DPRK: The Great Study Hall of the People

As we had been told at the trip briefing the next day's itinerary didn't exactly match the published one. We were re-briefed on it over breakfast. We were to visit the People's Study House, the Korean Folklore Museum, the Military Museum, the Pueblo spy ship and the Victorious Fatherland Liberation War Monument. The name of this last attraction being the North Korean name for what we refer to as the Korean War. It started to dawn on people that our days were going to be kept so full that we would have neither the opportunity nor the energy to wander off into areas we weren't supposed to see.

First up was the Grand People's Study House. All countries, whatever their political leanings, like to show their best face to the world. When I have overseas visitors you can be sure that there are areas of Wolverhampton and Birmingham that I'll steer them away from. There are places in both cities that I'd think twice about going myself. So it's hardly a surprise if the Korean authorities want to do the same. Almost all of the things we were to see in the coming week were either cultural showpieces or modern historic buildings that were intended to put the unconventional North Korean view of twentieth century history.

Given that Pyongyang had been completely flattened by the end of the Korean War and has been totally rebuilt since - mostly in a blocky, lego-brick, brutalist style - the Grand People's Study House is a bit of a surprise to look at. It fills the west side of Kim Il Sung square and has been built in a mock classical style with green-tiled saddle roofs and columned storeys that diminish in size like the layers of a wedding cake.

Inside the first thing you see, reminiscent of the famous Lincoln statue is a statue of Kim Il Sung, the Great Leader, seated in a marble pillared hall. The Study House isn't a school as such, more a centre where adults go to learn about computers, learn foreign languages and obtain additional knowledge and information. It houses a library and many classrooms including those dedicated to teaching the political philosophy of North Korea - the Juche ideology. We were, as I'd expected, taken round a number of rooms to see what was going on.

In one room students were busy at computers, though not connecting to the internet as would be the case in an English classroom. In another we saw, and briefly participated in, an English class being taught. We spoke to them in turn to demonstrate our accents. Slightly more ironic, or perhaps subversive, was the fact that as we entered they were learning English proverbs and the one being practiced was "Walls have ears". From there we went on to speak with a Doctor of Philosphy, Dr Lee Sung Chal and to visit a room where a curious assortment of books donated by the Dear Leader, Kim Jong Il, could be seen.
Overall two things struck me about the place. One was how wastefully built it was with marble staircases, huge, echoing cold corridors and that fanciful external look. The other was a kind of touchingly naive pride in the facilities which were, by western standards really rather primitive and old-fashioned: old computers, a part computerised/part card index system, students learning to speak English in wooden booths by repeating back phrases read to them by the teacher. I found myself reminded of the film Brazil, a dystopian nightmare of bureaucracy and control.

Out on one of the terraces we could look out on the square. We could, we were told, take pictures of the square and of the view to the north but were not to point our cameras towards the south. I wasn't sure why, though someone with a map speculated that it might be because there were ministerial dwellings in that direction.

After visiting the Study House we moved on to the three-storey, Korean Folk Museum, which gives a picture of life in pre-revolutionary Korea. The guide spoke excellent English and did her best to inject some interest into the static displays of artefacts in glass cases but it was something of a losing battle. After a while it all blurred into one and the ban on photography in the museum didn't help.


I was quite glad to leave and get back outside for our next, brief, visit to a stamp shop. Here, in addition to postcards and stamps to send home, there was a wide variety of commemorative stamps available, as sets,or in presentation slip cases or even bound into books. One especially interesting book told the history of the modern DPRK in stamps. I bought a couple of posters showing revolutionary stamps for my wall. This particular set reproduced the colourful but sinister posters that can be seen around the city showing smiling uniformed people holding guns in the air, or happy cheerful uniformed workers building bridges or pylons.
After half an hour in there it was time to go for lunch.