Having visited South Korea in the past, I noticed that shared cultural traits persevere despite the two nations’ divided political systems. For instance, in Peony Hill Park we encountered a wedding, and the bride was wearing the traditional Choson-ot Korean dress, just as you’d see in South Korea. Meals were similar too – as in South Korea, the norm here is to eat communally with multiple dishes; we ate classics familiar from the South, such as cook-your-own duck bulgogi (barbecue) and kimchi (fermented pickle), which appeared with every meal – even breakfast.
Sometimes the leash loosened. We joined commuters for a five-station ride on Pyongyang’s stunningly ornate subway – much like Moscow’s, with chandeliers, marble pillars and revolutionary murals. At the retro Mangyongdae Funfair, we rode the rollercoaster as out-of-town Koreans, unused to foreigners, called ‘M Hao’ (Hello in Chinese). This particular foreign imperialist then reassured a watching crowd of the West’s military capability by missing all ten shots on the air-rifle shooting range.
Heritage big hitters – After exploring Pyongyang, we drove 2.5 hours south down a deserted freeway to near Kaesong, where tensions manifest between the two Koreas along the Demilitarised Zone (DMZ). We broke the journey at the Hyonjongrung Tombs. With North Korea so couched in anti-imperialist dogma it’s easy to overlook the fact that several millennia of royal rule once unified Korea. The grass-mound tombs of King Kongmin (1351-1374), 31st monarch of the Koryo Dynasty (AD 918-1392), and his Mongolian wife, rest on a wooded hillside. Carved stone sentinels of soldiers and scholars guard them – although they failed miserably to stop the Japanese looting the tombs in 1905.
Guide2 explained that feng shui determined the tombs’ location: “If the king didn’t like the choice he would kill those who chose it.” Absolutism runs through Korean history. Former royal capital Kaesong has other UNESCO World Heritage-listed treasures such as a private Confucian school, where a museum hosts exquisite centuries-old celadon ceramics and brass weaponry. The Ri Dynasty (1392-1905) is represented in the 14th-century Namdae Gate, with its 14-tonne bronze bell adorned with Buddhist iconography Buddhism persists in North Korea, Guidel told us. I suggested that this seemed unlikely. “Oh yes,” Guidel insisted. “We have these monks. They are old. I have heard them chanting… blah, blah, blah. They sound really boring.”
“We will destroy them” A further 8km from Kaesong is the DMZ at Panmunjom: the world’s most militarised border. At Panmunjom’s briefing centre, another soldier-guide with an exaggeratedly peaked cap explained that the DMZ stretches 246km across the Korean peninsula and is roughly 4km wide. His rhetoric ramped up nicely: “No heavy weaponry or aggressive actions are allowed inside the DMZ,” he said, “but the South Koreans ignore this.” We were marched towards the Armistice Hall, where an end to the Korean War was negotiated in 1953. An American tourist (being slightly risque) asked, “Why wasn’t your great Kim Il-sung here for the armistice signing?” “Why wasn’t your President Eisenhower here?” the guide retorted.
Touche. In the Joint Security Area, the border itself runs through several blue huts; inside, I crossed the border by circumnavigating a meeting table. South Korean flags were flying but there was no sign of their troops. Meanwhile, the soldier-guide posed awkward questions to us. “What do they say about us in your country?” he barked. “Err… well… Of course, we recognise you have a very different system, and…” I was rambling. Would a careless response land me on the first plane home? “Why does your country take part in aggressive actions towards North Korea?” he continued. I blathered on about paranoia of communism and not judging people by their political masters. He laughed. He’d heard it all before and knew exactly what the West’s view was on North Korea. “If the Americans ever try to invade we will destroy them with one-party unity and reunify Korea by force,” he ended, chillingly.
Life on the farm – The most striking impression gained by speeding around the countryside south of Pyongyang on a tour bus was of an intensely agrarian society. Every inch of flatland in this mountainous nation coalesces into a watery horizon of rice paddies. We saw labour-intensive work details (often soldiers) weeding the paddies; there were more ox-driven ploughs than tractors; loud mobile speakers exhorted workers with rousing music. Farm villages rose out of the paddies; each had its own obligatory obelisk, inscribed with the sayings of Kim Il-sung alongside billboards of him dispensing advice to farmers. Our tour included an undoubtedly polished insight into rural life by visiting a 6.5 sq km collective farm called Tun Tan towards Wonsan. Kim, a woman in her 50s, guided us around geometrically neat paddies that fluttered with red flags. We visited a community shop selling dried persimmon, and a school where children waited to sing for us. She told us that ten villages form this collective, arranged into teams with production quotas.
They keep 60% of their rice to share among the workforce while the state buys 40% for distribution. Like all North Koreans we met, Kim dutifully recalled Kim Il-sung’s words and deeds with biblical devotion. “He came here 50 years ago and described our collective as paradise,” she purred. “He asked us how many fruits on this persimmon tree? We said 500 but he insisted 800. We counted 803 and were amazed.” She said they would work hard to increase productivity for when Marshal Kim Jong-un visited. Kim also took us into her frugal little house, which was swathed by her own, much-loved garden of aubergines and cabbages. She showed us pictures of her family and told us with pride – like any mother – about her children’s university education.
A face to the name – In North Korea’s deep south-west is Mt Kumgang National Park. The North shares the park with South Korea – though pink-tracksuited hiking guide, Dae, insisted that the DPRK has the most beautiful side. Kumgang’s rocky mountainsides were draped in forests of magnolia, maple and pine, and incised by serene gullies with natural swimming holes named things like ‘floating jade’. The pathway was inscribed with beautiful Japanese and Korean calligraphy left by Ri Dynasty Buddhist pilgrims en route to the 74m-high Kuryong Waterfall where nine mythological dragons are said to inhabit the plunge pool. Modern hotels near Kumgang sit idly empty. A tall, green, wire fence hems the road all the way to the South Korean border at Sokcho.
For a decade until 2008, during an interlude in hostilities, South Koreans arrived here to be reunited with relatives they hadn’t seen since partition in the 50s. The shooting of a South Korean tourist curtailed this accord in 2008. Exiting North Korea I wondered for how much longer travellers would have the opportunity to witness this anachronism of totalitarian communism, elsewhere confined to the footnotes of 20th-century history? It is easy to revile and laugh at North Korea from afar but it felt right to have visited, to put human faces and emotions to some of those who have to live in this state.
Service 51 departed Pyongyang Railway Station for the 1,349km train journey to Beijing. For five hours we trundled westwards, past glassy rice paddies, to the border at Sinuiju. At immigration, the guard shook our leader Julia’s hand and politely said goodbye; no one had their camera memory cards deleted. Crossing the bridge over the River Yalu into China, the neon glass-fronted waterfront of Dandong gleamed with economic progress. Looking out I saw Dandong’s traffic jams and thriving free enterprise. Just five hours away – but a different world.
