20. And finally, every place in NoKo is dimly lit (if at all), so keep your cell phone handy.
It’s really dreadful, she muttered to herself, the way all the creatures argue. It’s enough to drive one crazy!
—Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
Chapter 3
The Koryo Hotel
I am sitting alone in an enormous banquet hall inside the Koryo Hotel, waiting for someone to serve me dinner. I’d been directed to sit at table number eighteen in the center-right of the room for no discernible reason. This is where I am first introduced to what I will learn is the prevailing style in North Korea: fancy tacky.
The room is beyond garish, with terrible fluorescent lighting (somehow made worse by strands of something slightly resembling Christmas lights but not in the right colors, and a whole lot less festive) and tables dressed with clashing 1970s-hued, tuna-pink tablecloths, lemon-yellow placemats, and lime-green napkins—all of which are dirty. Overly dramatic, bellicose-sounding, anthem-like communist music blasts from speakers plucked straight from the 1950s. In the ensuing days I spend in North Korea, I will come to understand that (1) almost everything in North Korea seems plucked straight from the 1950s and (2) I will almost never not hear that music blasting from speakers.
My waiter arrives, and somehow we discover that we both speak Spanish. From then on, hablamos en español sólo. There are no words to describe how horrible his accent is, except perhaps horrible—it was damn bad. And through no fault of his own, he keeps bringing me small plates brimming with food that is both indescribable and inedible. I’m a vegetarian, so I know that it takes a special talent to fuck up eight plates of vegetables. No longer hungry, I ask if I am allowed to take my “Large Beer” up to my room to drink. (You are automatically served one free Large Beer with lunch and dinner. However, you must ask, and pay, for water.) “Sí,” he replies with a smile that is both kind and genuine. My Spanish-speaking waiter will turn out to be my best North Korean friend, after Fresh Handler.
Life at the Koryo Hotel was like watching a Wes Anderson movie only weirder, and I was the star. Like the dining room, the rest of the hotel is decked out in decades-old decor that in its heyday was gaudy, chintzy, and ostentatious, and in the present day is dated, faded, and démodé. A little less dirt and a little more quirk and you might call the place kitschy, but the pervasive feeling of melancholy and doom that envelops the hotel made that ship sail.
I spent five nights in the Koryo, two of which were consecutive, all of which were in my assigned room: 2-10-28. When I left my room on, say, Tuesday morning, and there were four squares of toilet paper left, and one of the lightbulbs in the bathroom had burned out, and the soap had melted to a sliver, and half of my Large Beer sat atop the ungainly nightstand-cum-AM/FM-radio-cum-alarm-clock next to the bed, two nights later, when I returned, all would be exactly the same. Only another lightbulb in the bathroom would have burned out. By the end of my stay, there were no lights in the bathroom. All of the bulbs had burned out.
I asked Older Handler why it was that I was put in the same exact room each time we stayed in the Koryo (my handlers stayed in the hotel, too, even though they lived in Pyongyang) and why they didn’t freshen my room in between stays. Older Handler replied, “You can leave your suitcase for $25,” typifying the inane, illogical, insane, absurd, and/or evasive responses I’d receive to all questions, except when people would just plain lie to me instead.
That North Korea has widespread electricity shortages is well known and well documented, but there is still something truly eerie—and oddly hilarious—about stepping off an elevator onto a floor in pitch darkness. It’s too late by the time you realize. The elevator doors close behind you, and there’s no going back. It’s just so damn dark. Your eyes don’t adjust, and you can’t find the button to summon the elevator. It’s abject blackness.
Unprepared the first time, I stood there in the dark, laughing at what a caricature of itself NoKo is, as I searched my bag for my flashlight—a.k.a. my cell phone, which was useless otherwise, save for the Kaplan Vocab for GRE app that required no internet or Wi-Fi to work. (I learned 169 new words during my trip.) And because it feels like I’m bullying NoKo if I point out that there was no consistent way to unlock my door using the electronic key, which often left me standing in the pitch-black hallway, cradling my phone under my neck as I tried inserting the key in every possible direction until somehow the door magically opened…well, I won’t do that then.
