have heard me and I realised that she might not be allowed to do either without having her correspondence intercepted.
‘Did you meet him at university?’
‘Yes, we were both studying English. I wanted to study music, but my father told me I would study English at Kim Il Sung University.’
‘What was it like?’
‘Studying English?’
‘No, Kim Il Sung University.’
‘I felt very proud. I studied very hard every day for five years.’
‘What sort of things did you learn?’
‘We learnt good things about all countries except the US and Japan. I want to travel to as many countries as possible, but especially to countries that have world miracles.’
‘Like?’
‘London, to see the London Eye, Paris for the Eiffel Tower, and the Spinx.’
‘Spinx?’
‘In Egypt. Also, the Nicaragua Falls. I also enjoyed learning about the Second World War.’
Given the distorted version of the Korean War – known as the Victorious Fatherland Liberation War – taught by the DPRK, I was curious to hear what Miss Kim had learnt. ‘What aspect did you enjoy the most?’ She fixed me with a long stare. ‘I learnt that fascism is a very bad thing. Each country should be left alone to live as they want to. And big countries always want to make small countries adopt their culture. It is bad.’
Before I could probe further, she wedged her earphones into her ears and turned towards the window, signalling that the conversation was over. Pak and Lee hollered that lunch was ready and I caught up with Sarah on my way to the dining car. Feeling a bit sad, I relayed my conversation to her about Miss Kim’s boyfriend moving to Paris.
‘That’s odd.’
‘Why?’
‘There are no diplomatic relations between North Korea and France. France and Lithuania are the only two EU nations not to recognise North Korea.’
‘So …’
‘So, either his family were moved somewhere else or he just didn’t want to dump her and is probably seeing someone else. Poor girl.’
In the very last car of the train, three women were crowded into a kitchen with one gas stove and a cupboard of cups, saucers, Nescafé and Coffee-mate. They brought out tomato and onion omelettes swimming in butter, and placed them on two wooden tables covered in laminate, which only just allowed for the fifteen of us to squeeze up. Pouring out beakers of good Korean beer, they piled on plate after plate of fried wings, kimchi, slabs of luncheon meat, rice and soup and a large platter of blood sausage – a speciality that looked like big scabs and which no one touched. Meal times on the train were the only occasions when we were all obliged to sit together, and the spectrum of personalities on board reminded me why I never travelled with groups. However, over the previous two days I’d spent time in the company of Tommy’s wife, Anna, who had an abundance of Twixes in her handbag, and I was starting to warm to Boston Bobby, a gentle Cold War veteran in a Red Sox hoodie and trainers. He’d spent much of his time sitting with us, when he wasn’t wearing a fake red nose to amuse passing schoolkids, or clowning around and running down the corridor waving rolls of toilet paper. Retired, Bob now worked as part of the welcoming team for Red Sox games, in between taking off on solo trips to Iran, India and Mongolia in search of adventure. His wife Brenda was more than happy to stay at home during these trips and he had so far managed to steel himself against the anti-American rhetoric and the propaganda posters of ‘American Imperialist’ soldiers having their eyes pecked out by crows – but I sympathised and admired his willingness to visit the country by himself.
‘How are you finding it all?’ I asked. ‘It must be quite tough.’
He shrugged. ‘I feels bad for ’em. You can’t live just for revenge. Look what it does, it destroys you. You gotta keep moving.’ Bob poured another beaker of beer and speared his chicken, or what we assumed was chicken. ‘Being unable to forgive or forget does nothing but stunt your own growth. Obsessing over us and Japan seems so petty and short-sighted. Imagine if every country in the world had grudges against every other country that had ever invaded or colonised. We’d all be lost.’
Just then a freight train began to draw parallel with our carriage. It was the closest we had ever been to local people: I could see right into the driver’s cabin where three men were sitting together in grey overalls; five others were perched on top of the load and as we attempted to wave they all waved back and started laughing. It was the first positive response. The engine eventually ran alongside us and the three staff gave us a thumbs-up as the sunlight streamed through the window, warming the men’s faces. They were no more than an arm’s reach away and we all jumped up and stood at the glass like children, that piece of glass representing so much that I wished we could break. Eventually they drifted further and further back until we had lost them and we retook our seats in silence. Alan, who had rarely spoken since the first day, looked up:
‘If we could just sit down and have a cup of tea with them it would be lovely.’
It was the saddest I’d felt so far.
