wfn.org | North Korea restricts Methodist visitors

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"UNITED METHODIST DAILY NEWS 97" by SUSAN PEEK on April 15, 1997 at 14:24
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Note 504 by UMNS on Dec. 11, 1997 at 16:08 Eastern (9667 characters).

CONTACT: Tim Tanton					      692(10-71B){504}
         Nashville, Tenn. (615) 742-5473      Dec. 11, 1997

Photographer finds access limited in North Korea -– but opportunities abound
to venerate the ‘Great Leader’

Note to readers: Mike DuBose, photojournalist with the United Methodist News
Service, visited North Korea Nov. 11-15 to see how Methodist aid was being
used in flood- and drought-stricken areas. This is his account of the visit.

						a UMNS feature
						by Mike DuBose

	Martial music blared from tinny overhead speakers and passengers burst into
applause when the aging Soviet airliner broke through low-lying fog and
touched down at North Korea’s P’Yongyang International Airport.
	I walked with the other passengers downstairs onto the tarmac beneath a
20-foot portrait of the deceased "Great Leader," President Kim Il Sung, and we
crowded onto shuttle buses for an incomprehensible 30-yard ride to the
terminal.
	Inside, the marble-lined terminal was cold and dark. Row after row of
exquisite chandeliers was turned off, despite the arriving crowd.
	Flush-faced young soldiers, caps pushed back jauntily on their heads, flirted
with girls selling flowers in the lobby.  Had I known what the rest of the
week would bring, I would have taken more time to savor this spontaneous
scene.
	We quickly discovered what the flowers were for. Our guide bought a bunch,
and we headed directly to the Grand Monument on Mansu Hill to lay the bouquet
at the feet of a towering bronze statue of the Great Leader. We were
encouraged to bow before this image of the president, who died in 1994.
     "People in our country have great respect for our Great Leader," the
guide explained. 
	The Great Leader would become our constant companion over the next few days,
smiling down from portraits or staring solemnly from statues and mosaics at
every turn.  His face also adorns the red lapel pins worn by most of the
population.
     I had traveled to North Korea with Larry Powell, United Methodist
Committee on Relief representative, to see how Methodist aid shipments were
being used in areas stricken by flooding and drought. However, we would see
little of the countryside. Our hosts had us on a tight schedule that consisted
primarily of visiting shrines to the Great Leader.

An isolated country  
	From the time the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea was created by an
arbitrary division of the Korean peninsula at the 38th parallel following
World War II, Kim Il Sung was the only political leader the country ever had.
    Kim Il Sung rose to prominence as a guerilla leader fighting Japanese
occupation forces in the 1930s. Forced to flee to the Soviet Union during
World War II, he returned home after the war and eventually became head of
Soviet-backed North Korea. 
     His hold on the people here has eased little since his death. His son,
Kim Jong Il, has inherited some of his mantle and is known as "great leader"
–- without the capital letters accorded to the father.
	North Korean society is almost totally isolated from outside influence and
provides fertile ground for the cult of personality surrounding the Great
Leader.
	P’Yongyang is untouched by the forces of capitalism and consumerism.  It is
one of the few places on earth, certainly one of the few cities of 2 million,
where you will see no commercial advertising of any kind -- not a billboard,
handbill or bus sign. There are no street vendors. Public signs are plentiful
but consist of tributes to the Great Leader, socialist slogans, and portrayals
of brave soldiers and tireless workers.
	Today, this country of 23 million is reluctantly opening its borders to food
shipments and foreign aid workers in an effort to ease the effects of drought
and flooding that have devastated recent harvests.  A great tension exists
between the need for outside help and the government’s desire to retain
control of the people and resist western influence.
	During the five days that Powell and I stayed in North Korea, we saw nothing
unless it met the approval of our "handler," Han Myong Il, assigned by the
government to watch our every move.
	I found P’Yongyang to be a city of incongruities.  In a place where
electricity is so precious that power is often available only on a rotating
basis to homes, where traffic lights are darkened and the intersections
instead staffed with traffic police, and where escalators in the premier hotel
are turned off between passengers, monuments to the Great Leader are bathed in
thousands of watts of light.
	Great, wide streets and six-lane highways carry almost no traffic -- just a
few army trucks and official Mercedes sedans -- yet pedestrians are required
to use tunnels under intersections downtown.
	It was so quiet in P’Yongyang at night, that from the 32nd floor of our
hotel, I heard a rooster crow each day before dawn.
	P’Yongyang is a city crowded with concrete apartments of all shapes and
sizes, many of them 30 or more stories tall.  All have been built new since
the 1950s because, as Han reminded us several times, the "American
Imperialists bombed the city flat" during the war.  Even in the countryside,
collective housing is the norm.  We saw no single-family homes.
	One couldn’t help but be impressed with the cleanliness and orderliness of
society.  Squads of women and schoolchildren swept up fallen leaves on public
sidewalks and gutters.  We didn’t see the first scrap of litter on the streets
anywhere we went.

