My Holiday in North Korea

by Wendy E. Simmons

  —Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

  Chapter 22

  The Gynecologist

  I am waiting alone in front of the made-to-order omelet station at the breakfast buffet in the Koryo Hotel. The station is a small, free-standing, electric frying pan/skillet thing that had to be thirty years old and resembled the brownish-colored aluminum one with the Teflon cooking surface that I used to illegally use in my college dorm room in the 1980s. Here the chef cooked only fried eggs that he somehow managed to serve cold, congealed, and covered in oil, even when freshly made.

  Because I am lost in thought, pondering the unique cooking skills required to heat eggs enough to transmute them from raw to cooked while still keeping them cold, I fail to immediately notice the man standing by my side.

  When I look up and over at him, I’m beyond surprised to see he’s young, cute, and not Chinese (unlike the overwhelming majority of tourists I’ve encountered).

  “Hi,” he says. He’s obviously new in town, so not afraid to talk to strangers yet.

  “Hi,” I whisper back.

  We quickly exchange names, ranks, and serial numbers in a tone slightly above hushed, and I return to my assigned seat.

  As I sit buttering my eggs with strawberry jelly (it was the only way to get them down), he walks over and asks if he’s allowed to sit with me instead of at his assigned table. We both look around the room, conducting a synchronized threat assessment of what might happen to us if we break the rules. Not much, we conclude, so down he sits.

  We don’t have much time—we both have to meet our handlers downstairs in the lobby in eight minutes, at 8:00 a.m. on the dot—so we debrief each other quickly.

  He’s a twenty-six-year-old Irishman who lives somewhere outside Dublin, is a pediatric surgeon, and incredibly, just like me, is traveling alone. He’s spent the past six months on holiday with his mates traveling around the world—but unlike him, they’ve wisely skipped this, his last stop and gone home. He just arrived the day before and will leave NoKo in just over a day on the same flight as I.

  I calmly tell him I’m from New York, and feel like I’m about to lose my mind because Older Handler is a nut job, and all anyone’s done for the past eight days is lie to me and give me the stink eye, and that I’m dehydrated from not drinking enough water because it makes me have to pee too often, which is a pain in the ass because every time I have to pee they have to find me an approved bathroom, and poor Fresh Handler has to go with me, and that I’ve eaten nothing but chocolate bars and really bad eggs since I’ve been there. And then my projectile word vomiting really begins.

  I can’t control myself. It’s like I haven’t seen another human being in a year. As it all pours out between bites of strawberry-jelly-covered eggs, his face registers a mix of sympathy and fear. I feel compelled to tell him that I’m not crazy (a claim that always sounds crazy), that I’m a normal person (ditto) with a good job where other people even work for me! I’m a homeowner! Not some lunatic who babbles uncontrollably about Older Handler and conspiracy theories to anyone who innocently says hello.

  When I take a breath, he explains that his handlers, both young women, are really nice and really cool, and they joke around with him, and he jokes around with them, and they’re pretty lax about stuff and remiss with all the rules.

  UMMM. Wait a minute! I didn’t even know this was a possibility!

  And then I get it…they have a schoolgirl crush on Dr. Handsome. No twisted, bitter, envious, autocratic, despotic Older Handler craziness in his camp.

  Oh and it also seems that for whatever reason—my guess, wishful thinking—his handlers are convinced he’s a gynecologist, not a pediatric surgeon, and thus have been querying him for tips on how they can have twins.

  After my visits to the “multiples exhibit” at both the hospital and the orphanage—and after having pummeled Older Handler with questions about why the Dear Great Leader likes twins and triplets until I thought she was going to smack me—I’m feeling pretty much like an expert (it’s a conspiracy). I tell him everything I am one hundred percent convinced I definitely do or do not know.

  The hands on the giant clock above the buffet tell us we better move it or lose it. Our handlers are expecting us now. My team is driving to Mount Myohyang, and his team is hanging in Pyongyang, so for the moment we say good-bye.

  When I see Older Handler in the lobby, I have a giant smile on my face. My eggs may not have been tasty, but breakfast was cathartic.

