Day 2, Wednesday May 1, 2002:

Day 2 was busy!
So busy in fact, that I won't be able to give all the details on all the monuments we saw. Please click the links for further information.

All day we had the most glorious sunshine and by the evening I was quite red. You couldn't wish for a better day to see all the important monuments of the city and enjoy an open-air spectacular in the evening. Yes, today we would see the Arirang performance that the NK had been advertising since August of last year. Due to KIS's 90th birthday and KJI's 60th (and to some extend steal the thunder from the Football World Cup in SK later in the year), it would be the biggest mass game extravanganza ever staged.

But let's do things in order.

First destination in the morning was Mangyongdae, just outside of Pyongyang. KIS was born here in 1912 and the huts where he lived have been preserved, beautified and are now considered one of the most important national sites. As it was May 1st, it was a public holiday and the place was packed!

Mangyongdae. The birthplace of KIS is just to the right, behind the trees.

The lady guide showed us the three huts in which KIS and his parents lived. There was just enough time to take a couple of snaps, but we didn't linger too long as the crowds behind us were waiting for their turn. The huts were small and neat with few bits of furniture and farming tools. There were numerous memorial plaques all over the site, indicating where KIS had first thought of the liberation of the fatherland, beaten his peers and elders at all sports and thus steeled his resolve etc etc.

They read something like this:
"When he was a little boy, the Great Leader climbed up this tree, trying to catch a rainbow that sparkled over the Taedong river. It was then that the farsighted idea of revolution for the country's future liberation took shape in his brain."
"This well was sometimes used by the revolutionary family of our respected and beloved Great Leader Kim Il Sung."
"While playing children's games on this rock in the shape of a warship, the Great Leader expanded his plans to drive out the Japanese imperialists in the future."
"Jumping down from this rock with his childhood friends, the Great Leader, the honourable Kim Il Sung, perfected his intellect."

Everything was immaculately clean and well tended to. The grass was green and lush.
We walked up to a pavilion where we admired the view that gave Mangyongdae its name, "Place of 10,000 Views". We were almost alone in the pavilion and did hardly see any NK up there.

Next was planned the Mangyongdae Funfair, but we skipped it in view of a full schedule and because the venue after would be another funfair anyway, the one at Taesong.

What simple pleasures! None of the noisy fairground rides you see in the west, with music blaring and flashing lights and electronics everywhere. Here we had swings, tug-of-war, a very sedate ferris wheel and a rollercoaster without loops. I thought it was lovely! Everybody seemed to be enjoying themselves greatly and we were free to wander around and take pictures as we pleased.

Taesong Funfair

My only gripe would be the throw-rocks-at-the-Americans booth. American soldiers painted onto a wall, each with broken limbs, against a background of flames and apparently dying, with holes in their chests. Eager children and teenagers would throw wooden bullets (the size of eggs) at them. It didn't look as if prizes were to be won. That booth was a bit much I thought, but considering where I was, I shouldn't be too surprised. Another thing, but I didn't see it myself, I am told we were followed around by official-looking people with notepads...

Anyway, back onto the bus and off to lunch, but not before we had a quick look at the Kumsusan Memorial Palace (details), where KIS had his office and now lies in state for perpetuity. The building is monumental in scale, with an even more enormous forecourt of some 400 x 200m. Massive slogans on either side read "The Great Leader Comrade Kim Il Sung Will Always Be With Us." A corridor leads into the building on the left, that is more than 1 kilometre long!
The entire area is spotlessly clean, the grass is trimmed and the plants are watered. We weren't allowed into the Palace, only Koreans and foreign VIPs are, but still, I was impressed!

Kumsusan Memorial Palace

Children at Kumsusan Memorial Palace

This and so many other monuments were built on an enormous scale, because Pyongyang was virtually destroyed after the 1950-53 Korean War and completely rebuilt. That's why the roads are six to 10 lanes wide. They may have had no cars (and still don't!), but they had the space, so that's what they did.

