My Visit to North Korea, Part 2
When you arrive in North Korea, there’s a sense of unreality about it. I suspect even Bill Clinton, when he climbed out his private jet onto the tarmac at Pyongyang, must have wondered to himself, “Is this really happening? Am I actually here?” For most of us, North Korea seems to occupy the same imaginary plane of existence as Mordor. I live in Beijing, and the concrete realization that the DPRK is a real place just a short hour and a half flight away — even though I’d known it all along in theory — came as quite a shock. Showing up at the Beijing airport and checking into my flight felt like that scene in Harry Potter where the plain brick walls of King’s Cross station give way to reveal a hidden platform with a magic train to whisk him off to Hogwarts.
In response to Part 1 of my story, many readers where curious to know what the North Koreans we encountered were really thinking behind their fearful and fearsome stares. From the few glimpses we were able to gather, what is life really like there, and what do people think of the outside world? I’m going explore these questions in future posts, and try to offer a few possible insights. But for the moment, let’s take a while to revel in the surreal “down the rabbit hole” quality of those first few hours in Pyongyang. And the best place to do that is at the hotel where we stayed.
Foreign tourists to North Korea pose a problem. The government wants their money, and needs them to show off at the Mass Games, but it certainly doesn’t want foreigners walking the streets and talking to random citizens. If only it could stick them somewhere, like on an island — which is exactly what they’ve done. The Yanggakdo International Hotel is a 47-story tower (one of the tallest in Pyongyang) located on an island in the middle of the Taedong River which bisects the city. The only links to the city are a single, heavily guarded steel bridge on either side, which guests are not permitted to cross. Even on the grounds surrounding the hotel itself, you must have an escort.
The hotel and its rooms are basic but fairly comfortable. You can even, believe it or not, watch BBC on your TV. (The local guides and minders also stay at the hotel, but on separate floors that do not have BBC. We asked one of our minders, who seemed relatively well-informed about world events, whether he had ever watched CNN or BBC, and he said — quite ingenuously — that he had never done so). As for the bed, I came away with a cluster of three angry red flea bites that itched horrendously for weeks afterwards.