  I tell her I met another tourist traveling alone! Just like me! Who’s from Ireland! Whom I told all about how fucking nuts you are for eight straight minutes! (I left that last bit out.) And how now I feel as giddy as his handlers! (Same with that.)

  OLDER HANDLER: You mean the gynecologist?

  ME: He’s a pediatric surgeon. Not a gynecologist.

  OLDER HANDLER: He delivers twins.

  ME: No, he operates on babies.

  OLDER HANDLER, intractable, silence.

  Late the next afternoon, on our drive from Mount Myohyang back to Pyongyang, Older Handler is apologizing to me. It’s my last night in NoKo, so she wants the four of us—Fresh Handler, Driver, her, and me—to have a fun dinner together and make chedah. But tonight’s restaurant is Korean BBQ style, so “only meat.”

  I appreciate her sincerity. She’s made a concerted effort throughout my stay to ensure no one feeds me anything with meat in it, which I’m very grateful for (and further convinced that on the rotating schedule of fakarants, it must be this joint’s turn). I tell her not to worry, that it’s not a problem at all. Quite frankly, I think to myself, I’d literally eat the tablecloth if it ensured I’d be on the next plane out tomorrow.

  Unconvinced I’ll be okay with only rice, she adds, “The gynecologist will be there, too.”

  ME: He’s a pediatric surgeon.

  When we arrive at the fakarant, Dr. Irish, his driver, and his two adoring fans are already seated and have started eating and drinking. We sit at the table next to theirs, and Older Handler immediately takes charge:

  OLDER HANDLER: We make chedah! You drink wine! We get wine!

  Older Handler loves wine.

  Wine is what Older Handler affectionately calls Soju, which is decidedly not wine but basically pure alcohol. I’m not sure if she actually thinks Soju is wine or if she’s using the word wine euphemistically to mask her fondness for the hard stuff, but I find her misnomer endearing.

  The first time Older Handler offered me wine, I innocently took a generous sip, expecting it to taste more like Chardonnay than rubbing alcohol crossed with fire. Once I stopped coughing and tearing uncontrollably, I decided I liked it, and from then on Older Handler has made sure I’ve ordered—and paid for—wine whenever it’s available.

  Several bottles of Soju arrive, and for the last time I also buy Driver a few beers (he’s a beer guy, not a wine guy). Within minutes we’re all sloshed. (Once, after Driver had enjoyed a two-Large Beer lunch, I asked Older Handler about drunk driving in Korea. Her response: “Yes, we have.”) We “chedah” each other, and we “chedah” Dr. Irish and his posse, and they “chedah” us back. Sitting there together, everyone drunk, smiling and laughing, it almost seems normal.

  I feel overwhelmingly and irrationally sentimental. I can’t believe I’m leaving in the morning. I’ve spent so much time wishing it was over, and now it is. Only now I sort of wish it wasn’t, even though I still can’t wait to leave. It felt exactly like the one time I went to sleep-away camp, which I also hated and couldn’t wait to leave. But the last night, when the entire camp sat around a giant bonfire, singing songs and reminiscing about the summer’s events, I cried along with the others, not wanting it to end but desperate for it to be over.

  In the two days that have passed since I first met Dr. Irish at breakfast, he’s been dragged around on his own propaganda tour. While his handlers have maintained their you’re-so-dreamy laissez-faire approach to his care and handling, they’ve failed to convi
nce him that North Korea is anything other than repressed and insane. As we sit sharing stories and comparing notes under our breath, a giant wave of relief washes over me: for the first time since I arrived in Korea, someone else is confirming the crazy.

  When Older Handler and Driver are engaged in conversation, I use the opportunity to pitch Fresh Handler on the idea of escape, having spent an entire week telling her why New York City is so great, why she’d love it so much, and what great friends we could be.

  “I wish!” she giggled into her hand so Older Handler couldn’t hear or see.

  I fucking knew it!

  “Me, too,” I said solemnly in return.

  That I would never be allowed to see or speak to Fresh Handler ever again, in any manner, was a strange and sad reality.

  The next morning we’re all gathered in the lobby, ready to go.

