Tuesday, May 20, 2008
More about DPRK
Almost two weeks have now passed since I came home from North Korea but I haven't landed totally yet. The more I think the more absurd and terrifying it is.
When I read blogs and look at pictures on the internet from other people who have been there, I can not help recognizing all places and even most people. The militaries and local guides are the same as I met. It shows, again, that only very few people are trusted so much so they are allowed to meet foreigners.
There are so many enormous monuments and buildings. Palaces. But the people are starving. The electricity supply is poor. In Pyongyang it worked while we were there but outside the capital there were regular power failures.
Pyongyang is a dead city after dark. No sounds from people or cars. No lights, except from some windows (Maybe fifty percent of the windows). No streetlights. The air in the centre of this 3 million people city is totaly fresh. No commarcials, no people who try to sell things. Nothing. Sometimes you see very synchronized people doing mass gymnastic at Kim Il Sung square. Dressed the same, doing the exact same movements at the exact same time. They might have been there only because our tourist group were comming, or maybe not. I don't know. I just know that I don't trust anything I saw. Everything might have been a show. Even though some things looked as they were for real.
The rhetoric and propaganda felt like a parody. Only, it wasn't meant to be. We visited a captured US-ship which was taken by the North koreans in the 60ies when spying outside their coastline. The language in the video they showed was interesting. It was all about the heroic achivements of the People´s army and the Great Leader. I stoped counting the number of times they used "imperialists" after eight times. Then two minutes had passed. The whole video seemed like a parody of war propaganda. The ship is still in the river at the centre of pyongyang.
They are really trying to keep the war memories alive. A bridge from North Korea to China is only half reconstructed after the Korean war. The Chinese built their half but North Korea wanted to keep a broken bridge as a memory of the war. As if they needed one more such memory...
I will write more...
When I read blogs and look at pictures on the internet from other people who have been there, I can not help recognizing all places and even most people. The militaries and local guides are the same as I met. It shows, again, that only very few people are trusted so much so they are allowed to meet foreigners.
There are so many enormous monuments and buildings. Palaces. But the people are starving. The electricity supply is poor. In Pyongyang it worked while we were there but outside the capital there were regular power failures.
Pyongyang is a dead city after dark. No sounds from people or cars. No lights, except from some windows (Maybe fifty percent of the windows). No streetlights. The air in the centre of this 3 million people city is totaly fresh. No commarcials, no people who try to sell things. Nothing. Sometimes you see very synchronized people doing mass gymnastic at Kim Il Sung square. Dressed the same, doing the exact same movements at the exact same time. They might have been there only because our tourist group were comming, or maybe not. I don't know. I just know that I don't trust anything I saw. Everything might have been a show. Even though some things looked as they were for real.
The rhetoric and propaganda felt like a parody. Only, it wasn't meant to be. We visited a captured US-ship which was taken by the North koreans in the 60ies when spying outside their coastline. The language in the video they showed was interesting. It was all about the heroic achivements of the People´s army and the Great Leader. I stoped counting the number of times they used "imperialists" after eight times. Then two minutes had passed. The whole video seemed like a parody of war propaganda. The ship is still in the river at the centre of pyongyang.
They are really trying to keep the war memories alive. A bridge from North Korea to China is only half reconstructed after the Korean war. The Chinese built their half but North Korea wanted to keep a broken bridge as a memory of the war. As if they needed one more such memory...
I will write more...
