Read Part 2 and Part 3 of Tomas Van Houtryve's "Journey to North Korea."
Descending into the subway in Pyongyang.
In 2007 and 2008, photojournalist Tomas Van Houtryve visited North Korea past infiltrating a communist-solidarity delegation. In the 2d story of his 3-part TIME.com series, Van Houtryve describes the surveillance he was subjected to and the baroque majesty of the mausoleum of Kim Il Sung.
After dinner at the end of my 2d day, I was pulled aside by my guides. The interrogation lasted for four hours. The near grim-looking of our minders, Mr. Chung (I accept changed the names of my North Korean minders for their protection), was the bad cop. "We Koreans are very open and hospitable people. Look how we open our abode and our hearts to you," said Chung. "But if ever nosotros are betrayed, we take revenge on you and on your family."
Naturally, they were most curious nigh my pictures. Chung explained that I had been taking pictures from the bus when we passed a "undercover military installation" disguised as a normal building. "A soldier saw your photographic camera in the window and called in to report it." I was made to fetch all my memory cards and show the minders every frame. Some were deleted. Unbeknownst to my interrogators, anticipating such an eventuality, I had developed a arrangement to copy and hide the contents of my memory cards. Somehow, I was given the benefit of the dubiety, and eventually I was released.
For the next few days, I managed to remain firmly in character as a compliant pilgrim to the last "socialist paradise." But I began to feel a mounting paranoia from the constant surveillance. I suspected that my hotel room was being watched. The temper certainly didn't encourage relaxation. Located in Pyongyang's sports district, the Sosan Hotel is a three-sided brick skyscraper with 24 floors. The hotel was empty except for our nine-person delegation on the 14th floor. The power was off on all other floors, and at that place was running water for just ii hours a day.
Afterward a few days, we moved to more modern hotel. I searched the room for bugs, non actually knowing what I was looking for, and to my horror discovered a nickel-size black disk with two protruding wires stuck to the dorsum of a mirror over the bed. The North Koreans were listening to me in my sleep.
On a few of our trips around the city, photography was banned, something that almost came as a relief. The most impressive of these unphotographed excursions was to the mausoleum of Kim Il Sung. After his death in 1994, Kim was declared President for Eternity. The windows of his mammoth presidential palace were sealed with white marble, and the entire complex was turned into a monumental tomb that dwarfs the mausoleums of Lenin and Mao.
We had been told to wearable our all-time formal clothes, and we arrived in the first great hall of the palace to the sounds of the "Song of Full general Kim Jong Il," a limerick featuring crashing cymbals and military machine horns. Towering higher up the states was a Lincoln Memorial–size white statue of the President for Eternity. Next was a room commemorating the way the masses reacted to the loss of the Slap-up Leader. Bronze relief panels showed a sea of mourners, their faces twisted in desperation. Over the wail of mourners, a somber vocalisation narrated how "the tears of the people cruel to the globe and turned into diamonds."
Earlier we could enter the room where Kim Il Sung's embalmed body lies in state, nosotros had to be purified. One by ane, we stepped through a narrow chamber. On one side was a head-to-toe banking concern of vacuum nozzles. On the contrary side a banking company of evenly spaced jets shot out air. The inner crypt was bathed in dim ruby-red low-cal. Soldiers with polished silvery Kalashnikovs, bayonets fixed, stood at attending around the body, which glowed faintly nether a thick glass casket. We were instructed to approach Kim in rows of three, bow once at his feet and then bow over again on the right and left sides of the body.
The adjacent room held a collection of all the medals and distinctions that Kim Il Sung was awarded during his rule. Most, like the Order of Lenin, were from the Soviet Marriage and its former vassal states. Only Kim also held on to a coin made to commemorate the 15th anniversary of an agricultural university in Bangkok and a gift plate sent from the communist mayor of a Paris suburb. This wasn't the only time I was to witness the Kims' pack-rat tendencies. One-half a day's drive from Pyongyang is the International Friendship Exhibition, where a vast bronze door leads to an underground cavern blimp with threescore,000 pieces of totalitarian tack — an ivory ashtray from Robert Mugabe, a jewel-encrusted saber from Yasser Arafat, a stuffed crocodile twisted into a human pose and belongings a drink tray from the Sandinistas.
Dorsum in the mausoleum, our bout came to an end when nosotros were shown into a room where ornate guestbooks were laid out on huge desks. Just delegations held in the highest esteem were allowed to sign, said our excited guide. That wasn't to say we could practise so unsupervised: our minders shuttled between the desks, reading as we wrote. Of a sudden, the electricity cutting out. Because all the windows were blocked, we were plunged into darkness. For 10 minutes, nobody said a word. And when the lights came back on, in that location was no acknowledgment, no apology and no explanation.
Read function 1 and part 3 of Tomas Van Houtryve's "Journey to North Korea."
Source: http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1915939,00.html
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