We asked our guide Mr K, if we could go to the 'International Bookshop'. As we went past, we quickly stopped to check if it was open, but, it being a public holiday, unfortunately it wasn't. To make the stop worthwhile we got permission to take photos of a traffic lady instead. There is too little traffic in NK to justify wasting electricity on traffic lights, so shapely young ladies are chosen and trained to act as traffic wardens. It was amusing to watch her twirl. I'm sure she didn't know what to make of almost 20 people suddenly pointing their cameras at her!

Off to have lunch on a river boat, right between KIS Square and the Tower of the Juche Idea. The food was plentyful and very good. The two contraptions on the table are little grills, onto which we put the meat. We would have barbecue again for dinner on day 6. More food was brought during the meal and we really could not finish it all. I felt rather guilty all through the week at the amount of food that we were unable to eat, knowing that other parts of the country suffer from famine.
For more on what food was being served at meal times see Day 5.

Lunch

The boat soon started a short roundtrip to the other side of the river, then towards our hotel and back to base. As I said, the weather was glorious and we sat on the upper deck under a canapee with a light breeze. The views were wonderful, the bluest sky you could imagine, a bit of music in the background and plenty of food and drink. I particularly liked seeing the shifting fore- and background of boats and trees and buildings moving against each other. My video camera was doing overtime!

The next stop was quite literally that, namely the Pyongyang Metro. We took a short ride from 'Revival' (Puhung Station) to 'Glory' (Yonggwang Station). The platforms are huge, with marble columns and chandeliers, inspirational music plays as you're coming down the escalators. You may have seen the mosaics that adorn the walls, they're fantastic! Everything was spotlessly clean as always.
The carriages themselves are rather dark inside with just a couple of weak lamps providing light. I read somewhere that the train that took us from Sinuiju to Pyongyang was Swiss-made, and the underground trains originated from East Germany. I would refer you to the excellent Pyongyang Metro site for further technical information.

One of our group got chatted to during the short ride. This was probably the closest we got to making contact with the locals. On exiting, a little man couldn't believe his luck when we all stormed his table, where he sold the Pyongyang Metro booklet.
The platforms are very deep down and we saw three big shafts for security doors, so no doubt the underground doubles up as bombshelter in an emergency.

Yonggwang Metro Station

And on we went.

The Tower of the Juche Idea was next. For more details on the architecture click here, suffice to say here that it embodies the country's philosophy of Self-Reliance. It's the highest stone tower in the world and the number of stones used is the same as the number of days KIS lived. Seventy tiers and seventy flower ornaments represent his age. I love all this stuff! After a quick tour around it with a guide and plenty of photos later we went to the gift shop and up to the viewing platform just underneath the flame. I had seen Andy Kershaw on Channel 4's Travelog (1995) with a model of the tower. I wanted one, but unfortunately there were none I liked. Only a plastic contraption, very cheap looking, that they wanted $15 for. For once I passed on an opportunity to buy kitsch.
The views from the top were great and went on for miles. The Ryugyong Hotel stuck out of the skyline like a sore thumb (see Day 1), but I loved the river and the two enormous fountains on either side of the tower, blowing water up to 150m in the air.

Tower of the Juche Idea

View from the Juche Tower towards the May Day Stadium

 

The Monument of the Party Foundation (details) was next on the schedule. It's rather newer than most monuments, completed only in 1995. The hammer, sickle and pen represent the workers, farmers and intellectuals. There are murals inside the outer ring and it looks better in real life than on photos.
The lady guide spoke of her dream of becoming a Party member. To her KIS is her father and she wanted to work for him, so she chose a job at this monument. Good for her!
I think this was the only monument we saw without a gift shop...

Monument to Party Foundation

 

Back onto the bus, to the Arch of Triumph (details). It's three meters higher than its counterpart in Paris (of course) and erected on the site, where KIS held a speech after the liberation of the fatherland in 1945. There was little traffic, so we just wandered onto the road to take pictures. The structure was impressive, with various rooms inside, but we weren't able to go see them. The KIS Stadium is right next door, but we didn't get close.

