Mount Paekdu

Another major highlight of my North Korean tour was our visit to Mt. Paekdu. Mt. Paekdu is the highest mountain on the entire Korean peninsula, and it's way, way the hell up north, right on the Chinese border (there are still arguments about whether Paekdu belongs to Korea or China).

Mt. Paekdu is really important for a lot of reasons; it's the highest mountain on the entire Korean peninsula; it has a huge crater lake at the top (the mountain is an inactive volcano); it's difficult to get to and really beautiful; and it’s a very historic, sacred site. Koreans believe Mount Paekdu to be the site of the origin of the Korean people, the foundation of their race and country. It's a sacred place and traditionally a site of worship.

It's especially important to North Koreans because during both the Japanese occupation and the Korean War, anti-Japanese and Communist guerillas were organized there (Kim Il Sung and his secret camps). Kim Jong Il was also supposedly born there (most Western sources say otherwise). So there are tons of reasons to see Mt. Paekdu, besides the awesome natural scenery.

We spent one night and two days in the Mt. Paekdu area, and it was really fun and so different from Pyongyang. We chartered a flight to a town called Samji, and once we were in Samji, I could see why we had to fly. Barely any roads in the region are paved, so we were bouncing around for hours at a time in our minibus, covered in dust, going down tiny, narrow dirt roads. The scenery was so beautiful – really wooded (reminded me of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula) and mountainous, with the occasional waterfall. The coolness was a welcome change after the heat and humidity of Beijing and Pyongyang.

But getting to Samji was only half the battle. Since it's so far north and the terrain is so (duh) mountainous, Mt. Paekdu itself is only accessible for a few months every year. The crater lake, Lake Cheon, is frozen 8.5 months out of twelve, and our guide Mr. Oh said that in winter, the winds can literally blow people away. The average temperature at the peak hovers around 17 degrees Fahrenheit (it was nice and cool in August – perfect hiking weather).

We drove a ways, maybe an hour, from Samji to the mountains. At Mt. Paekdu, the funicular wasn't working (‘temporarily out of order’) and our little bus could only go so far, so we had to walk the last 45 minutes up to Lake Cheon.


The view was worth the walk:




And the world's most worthless funicular:
This isn’t even the highest point – we could have walked a few more minutes to another vantage point, but I was tired and the view would have been about the same. We also had the option of walking down to the edge of Lake Cheon. It would have been amazing, but I never would have made it back up those hundreds of stairs!

When we were done, someone told us that it would be faster to walk down the funicular track, rather than down the path that we had walked up on. I don’t know if it was faster or not, but walking down the funicular was hard (so, so steep, my knees were killing me by the end) and at times really scary – boards were rotted out, the handrails were rusty, the whole thing was creaky and practically swayed in the wind. I’m scared of heights so I just crept down, and it took me about as long going down as it had going up!

Obviously the problem was more than temporary!

Besides Mt. Paekdu, we saw the secret camp where Kim Jong Il was supposedly born while his parents were busy stomping out the Japanese and imperialist aggressors. There are tons of secret camps in the northern mountains of the DPRK, but this one was particularly touching - we could see Kim Jong Il's childhood toys, as well as his baby blanket (made from bits of cloth given by the female guerillas, from the uniforms off their backs). There was also a really pretty waterfall and the Samjiyon Grand Monument, a historic battle site with monuments to the Juche philosophy and our favorite Great Leader.

Overall, the Mt. Paekdu area was a really nice overnight trip – we could get out of the city and see a different side of the DPRK. I’m a total sucker for trees and mountains and natural scenery, so this was my favorite part of the country.


And obviously the Kims share my good taste:

And Then My Head Exploded: The Mass Games

Seeing the Mass Games was my main reason for coming to North Korea, and I was not disappointed. It was worth every cent I paid for the entire tour, as well as the price of the tickets themselves (100 Euros or $135 for 'second class' seats, not included in the tour price).

The Mass Games are held every year, several times a week between August and October. This year's performance (I'm not sure how much it changes from year to year) is called Arirang. While it has nothing to do with games, the 'Mass' part of the title is completely accurate - over 100,000 performers are involved. Thousands are on the floor at any given point, while thousands more schoolchildren sit in the stands across from the audience, holding up and flipping large, colored posters to form gigantic images that complement the performers on the ground.

I think Arirang is meant to be about Korean history; I couldn't read the posters to understand the scene titles, but even without following the story at all I was blown away by the dancing, acrobatics, pyrotechnics, gymnastics, and coordination of so many people. There just aren't words for it, and my pictures of course don't capture the movement, and barely give you an idea of the scale. I took these pictures at the first performance I attended, and then a bunch of us went twice. The second time we got a free seat upgrade and I didn't take a single picture, just tried to take it all in.