The gift shop in the Koryo Hotel lobby—which is really more of a bodega that also sells ugly clothes—provided my primary sources of sustenance: milk-chocolate bars and bottled water. It also, inexplicably, sells large pieces of frozen fish, which I often thought about bringing up to the register as a joke. But since I was already doing America no favors with my behavior, I refrained.
One day when we were driving around Pyongyang, I noticed a modern building that looked inhabited on an island in the middle of a river. (Rule of thumb I came to realize: dilapidated, old building = real building with actual DPRK inhabitants; modern, new building = fakery built to make NoKo look normal.)
“What’s that?” I asked innocently.
“Hotel,” Older Handler snapped.
I pressed on, a lamb to the slaughter, “How does that hotel compare to mine?”
“Yours is fine,” she barked back through her conversation-ending, tight-lipped smile.
I realized at some point during my second day that everyone was always wearing a pin with one or more of the Great Leaders on it. At first I thought it was just the handlers, drivers, and other people interacting with tourists, but no, it’s all DPRK citizens except for children, who are not considered citizens until age seventeen. (When I asked Older Handler what you’re considered from birth until age seventeen if not a citizen, she responded, “a child.” Fair enough.)
Fascinated by a law that requires citizens to wear pins depicting their dead leaders (albeit dead leaders the people believe are still ruling the country posthumously) at all times, I peppered Older Handler with questions about what would happen to you should you be unwilling or unable to wear your pin. The last round of our lengthy and rather useless exchange went like this:
ME: Okay, but, what if your house caught fire, and when you ran outside to save yourself, you forgot to put your pin on first?
OLDER HANDLER, being deliberately obtuse: I don’t know such a day.
Victory, hers.
One afternoon the elevator guard stopped me from entering the designated tourist elevator. Since he was the same elevator guard who was always there, and I’d stayed in the hotel three nights already, and been up and down the elevator a million times, and was clearly a tourist—not to mention there were maybe twenty-five tourists total staying in the hotel that week—I’m pretty sure this guy knew I was a legit guest and was just fucking with me. Nevertheless, I showed him my key as proof.
He refused to budge. He just stood there, arms crossed. I was in no mood. Without a second thought, I gave him a look that said, “Are you fucking kidding me?” while accidentally saying aloud, “Are you fucking kidding me?” Whoops. So I added, “C’mon dude, I have to pee.” Without saying a word, he stepped aside and waved me past.
Victory, mine.
No, no! The adventures first, said the Gryphon in an impatient tone: explanations take such a dreadful time.
—Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
Chapter 4
James Franco Could Have Killed Me
I’m standing at the sink brushing my teeth in my hotel bathroom, which looks like a motel bathroom from any movie made in the 1970s that involved drugs and bell bottoms, but with worse lighting.
It’s my first morning in NoKo, and I’ve been instructed to meet my handlers downstairs in the lobby at precisely 7:50 a.m. I set my alarm for 7:00 a.m., but I hadn’t needed it. Turns out some kind of eerie patriotic-murmur-music starts playing out of loudspeakers every morning ar
ound 7:00 a.m. here in NoKo—I guess to cheer workers off to work. When I asked Older Handler about it, she told me she didn’t know what I was talking about.
The Koryo has cable TV with international news channels, a true luxury anywhere you travel, let alone in North Korea. Because the TV is in the other room, the sound is a little faint—but I’m pretty certain I hear the BBC broadcaster say that North Korea is threatening war against the U.S. over the forthcoming release of a Sony Pictures movie called The Interview, about two CIA spies plotting to kill Kim Jong-un, starring James Franco and Seth Rogen.
Umm, whaat?!