The Majon guesthouse in Hamhung made the Yanggakdo look like the Ritz. Having spent the day touring a fertiliser factory, the brutalist Grand Theatre and more statues of the Kims, we retired for the night to this spot that was fast becoming popular with North Korean tourists – at least those with the papers to travel. Stumbling across the gravel by torchlight, I could hear the rush of waves against the beach below as we found our cottage and offloaded our bags. Someone had left the plug in the bathtub, which I immediately drained, and then opened the sink tap to wash my hands. There was no running water. A red plastic barrel by the sink contained boiling water and a mug and it transpired that the tub had been filled earlier in the day so we could wash. The barrel was expected to stay warm until the following morning in spite of the room being colder than the fridge, which smelt of old milk. I was used to squatting to bathe in India and had taught Jem to do the same, but it presented quite a puzzle to the rest of the group. At breakfast Tommy said he had simply climbed inside the barrel and used it as an upright bath, while Alan was so repulsed he had taken a bar of soap and gone down to bathe in the ocean at dawn. It didn’t bode well for the citiz
ens of Hamhung if this was the best the city had to offer.
After breakfast, we were back on the train for the twelve-hour journey up the northeast coast to the remote port city of Chongjin. So far, few passenger trains had passed by, but abandoned trains were in abundance. Green with a yellow stripe down the middle, their blistered carriages wore petticoats of rust, but the windows remained intact, unlike abandoned trains in England, which were a magnet for graffiti artists and vandals. I cornered Pak and asked him why they hadn’t been taken away for scrap and he shrugged and went into the vestibule for a smoke. Less than half an hour later we passed one such carriage with pretty curtains in the windows. They were clean and tied back to reveal a line of washing drying inside. A moment later a girl with wet hair poked her head out of one of the windows and watched our train roll by: they had been adopted as homes. This was a wonderful example of the juche ideology of self-reliance established by Kim Il Sung. It made perfect sense. Inside was warm, protected from the elements, and there were sleeper berths for all the family.
The train to Chongjin clung to the coastline, disappearing into hillside tunnels and emerging by stony beaches where kids in brightly coloured anoraks chased one another along the shore. As we passed through local stations, the sweet smell of rubbish that often rotted between the tracks was noticeably absent. For all the criticism of the regime it had some reasons to be proud. The cities looked as though they were scrubbed and washed every night. Elderly women carried dustpans and brushes and even a handful of leaves would be swept up in an instant.
Pyotr was still taking photos at stations, so much so that a few hours into the journey we were summoned by Sarah and Pak. Someone along the route had reported us and we were now being monitored. Furious with Pyotr and also Satoshi, who, since the first day, had been wandering around filming and trying to chat to passing children, the group was beginning to show signs of strain. No one wanted to jeopardise the trip or get Sarah and Pak into trouble, who would inevitably be the ones to bear the brunt of punishment.
The city of Chongjin was a concrete dump. Once a small fishing village, it was now a centre for trade owing to its proximity to Japan and China. While the outfits were in stark contrast to the drab dressing in Pyongyang, I felt like we had taken the train into 1988. Women in black flared trousers and quilted bomber jackets cycled by wearing black platform shoes with big buckles, their hair styled in shoulder-length perms clipped at the back with a giant sprayed quiff, much like Janet Jackson in her heyday. Younger girls wore state-of-the-art trainers covered in sparkles and spangled laces – including a pair of tangerine-coloured boots splashed with rainbow stripes – and carried trendy handbags. With the exception of one Lexus and a battered old Volvo there were no cars on the road, just trams and people riding past on bikes, chatting on mobile phones and wearing sunglasses.
On a short walk around the city centre I was able to peer into windows and shop doors with ease and found that the quintessential red flower that sat on every balcony was no more than tired silk. Net curtains parted to reveal two framed photos of the Kims on every wall, and shops stocked Hennessy cognac and Courvoisier. Given the anti-Japanese propaganda it was odd that women were carrying Mizuno shoulder bags and riding Honda bikes. Lee was walking alongside, winding up Miss Kim, so I asked him about the Japanese brands.
‘There is so much Western propaganda against us and I don’t know why,’ he replied. ‘We use Mitsubishi, Sony, Japanese brands, American brands. They’re just items created by other human beings.’
‘But aren’t they considered your enemies?’
‘Enemy is a strong word, hostile is better, but really it’s okay. We read Western media. Our tourism company gives us the New York Times, we watch BBC news, ABC news from the States, once it’s been approved through the government we have access to it. That’s why we want people to come here and see it for yourself. Because seeing is believing. What you see is how it is.’
And yet that afternoon we were treated to a spectacular show of propaganda at a ‘local’ school. The Steelworks Kindergarten, which had a delightful little playground for the kids featuring all the usual items one would expect for four-year-olds – a tank, a submarine with a torpedo on the side and a merry-go-round of fighter jets – put on a one-hour show that involved some of the most complicated dance routines I have ever witnessed. The children, who were no higher than my waist, were dressed in the sort of outfits worn by Olympic ice dancers, and grimaced with red lips as they flew around the room, pirouetting, punching the air and cartwheeling in perfect harmony.
