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2 A breach in North Korea's iron
curtain By Andrei Lankov
Last December 5, when the Hyundai Asan
group, a South Korean company specializing in
business interaction with North Korea, launched a
new tourist program, it did not attract much
attention in the media. However, this was an event
of historic importance, with far-reaching social
and political implications.
South Koreans
are now allowed to visit the historic North Korean
city of Kaesong, located just 60 kilometers to the
North from Seoul.
This is a one-day trip:
had the Korean Peninsula not been divided in 1945,
Kaesong would probably have become a part of
greater Seoul a long time ago. The tourists start
border-crossing at
7:30am, by 10am they arrive
at their first stop at the Pakyon waterfalls. Then
they have a sumptuous lunch, tour the city and at
about 5pm cross back to the South. The established
daily quota of visitors is 300, and tours operate
six days a week.
Tourist exchanges between
the two Koreas began 10 years ago, when in 1998
the picturesque Kumgang mountains were partially
opened for South Korean tourists. However, the
Kumgang project, still much trumpeted in the press
as a symbol of reconciliation and cooperation, can
hardly be seen as a good example of tourist
exchanges.
Kumgang is, essentially, a
tourist ghetto. The local population has been
evicted and the area fenced off. Life within the
high fences is not much different from some
tourist resorts in the South. To protect their
subjects from dangerous knowledge about South
Korean economic prosperity, the North Korean
authorities allow only a limited number of
carefully checked people to work inside the
closely guarded perimeter.
The majority of
these employees come from China, being hired among
the Chinese Koreans (incidentally, these workers
are not allowed to leave the area as well).
Therefore, tourists' interaction with North
Koreans is almost non-existent: at most they can
make small talk with the so-called "mountain
guide" - a nice euphemism for a secret police
officer supervising the visitors. Of North Korean
life, they see nothing.
And commercially
speaking, the Kumgang project is hardly a success.
Hyundai Asan's early estimates were grossly
inflated. In 1999, a company representative
predicted that by 2004 the annual number of
visitors would reach 1.2 million. Actually, as
recently as 2007, merely 350,000 tourists had been
to the Kumgang area.
Kumgang is located
far enough from Seoul and other major urban
centers for one to have to spend at least three
days on the trip. The need to make fixed payments
to North Koreans also drives prices high: about
US$500 per person. So far, the project has
survived only because of the Seoul government's
subsidies and indirect support: the symbol of
inter-Korean cooperation cannot be allowed to go
belly up.
Kaesong tours are different.
Kaesong, with population of merely 150,000, is the
third-largest North Korean city (urbanization is
strictly controlled in North). From the 10th to
the 14th century it was the capital of the Koryo
dynasty, and many historic monuments from that era
have survived. This historic significance is the
major attraction, and it is not incidental that
history teachers form a large part of the
visitors.
However, the present author
would not like to spend too much time describing
the beauty of Pakyon waterfalls or the priceless
ceramics of the Koryo era. I will not spend much
time on thoughts about the heroic death of loyal
Chong Mong-ju, treacherously murdered on the
Sonjukkyo bridge. All these attractions do play a
role in the Kaesong project, but it seems that it
potentially has important social and political
consequences.
The Kaesong tour is the
first project which gives the average South
Korean, Mr Kim or Ms Pak, an opportunity to see a
semblance of North Korean life. Hitherto, only a
handful of South Koreans, most of them government
officials, have been able to visit North Korean
cities. Now, for the first time in 60-odd years, a
very limited opportunity is open for an anybody
who is willing to pay a fee.
Of course,
North Korean authorities went to extraordinary
lengths to prevent any interaction between locals
and visitors. The list of prohibited items is
quite impressive. Tourists cannot take any kind of
printed material, computers and computer
equipment, mobile phones, radios and video
cameras, universal serial bus and other memory
devices. The old film cameras are banned as well.
Only digital cameras are allowed into the North,
since at the border check point North Korean
police officials check every single picture taken
by every single tourist.
The rules for
taking pictures are simple: everything which is
not explicitly allowed is forbidden. Tourists can
take pictures only at designated stops, and only
historical monuments can be depicted. No pictures
of the city streets and local people are allowed
(obviously because the North Korean leaders know
how unflattering those images if seen by South
Koreans).