A huge motivating factor in my decision to visit North Korea was the documentary A State of Mind. I watched this sometime last spring or summer, and then I knew that I had to see it live. A.S.O.M. is about two young girls who live in Pyongyang and perform in the Mass Games. I highly, highly recommend requesting the DVD from your local library - you'll see some amazing footage of the Games and the insane preparations the girls go through to perform, as well as day-to-day life in North Korea.

The Mass Games was definitely one of the top expereiences of my life, and currently North Korea is the only place in the world to see anything like it. They're held at the May Day Stadium (which has the largest capacity of any stadium in the world). To see more, just type 'mass games' in Google Images and you'll see tons of photos that are much better than mine. YouTube also has quite a few videos; just type in 'mass games.' I didn't watch them all, but this one is really good: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwKWttrEaSM&feature=related (if the link stops working, search YouTube: the name of the video is Arirang Mass Games 2007, by 'lastknownlocation') - you can see the kids with the posters really well.

The Enemy Has Landed: An American in the DPRK

Last month I spent ten days in North Korea. I’m planning to write a few blog posts about it, and here’s the first: mostly an overview and summary of random things that I wanted to mention but that didn’t justify their own post.

Everybody asks the same questions, so:

1: Yes, it's possible to travel the DPRK (Democratic People's Republic of Korea). But, you have to take a tour and see what they want you to see - there's no such thing as independent travel - and you will pay through the nose for it. You don't have to take a group tour, but you are always guided. Americans can visit too, but we have to fly in and out of the country - everyone else on our tour had the option of exiting via train.
2. Yes, you can take pictures, with some restrictions: no photographing the military or anything that is even vaguely disrespectful to the DPRK or its leadership. Nothing poor-looking or broken down, and no pictures of statues or memorials that show only part of it, or from behind, or with someone making rude gestures, or anything like that.

3. Yes, everything is poor and run-down looking (including the people – apparently they never eat fruit and have meat only very seldom) but we didn't see any homelessness or starvation. Everyone was decently clothed, and under Communism (Korean Worker's Party) there is universal health care, free education and almost universal literacy.

I visited the DPRK with Koryo Tours - http://www.koryogroup.com/. It's very expensive (2,190 Euros or about $3,100 for the visa, flights to and from Beijing, hotels, meals, and entrance to most of the sites; I had to get myself to Beijing, pay for my Mass Games tickets, and a few other sundries), but not at all difficult because the tour company does all the leg work. Our tour was about 40 people; we were divided into two groups and followed a staggered schedule so it didn't feel crowded at all. We spent most of the ten days in and around the capital city, Pyongyang, at the Yanggakdo Hotel. Pyongyang is definitely a showpiece – the approved and privileged citizens of North Korea live there, and it’s crammed with tourist-approved, designed-to-impress sights. There were two overnight trips away – one to the Mt. Paekdu area, and one to Kaesong, a city near the southern border from which we visited the DMZ.

Views of Pyongyang

Each group had two North Korean guides - one male and one female - who accompanied us everywhere. We were not allowed to go anywhere by ourselves. Our guides were really nice and helpful. They were interested in our lives and answered our questions about life in North Korea. I told them that I was a teacher, but not that I was working in South Korea! Yanggakdo Hotel is on an island, and we were allowed to walk around the island if we wanted, but we couldn’t set foot on the bridge that connected the island to the rest of the city. To be honest, I didn't really notice or care about the restrictions because they kept us so busy. We were constantly on the go, morning to night, seeing one thing after another for ten days straight.

The DPRK is beautiful - very mountainous and green, and even Pyongyang has a lot of trees. The buildings are absolutely hideous - moldy concrete blocks with visible water damage, some crumbling, and no color at all. There were a lot of cars and buses in Pyongyang, but when we left the city, to visit Kaesong, for example, there wasn't a single other vehicle on the highway, for the entire 2+ hour ride! This, and the general lack of 'hustle', was very odd. You could often see people sitting around or sleeping outside in the middle of the day, and I saw very few businesses. Of course, we only saw the nicest parts of Pyongyang with all the touristy stuff – the image that the DPRK wants the world to see, not real Korean neighborhoods – but there just weren't that many shops or restaurants or businesses.