That's me in front of the Arch of Triumph

 

That out of the way, yet another bus trip. We were headed for the Pyongyang Circus, where we would enjoy outstanding acrobatics (we saw no trained animals, but I've seen photos of a dog act). There's an annual Circus Festival in Monaco on the French mediterranean coast and I had read that the North Koreans have won medals there on several occasions. I'm not surprised, what we saw was quite remarkable! Jugglers and a rope-skipping act were first, followed by a girl, who would lie on her back and juggle up to five balls with her feet. Especially the piece where she bounces a ball up a pole with five platforms and a basketball net at the top sticks in my memory. More balancing acts on a swing and on tubes, plus a magician who I should see a couple of days later on TV, performing the same trick. The clowns were good and we got a bit of audience participation as well with them. The show closed with a high trapeze act. Plenty of Oohs and Aahs from the crowd, but they didn't do much for me...

Back to the hotel for dinner, a quick rinse and change of clothes, because we finally arrived at the highlight of the tour, the Arirang Mass Games.

Arirang, the quiet before the storm!

This 90 minute spectacular is a showcase of what NK does best - Gymnastic Mass Exhibitions. It's held at the May Day Stadium, at 150,000 seats the world's largest! (Out of interest, second and third are the Azadi stadium in Teheran at 128,000 seats and Rio's legendary Maracana stadium at 122,268 seats, even though the latter has crammed as many as 199,854 spectators in at the 1950 World Cup match between Brazil and Uruguay).

 

	Arirang Mass Games

So good in fact are the NK at mass games that their expertise might be enlisted in the 2008 Olympics' opening ceremony. Thousands upon thousands of participants on the ground, plus another 20,000 or so school children on the seats opposite, all with coloured placards that are raised to form gigantic murals. Scenes depicted are of course KIS, flowers, agriculture, children, soldiers, workers, landscapes etc. It's is absolutely fascinating to watch the warm-up before the show, when they form geometric patterns and practice the timing of the transitions.

All through the show I did not see a single mistake and person standing or running out of line. We saw men, women and children, male and female soldiers and even parachutists, all performing in perfect unison. The scenes played out related entirely to NK achievements, the exploits of KIS and KJI and the reunification of North and South. Especially the latter were actually quite moving.
To quote the Korean Central News Agency of June 10, 2002: "The audience was struck with deep admiration at its high ideological and artistic value, refined skill of performers, its peculiar setting and ever-changing background scenes."

Closing scene of the Arirang performance

Have a look at the photos above for some idea what the show was like.

The time spent practicing (since August 2001) must run into hundreds of millions of individual man hours. It is quite staggering. Just think how this time could have been spent more productively on farming and industry. It is also significant to note the complete disappearance of the individual within the group. The Arirang programme actually gives names of principal dancers, but that's about 20 out of 100,000 nameless creatures. To top it all off, had KJI been in attendance, at the end of the show all the audience and all the actors and dancers on the ground would have been turning towards him, applauding him.

Unfortunately, this was the only instance where I was not allowed to use my video camera, which really annoyed me. Never mind the fact that the batteries in my JVC were almost dead anyway from a hard day's filming, I really wanted to see this and keep a record of it. Luckily, it would appear that there will be a video of the show, which I MUST have! Either the ever-helpful tour organiser can get one for me, or there is Rainbow Trading in Japan, who sell NK merchandise.

On the way back to the hotel we dimmed the lights in the bus and our tour guides regaled us with Korean folk songs. Mr K sang 'Arirang' and Ms R 'My Friend'. It was certainly different, sitting there in the dark, many miles from home, driving through a dark and strange city and having North Koreans sing for us...
We passed thousands of pedestrians, all walking back home.

Those with more energy than me checked out the Chinese-run casino in the hotel. It's entirely for foreigners, no NK would see such decadence. It's all a bit surreal and you wonder how they find the staff to go to work here and how long for their work placement is.
There was also a Karaoke bar and a sauna. M told me later that he spoke to one of the managers in the bar, who would helpfully point out to him the prostitutes.

top of the page

for search engines: north korea, holiday, travel, Nordkorea, Nord Korea, travelog, diary, Reisebericht, Arne Eilers, Pyongyang, Panmunjom, dprk, pjongjang, koryo, chosun, urlaub