I dash into the other room to catch the story. Oh, THIS IS TOO GOOD! It’s hilarious! The Supreme Leader of North Korea has promised “merciless retaliation” against America over a James Franco movie fewer than 24 hours after I arrived!
I plop down on the bed and wait for the news cycle to loop through so I can watch the story again. When it comes back on, it includes actual clips from the movie that has pissed North Korea off so much that they’ve decided to declare war. I’m pretty sure this is ironic. It’s definitely funny, at least, with my being an American in North Korea and all. Because my mom watches the morning news, there’s little doubt in my mind she’s just shit herself.
Perplexed by why the Hermit Kingdom is allowing an American Imperialist to watch something on the hotel TV that is so egregiously offensive they’d declare war against America, I think to myself, huh, maybe these guys aren’t so bad after all. That thought doesn’t last long, though, since a second later the screen goes black, and I realize that a TV censor somewhere has probably “lost his job.”
Update
I first heard the news about the James Franco/Seth Rogen movie and North Korea’s retaliation threat on the morning of June 26, 2014 while in North Korea. On the morning of November 24, 2014, a picture of a grinning skeleton with a warning message that said, in part, “We’ve already warned you” appeared on Sony employees’ computer screens. This would mark the onslaught of an unprecedented computer hack on Sony by a group calling themselves the Guardians of Peace (GOP). Within days of the hack, which cut Sony off at the knees, rumors began to circulate that the attack was in response to the forthcoming release of The Interview.
Although there was no firm evidence yet, on June 26 NoKo warned that the film’s release represented an “act of war” that would lead to “merciless retaliation against the U.S.,” which I remembered hearing verbatim in my hotel room in Pyongyang. Crazy!
In the ensuing weeks the GOP leaked to the public vast amounts of crippling and embarrassing information stolen from Sony and issued a statement confirming that the hack was a result of the movie.
Following threats on theaters, several cinema chains decided not show the film, Sony announced it would cancel the Christmas Day release, and U.S. intelligence officials conclusively linked the GOP attacks to North Korea, which of course denied any involvement (but praised the Sony hack as a “righteous deed”).
Then all hell broke loose.
President Obama went on record saying “Sony made a mistake” by deciding to pull the film, and Americans were outraged that a two-bit dictator could successfully impose censorship on American society…over a comedy no less.
At first North Korea volunteered to help find the “real culprit” behind the hack but then decided the United States government was behind the making of the movie and threatened to attack the White House, the Pentagon, and the entire U.S. instead, which prompted President Obama to declare that the U.S. would “respond proportionally.”
Eventually Sony did an about-face (peer pressure? publicity stunt? dollar signs?) and released the film on Christmas Day to any theaters that wanted to screen it and to homes via video on demand. Obama praised Sony’s decision (the people were heard!), and the movie raked in over $15 million in online downloads in just four days, making it the number one online movie ever released.
Take that, NoKo.
Ironically, while millions of Americans were downloading The Interview, tens of North Koreans (okay, a thousand at most) lost access to the internet when NoKo’s service went down. In retaliation, Kim Jong-un called President Obama a monkey.
Many have questioned how a country with no electricity could pull off such a grand hack. To those people I say, because it’s a batshit-crazy country full of slaves.
The story broke on June 26, 2014, my first morning in NoKo. I started writing this book on November 6, 2014. I finished the first draft the morning of December 18, when the story couldn’t be any hotter, then boarded a flight for Sri Lanka. I missed the movie’s release because I was in Ella, Sri Lanka, where the power had gone out (as a result of excessive rain and landslides, not an evil dictatorship), so I couldn’t access the internet. And on January 3, at the end of my trip, when I arrived at the airport to fly home, the U.S. announced sanctions against NoKo in retaliation for the hack.
I see nobody on the road, said Alice. I only wish I had such eyes, the King remarked in a fretful tone. To be able to see Nobody! And at that distance, too! Why, it’s as much as I can do to see real people, by this light!
—Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass
Chapter 5
Shit I Think Might Be Real
fakarant (noun). Any location that resembles a restaurant in that it has tables and chairs and place settings and waitresses, and prepares and serves food, but is not a restaurant in the anywhere-else-in-the-world sense of the word because:
It seems only tourists eat there
All of these places seem to be operated by the KITC, a company whose express goal is convincing tourists that NoKo is normal. In this case, their job is to persuade visitors that there is a plethora of restaurants in Pyongyang and that normal Koreans can, and do, eat in them whenever they want to (which they can’t and don’t).
Only once did I see anyone other than tourists and their handlers in any of the fakarants. One night in Pyongyang we went to a fakarant for dinner that had several small, private dining rooms instead of one main room. As we were being shown to our room, we passed a group of Chinese tourists. Older Handler pointed and said, “They’re Korean.” (They were not. Or they were, but they were missing their telltale Great Leader pins, were speaking Chinese, and their KITC van was parked downstairs next to our car, which I saw with my own two eyes when we walked out.)
Anyway, we are on our way to a fakarant for lunch, and Older Handler turns to me and says that since I like to take photos, would I like to go to a real Korean wedding?
Are you kidding? Of course I would!
This is so nice of Older Handler, I think to myself. I’d like to believe she’s just being nice—even now I can barely type this next bit without my heart falling—but there’s no way she’s just being nice. Of course she’s ingratiating herself to manipulate me in some way. And it’s been a particularly boring, fascinating, disgusting, and hilarious morning of North Korea, WINNERS, America, SUCKS! So she may also be trying to throw me a bone.
But I don’t care about the reason. If she’s giving me the chance to see something even approximating her version of real, I’ll take it.
It turns out that the son or daughter of an employee of KITC (the story, as usual, was convoluted) was conveniently having his or her wedding reception that very day at 1:00 p.m. at the same fakarant where we were having lunch at noon. On a Thursday.
I was skeptical.
We arrived at the restaurant, which interestingly had a “shop” on the ground floor. Shops, like restaurants in North Korea, are confusing, and hard to come by. I hadn’t seen one yet, and we’d spent a lot of time driving around Pyongyang. I’d been peppering Older Handler with questions about shops—where are they, could she point one out to me, when are they open, who could go, what are the hours, do people walk up and down aisles, do people push carts, do people choose things from shelves or do they take whatever they‘re given…the same type of questions one might ask Martians or a three-year-old, to which Older Handler
simply replied, “Yes.” So when she saw one, she took the opportunity to point it out:
OLDER HANDLER, while pointing to the dark, closed, near-empty shop that from what I could see primarily sold large stuffed animals and very cheap fancy clothes: See, there’s a shop.
We walked up the stairs, past the fakarant’s filthy, disgusting guest bathroom. Think worse than a dive-bar bathroom at the end of a long night, including unidentifiably wet floors, while remembering there is no running water in most bathrooms. I wasn’t concerned about myself; I’ve been going to the bathroom in literal shitholes (and worse) all over the world (including the U.S. of A.) my whole life. But all I could think about was, “We’re at a wedding! That poor bride! With her long dress! Or maybe she has a short dress? No, probably not. How will she go to the bathroom in that bathroom and not get her dress wet? Will she not go to the bathroom during the reception? How can she not have to go to the bathroom? Maybe it’s a short reception? What kind of reception is on a Thursday afternoon anyway?”
We’re immediately directed to our table (no crowds, no wait), and as we dine, several waitresses busily go about setting up the room for the reception. It’s fascinating; they manage to move fast and slow at the same time. They’re beautiful—(I read somewhere later, after getting home, that the Party selects the most fetching women from around the country to come live and work in Pyongyang so the city literally looks its best for foreigners), and they’re setting up one of the ugliest rooms I’ve ever seen. To start with, it was painted the color of Grey Poupon mustard.
My Holiday in North Korea Page 3