The only exception is made for
the statues and portraits of Great Leader Kim
Il-sung as well as portraits of Dear Leader Kim
Jong-il. However, those pictures should be taken
with very special care: the images of the great
men should be seen in full, and be placed in
strictly vertical position.
The 10 South
Korean buses, accompanied by a few South Korean
jeeps as well as North Korean police vehicles,
move in a column. Every bus has two North Korean
"guides". These are men in their late 20s and 30s,
remarkably fit and equipped with walkie-talkies.
One "guide" stands in front of the bus, while
another takes a seat at the back. On stops, they
make sure that none of the tourists venture more
than a couple of meters from the designated path.
Uniformed and armed policemen are placed
at regular intervals along the entire route. When
buses stop at a designated spot, the police cordon
does not allow locals to approach closer than 100
meters (well, not quite: in some cases locals are
allowed to use another side of a broad street).
A Hyundai Asan representative explains
that tourists should avoid any political
arguments, should not express disrespect or irony
when they hear obligatory references to the Great
Leader or Dear Leader, should generally avoid any
comparisons between life in the North and South.
They are briefed on the questions they are not
supposed to ask, like: "Why are all North Korean
mountains so bare and devoid of trees?" (As a
result of a highly successful reforestation
program in the 1960s and 1970s, South Korean
mountains, once also barren, are now covered with
thick forest).
Even the official name of
the South Korean state, "Hanguk", cannot be used
in conversations with North Koreans: it should be
refereed to in purely geographic terms as the
"South".
This might not sound like a
depiction of a freewheeling tourist adventure, but
compared to what we have seen before, the Kaesong
tours are a giant step forward. Most tourist
objects are located within the downtown area, so
on their way to museums, bridges and shrines the
South Koreans traverse the rather small city a
number of times.
The visitors cannot take
photos, but they still can see how the North
Korean city lives. From my own experience in North
Korea, it seems clear that the city Kaesong was
not especially prepared for such operations: there
might have been a bit of painting and cleaning
here and there, but in general visitors see an
authentic North Korean town of the more affluent
type.
Talks with fellow travelers on my
own trip as well as a look through Internet blogs
whose authors share impressions about their
Kaesong adventures create a surprisingly coherent
picture. Two features are recurrent.
First, tourists are surprised to discover
how close the North actually is. With almost no
contacts between the two Koreas, the inhabitants
of the South have come to perceive the North as
something distant and irrelevant. Of course, they
know that their capital city Seoul, home to
roughly half of the entire South Korean
population, sits right on the border. But this is
sort of abstract knowledge for most of them.
Therefore, the geographic proximity comes as a
discovery and makes people realize that North
Korean problems are more relevant than they
normally think.
Second, South Koreans are
struck by North Korean poverty. Once again, they
have heard about it. Gone are the times when Seoul
leftists fantasized about the North as a land of
great affluence and material comfort. However,
there is a remarkable difference between knowing
something from books and seeing this with one's
own eyes.
South Koreans are astonished to
see a city without cars, but with an occasional
oxcart on its major street. They are shocked by
the obviously low quality of housing and do not
fail to notice that some windows are covered with
vinyl instead of glass. They are surprised by the
abundance of Kim Jong-il and Kim Il-sung portraits
as well as by the ubiquitous slogans painted
everywhere - and sometimes deeply carved on the
slopes of picturesque mountains. Many people
compare what they saw with a set for a movie about
South Korea in the early 1970s, though some older
people say the sight rather reminds them of the
1960s.
Most visitors perceive North
Koreans as "badly dressed", even though in recent
years the quality and affordability of winter
clothing has increased remarkably - thanks to
cheap Chinese imports. They also notice that North
Koreans look older than people of their age in the
South. The difference in height between the
inhabitants of the two Koreas is also noticeable:
southerners born after 1970 enjoyed protein-rich
diets from their childhood, while their North
peers grew up when the food situation in their
country moved from difficult to disastrous.
Reports leave no doubt that most people
come back with an unflattering image of the North.
One of the visitors was laconic when he described
his impressions in two lines: "Have been in
Kaesong. What a melancholic place! I realized that
our system is a hundred times better." Another
blogger wrote: "Did not really see much of North
Korean life. But it is still clear that they are
very poor and backward."
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