Tell-tale hands
	Our stay coincided with the annual cabbage harvest.  Cabbages were
everywhere.  It seemed that anything that could carry a load -- army trucks,
wheelbarrows, oxcarts -- was full of cabbages.
	North Korea is very much an agrarian society, and its people -- even city
dwellers -- have strong ties to the land. Farming is managed collectively, but
seasonal labor is brought in from the cities, we were told. Each apartment
provides labor at planting and harvest time at the farm to which it is
assigned, receiving an allotment of cabbage in return.  
	Every North Korean -- even office workers, we were told -- is required to
work in the fields a certain number of days each month.  Handshakes offered in
greeting left no doubt: These people know hard work.
	We made repeated requests to visit people in the affected areas and
recipients of United Methodist aid.
     "That will not be possible today," became Han’s standard reply.
Photography of any but approved subjects was strictly forbidden.
     We were treated, instead, to an education on the Great Leader. We visited
his birthplace, where we were shown a malformed clay pot for beans. This
crooked pot has become a national symbol.
	We were treated to a delightful performance of music and dance by students of
the June 9 School middle school, so named because the Great Leader visited
once on that date to "offer guidance" to the school. The visiting westerners
caused quite a stir, and the young ladies insisted we join them for a dance.
	Afterward, I showed my dance partner a picture of my 4-year-old daughter. 
Tears filled her eyes as she kissed the picture and held it to her heart,
repeating some phrase over and over.  I asked what she said, and was told:
"Round eyes, round eyes." She had never seen anyone with such round, blue
eyes.

Places of worship 
	Our next stop was the "Tower of the Juche Idea" or "Tower of Self-Reliance."
Rising 170 meters above Taedong River in downtown P’Yongyang, the tower was
built in honor of the Great Leader’s 70th birthday in 1982.  It contains more
than 250,000 quarried stones, one for each day of his life. "Juche," otherwise
known as "Kim Il Sungism," is the political philosophy of self-sufficiency and
self-determination that Kim sought to export to other developing nations.  
	There is a large inscription at the base of the tower that we asked to have
translated.  It read "Man is the Master of All Things."	
	The extent to which the Great Leader is worshipped became more fully apparent
when we visited the Presidential Palace, where Kim Il Sung lies in state.
     A 1-kilometer moving sidewalk encased in a marble entry hall delivered a
constant stream of visitors to the palace.  After passing through a wind
tunnel intended to "dehumidify and disinfect" us, we stood before Kim’s body,
enclosed in glass and bathed in the glow of spotlights recessed into the
marble ceiling. We circled the bier slowly, pausing to bow at Kim’s feet and
sides.
	That evening on state television, the lead story of the "newscast" showed
highlights of the day’s visitors to the palace.
	On our last day in North Korea, we were finally able to visit one of the
affected areas.  As we boarded the van for a journey up the western seaboard,
Han cautioned, "It will not be possible to make pictures from the moving
vehicle."
	We turned off the highway onto a country road, passing columns of young
school children in dark blue uniforms, book bags on their backs, marching down
the road with shovels slung over their shoulders. Oxcarts pulled wagons loaded
with cabbage, and a middle-aged woman stooped beside the road to pick the few
dandelion greens growing among a pile of rocks.
	As we went down the back side of a railroad crossing, our van bottomed out
with a thud. Transmission fluid poured from a hole in the pan. Knowing we were
a couple of hours away from help or another ride, I offered a silent
photographer’s prayer of thanks for this opportunity and jumped from the van,
cameras in tow.
     However, Han cut me off with the familiar words that summed up my visit.
     "It will not be possible to make photographs here."
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