  I exit the Koryo Hotel for one last time. I get into my car with my handlers, and Dr. Irish gets into his car with his, and we both depart for the airport.

  As I sit in the back seat one last time, staring out the window at a city I can’t wait to leave, quietly contemplating what it all meant, the car carrying Dr. Irish, pediatric surgeon, speeds by us.

  “Ah!” Older Handler excitedly peeps, as she points. “Do you know whose car that was?”

  “No, whose?” I ask rhetorically.

  “The gynecologist’s!” she says excitedly.

  And for a moment, I really do love Older Handler.

  Driver pulls our car into the parking lot of the tiny, old, operating airport (which, NoKo-style, sits maybe a yard from a large, brand-new, closed airport), turns off the car, and gets out. He’s been uncharacteristically quiet during the drive there. He fetched my bag from the boot of the car and without looking me in the eyes, put it down by my side. I handed him his tip and motioned for a hug or something to say a proper farewell, but he turned away and got back in the car without saying one word—not thank you; not even good-bye.

  And that was that.

  Older Handler and Fresh Handler escorted me inside the terminal building. My eyes started welling up with tears. I always tear up in airports—I’m not great at transitions—but also I’m sad-ish at saying goodbye, and Driver’s surprising behavior had upset me, leaving me feeling even more discombobulated over how our goodbye was about to go down.

  Turned out the same as it had with Driver, only they thanked me for their tips.

  Maybe affectionate farewells aren’t allowed in North Korea, particularly those involving foreigners? Or maybe their snubs were coping mechanisms—the only way to keep their emotions in check to avoid trouble? Or maybe I’d read everything wrong, and none of them had ever liked me, believing all along I was nothing more than a vile American Imperialist?

  I’ll never know.

  I shouldn’t know you again if we DID meet, Humpty Dumpty replied in a discontented tone, giving her one of his fingers to shake; you’re so exactly like other people.

  —Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass

  Chapter 23

  They’re only Human

  We were driving someplace outside of Pyongyang. I don’t remember where, but we’d been in the car a while when we came upon a massive, sprawling construction site with half-built, deconstructed apartment buildings stretching for blocks in every direction. There were thousands and thousands of men laboring away in the hot sun using manual tools and dressed in their normal, ragged street clothes or military uniforms. It was shocking to see a construction site of that scale, with men perilously clinging to the sides of the buildings and dangling from windows with no safety gear on, hauling wheelbarrows piled high with construction debris, and doing the work machines usually do. Their movements looked frenzied and chaotic, like panicked ants zigzagging in every direction.

  I sat transfixed, staring out the window, trying to understand what I was seeing. Normally Older Handler would have been incessantly talking, forcing me to look at her instead of out the window, her normal tactic to prevent me from seeing anything she didn’t want me to see. But she was silent. I glanced at her to see why. She was staring out the window, too.

  “It’s so awful. They look like slaves,” I said softly, still looking at her.

  She shifted her gaze back to me, and her eyes said what she could not. Then she sighed and looked away.

  North Korean citizens are brainwashed from birth to believe that North Korea is superior to every other country in every single way; that their Great Leaders are omnipotent beings who must be revered; and that America, Japan, and South Korea are their mortal enemies, poised to attack their country at any moment.

  To ensure compliance with these beliefs, the North Korean people are systemically and systematically enslaved in thought and action. The Cult of Kim permeates every aspect of their lives. Their schools, jobs, and social activities are all part of the indoctrination process. They are denied all access to outside information of any kind. The only knowledge imparted to them is what the Party wants them to know, all of which is reinforced through social molding. Self-expression, freedom of thought, social discourse to effect change, and personal beliefs of any kind are relegated to private thoughts. They are told how to live, where to live, what to do, what to study, what job to do, if they can drive, if they can travel, where they can go, with whom they can speak. Denied any opportunity to shape their own lives, they are robbed of all autonomy, and live in fear of the Regime and one another knowing that any sign of doubt, dissent, or disagreement is intolerable, and that there is a very steep price to pay should they dare step out of line.