Spending money is pretty obnoxious in the DPRK. Foreigners aren’t allowed to use the local currency, the North Korean won (a lot of us bought some from the tourist shops as a souvenir) so places where foreigners are allowed accept the Chinese Yuan, the U.S. dollar, and Euros. There is NEVER change, anywhere. If you don’t have the exact amount, you might get change back in a different currency than you spent, or maybe they’ll give you an extra bottle of water or something. It was so weird – we were only allowed to visit specific places and they always knew we were coming, so you’d think they’d be ready, but that was never the case. Koryo Tours warned us of this, so I visited several different currency exchange booths at O’Hare and got a stack of 5-yuan and 5-euro notes, plus about $150 in singles and fives from the U.S.

Besides all this, there’s a very strange understanding of “exchange rate” in North Korea. There’s an official rate of exchange for the N.K. won, and then there’s a different rate on the black market for currency. And for tourists inside the country, it’s completely unpredictable. Once I was charged one euro for something, and I didn’t have the right change, so they charged me one dollar instead (the two aren’t equal!). Of course I have no idea what North Koreans pay for anything, but foreigners are kept so isolated that our prices didn’t seem to follow any rules. Sometimes they were reasonable (a bottle of water was about $0.30), and sometimes it was just ridiculous: a cameraman followed us around and filmed us over the entire ten days, and then put a (single) DVD together that we could buy at the end – for 70 DOLLARS.

We saw a few cool things that I don’t have any pictures of (because they wouldn’t let us). One was Kumsusan Memorial Palace, where Kim Il Sung lived and where his body now lies in state. North Koreans idolize Kim Il Sung as their hero and savior from the world’s evil forces, and as the ‘Eternal President’ he is still considered to be the leader of the country. His palace is such a trip: it’s gigantic and has no windows; you have to dress very nicely, go through security, walk on a shoe-cleaning device, and go through a machine that blasts you with wind to blow the dust off; and you have to stand for miles of horizontal escalators, go up and down staircases, and stand in lines of four, being very serious and quiet, to get up to Kim. You first file through the “Hall of Lamentations,” listening to a headset and looking at statues depicting the country’s grief after Kim’s death (I remember something about ‘tears so hot that they crystallized into diamonds upon hitting the floor’). When you finally get to the viewing chamber, you silently walk around the body, bowing once on either side and also at his feet (NOT at the head). Then you’re out and breathing freely again. At the end you can see Kim Il Sung’s huge collection of medals, diplomas, and honors. It looks like there’s something from every country, including a few from the U.S.

Another really cool place was the International Friendship Exhibition. We took a day trip to Mt. Myohyang, a really beautiful mountain and resort area about 150k from Pyongyang. While there, we visited the I.F.E., Pyohon Temple, and Ryongmun Cave. The International Friendship Exhibition was amazing. There are two huge wings, one housing every gift given to Kim Il Sung, and one with everything given to Kim Jong Il. Both wings were just gigantic mazes, organized geographically, but we were running short of time so we saw a tiny fraction of the gifts. Some were strange or funny, but a lot of the gifts were so beautiful – cultural relics and antiques or traditional crafts representing the various countries. It was the coolest, most unique museum I’ve ever been to, and I could have spent days inside. Here’s probably the most infamous thing in the whole museum, given to Kim Il Sung from the Sandinistas:

Also, we had to wear protective covers over our shoes, like in hospitals!

At almost every tourist site we visited, we were told EXACTLY how many times either Kim Il Sung, or Kim Jong Il, or both of them, had visited it. It seems that a big part of leading the DPRK is being a universal expert and offering your ‘on-the-spot guidance’ on every topic under the sun. We could get copies of Pyongyang’s weekly English newspaper, to see where Kim Jong Il had been that week – usually an industrial complex or company or government office that was in dire need of his on-the-spot guidance that would result in some radical and amazing benefit.

Please note how carefully I followed the instructions: fold the paper in thirds, so there isn't a crease over Kim Jong Il's face. Also, when I was done with my extra copies, I left them on the table in the hotel room rather than throwing them in the trash. I'm sure they're framed in a maid's room by now.

As for my pictures, I just made one (gigantic) album, so I'm waiting until I’m done writing about the DPRK to post the link. I don’t feel like writing about every single thing, because it’s just too much and not all of it is interesting. Quite often, the actual place, memorial, museum or whatever we had to see was boring or repetitive; but the spirit and logic behind it, hearing about the hows and whys of its being built, or hearing about what North Koreans thought and felt about it, was really interesting! I will write about my two favorites, the Mass Games and Mt. Paekdu, plus a bit about the propaganda and cult of personality in the DPRK.