‘Dwarves, I tells ya, definitely dwarves,’ Boston Bobby whispered to me during the performance. Even for my sixth-form production of Guys ’n’ Dolls we had been unable to generate the coordination and precision of these toddlers.
‘You can just imagine all the Notting Hill parents wanting to send their kids here,’ Nick said, when the show had ended and the children bowed and forced smiles through clenched teeth.
On the way back to the train we made an obligatory stop at the city’s Kim statues and were hovering about when some sort of commotion began to brew among the guides. Lee and Pak were engaged in a heated discussion with Mr Song, who was hanging his head. While taking a photograph for Pyotr, standing in front of the statues, he had accidentally cropped out one of the Kims’ heads. In his panic, he had tried to delete the photograph to avoid any trouble and had managed to delete Pyotr’s photographs from the entire trip. A shadow of schadenfreude passed over me – the constant photographing of local people reduced them to little more than zoo animals – but I felt terrible for Mr Song, who became known for the rest of the trip as The Deleter.
Fumbling for my watch, I rolled over and squinted at the window wondering why we had stopped. I propped myself up on my elbow and listened. The air was sour with the smell of the guards’ old Marlboro Reds so I buried my nose in my scarf, waiting for the jolts and wobbles from engine changes or the reassuring clump of boots from guards pottering around.
Nothing.
For a few minutes I lay staring at the mound that was Jem, willing him to be awake, but his breath whistled into the blankets, suggesting otherwise, and there was no sound of movement from our companions in the adjacent compartments. Roald Dahl had called this ‘the witching hour’ – a special moment in the middle of the night when every child and every grown-up is in a deep, deep sleep and all the dark things come out from hiding and have the world to themselves. Gathering the bulk of faux-fur blankets around my shoulders I shuffled up to the end of the berth and peered around the edge of the curtain, which was damp with cold. Blackness greeted me. We had stopped in the middle of an empty expanse. There were no lamp posts, houses or other trains in sight; no torches bobbing along to suggest human activity. We hadn’t even stopped at a platform.
So far, I had taken the trip in my stride, but I was aware now of a quiet hysteria building in my gut. Had we been reported again? Had Pyotr been hanging from the windows taking more photos? Or maybe it was me? I usually slipped away to make notes on the sly, but for all I knew I had been watched and was now going to be arrested by the authorities. They would force me to write an apology and read it at a press conference, or make me serve fifteen years of hard labour. It had finally happened. The paranoia had sunk in its claws and I was convinced I would never be able to leave the country. Shivering, I crawled back up the berth and lay down, turning foetal with anxiety when the train started to glide away from its spot and a blade of white light cut through the curtain. I saw that we were rolling into a station. And there, side by side, high up on the station wall, were the two illuminated faces of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il, beaming down. They were the picture of jollity: paternal and kind, watching over the fatherland. Without stopping, the train began to pick up pace and their light was soon shrinking into the distance. It was just a temporary stop outside a station. Pacified, I lay down, took out my phone and began to watch videos of the kindergarten children as the train swept down the coast to the
port city of Wonsan.
Loudspeakers played a crackling piece of dated music. It was early evening, and we had gathered at the edges of the main square in Wonsan to watch more than a thousand Korean students take part in a mass dance in preparation for the upcoming seventieth anniversary celebrations. The women were dressed in colourful chima jogori, and the men were wearing white shirts and red ties. It looked much like a barn dance; linking arms and dancing do-si-do in circles, they appeared to be enjoying themselves and the guides clapped and cheered in support. Mr Song grabbed us one by one and told us we could join in. Uncomfortable at the thought of interrupting them, we hovered at the edge waiting for someone else to go first. It was like being back at school again. Geoff ventured forward and Mr Song appeared from nowhere, grabbed my hand and thrust it into the palm of a tall man who let go of his partner and led me as though it were the most normal thing in the world. Too embarrassed to make eye contact, I noticed that Jem was dancing with the girl who had been thrust aside to make way for me and she was struggling to keep him within the formation, but laughing and patiently guiding him. This was what I had longed for all week. As we held hands and twirled, we became an unbroken chain of young people having fun. Little stood between me and the tall North Korean with warm hands but music and energy. A surge of heat flushed under my skin and I could feel tears at the corners of my eyes. They weren’t out of sadness, sympathy or pity, but a sense of nostalgia, for when we were small kids unburdened by prejudice – when we played with everyone without caring who they were or where they came from.
Around the World in 80 Trains Page 21