  By instilling profound fear, hatred of their enemies and unshakable loyalty and commitment to their Dear Great Leader, the Regime has managed to maintain absolute control.

  But for people like Older Handler, Fresh Handler, and Driver—who regularly interact with foreigners like me, who are eager to share information, foster understanding, and build relationships—the realization that so much of what they’ve been told their entire lives is a lie has to invoke a certain cognitive dissonance. I’d read somewhere that the prisoners on Alcatraz could hear the sounds of San Francisco—music and conversation—emanating from the city, and that these sounds of freedom so close, not their incarceration, were what tortured them most. I spent a lot of time wondering and worrying if my handlers weren’t suffering the same fate.

  I think Older Handler knew down deep inside that North Korea was absurd and that all the Great Dear Leader stuff was nonsense. But her lifelong indoctrination and absolute entrenchment in North Korean society made it impossible for her to dismiss her beliefs and reject her life.

  Or maybe not. Maybe she really did believe everything she told me.

  I had these moments with Older Handler when a glimmer of recognition would cross her face, or she would gesture to indicate tacit agreement, or she would say something that sounded sincere, and I would feel a real connection to her, something approximating friendship. Older Handler would cease being “Older Handler, Blind Enforcer of Insane Rules” and instead become “Older Handler, Real Person Capable of Complex Thought.” But then the moment would evaporate, as if she’d shaken herself out of a reverie and back into the reality of NoKo, where her job was to make me believe North Korea was the greatest place on Earth, and she couldn’t be happier there.

  As a result, I was always second-guessing myself with her. I one-hundred-percent believed she didn’t believe anything she was saying and was just biding her time, and I also believed I was completely wrong.

  We were stopped at a light in the car one afternoon when a group of people passed by us all wearing the same wide-brim hats. When I asked Older Handler why, she said something about how they’d all just returned from their two-week service, working the rice fields. She then explained that every citizen, including her, must work in the rice fields for two weeks each year, and that she had just served her time in the fields a few weeks ago. I was so shocked by her admission that I asked whether it was hard work and s
ad, being away from her family and job. By reflex she gave me a look that said something along the lines of, “Of course it’s hard working the rice fields, you moron,” but caught herself almost instantly, smiled and said, “It’s my honor.”

  Or one afternoon at the “book and stamp shop” in Pyongyang (which sold nothing but books written by or about the Great Leaders and other propaganda), Older Handler kept insisting I buy a DVD compilation of rabble-rousing speeches and military parades. I politely declined, but she was relentless. Finally, to put an end to the conversation, I informed her, “No one really uses DVDs in my country anymore. In fact I don’t even have a DVD player, and most computers no longer have DVD drives.” She ceased speaking, and her face registered a bona fide mix of confusion and disbelief: if North Korea is the greatest and most advanced country in the world, and we use DVDs, then why doesn’t America? As I started to explain the concept of on-demand and streaming services, she cut me off, “You buy stamps.” Her beatific smile had returned.

  It made me wonder yet again if all her bluster and grandiloquence was meant to convince herself that life in North Korea was great, as much as it was meant to convince me.

  I suspected Fresh Handler had a better grip on reality than Older Handler did.

  I’d seen her giggle at my sarcastic retorts about NoKo too many times to believe otherwise, and from what I’d gleaned from conversation, she’d been exposed to Western culture throughout her life and liked it.

  During our visit to the Monument to the Foundation of the Workers’ Party, an enormous monument, Fresh Handler and I, as usual, had to use the bathroom. (Much of our bonding time was toilet related.)

  The closest bathroom was in a building that also housed some type of art exhibit, which we stopped to visit before walking back to where Older Handler and Driver were waiting for us. As we walked around the gallery of bad art, our conversation turned from paintings to movies. Fresh Handler excitedly offered that she’d seen several American movies when she’d been at university. I told her I was surprised and asked her which ones. The names escape me now, but I remember several starred Hilary Duff or Amanda Bynes. She was so excited and animated describing the movies and so pleased when I told her I’d seen a few of them, too. When I asked her which movie was her favorite, she sheepishly answered that she’d loved them all and thought they were “so funny.”