DPRK: Various Monuments

The day’s itinerary was, as usual, laid out before us, but the weather made it less than appealing. We were to stop for a photograph of the Three Charters Monument, visit the Great Leader’s birthplace, visit an open air sculpture park, visit the Pyongyang Metro, visit the Great Leader’s monument (also in the open), go to a fairground to celebrate the Leader’s birthday. Not a promising list for such a day.

We did stop at the services and again for the Three Charters photo opportunity, miraculously in a very brief gap in the worst of the rain, but by the time we reached Mangyondae, the birthplace of the Leader, it was pouring again.

Clearly we could not miss out such an important place but our visit was as brief as it’s possible to be, a fifteen minute tour of the main bit with a guide explaining about Kim Il Sung’s early life and then back onto the bus.

It was still raining hard when we reached our next stop - the Pyongyang Metro. Anyone who hasn't seen this kind of overblown communist architecture might be wondering why on Earth we would want to visit the metro. I wondered myself until we got in there. We were allowed, accompanied of course, to ride the metro for one stop so we saw two stations. They were designed and built with an opera-house grandeur. There was more of that marble everywhere. There were rows of elaborate, multicoloured crystal chandeliers. There were massive murals of workers, of the Great and Dear Leaders, of revolutionary scenes. The metro itself on the other hand, though efficient enough could hardly be considered a model of modern comfort; the design of it, with it's hard leather seats and harsh lighting reminded me of the kind of buses and trains we had in the UK maybe forty years ago when I was at school.The weather had eased a bit once more by the time we reached the Great Leader’s statue. This is twenty three metres high and is, according to our guides, solid bronze. Given that a 10cm cube of bronze weighs about eight kilograms then a metre cube of bronze would weigh about 8000 kg and such a statue would, I estimate, weigh about two million kilograms.

I didn’t do that calculation at the time but, suspicious of this “fact” I did ask the question. I was told that the statue weighs “as much as the hearts of all the people of Korea”.

Actually the statue is, political ideology apart, extremely impressive. It isn’t just the statue of the leader, it is flanked by two enormous reliefs representing the flag of the country and the revolutionary struggle. There is no need for such an obvious and transparent fiction. It’s wonder enough without it.

After that it was back to the hotel where we had lunch in the revolving restaurant that sits at the very top of the structure looking out over the city. Lunch was excellent though for once my mushroom allergy got me the better deal. Instead of a vegetable soup (containing mushrooms) I was given a bowl of truly delicious pumpkin soup which was quite the nicest thing I had eaten in days.

In view of the weather we were also presented with a new itinerary for the rest of the day. After freshening up and changing into slightly smarter clothes we were to head out for the Sate Symphony Hall to see and hear a concert by the Korean Sate Symphony Orchestra, follow that with a visit to the annual flower festival celebrating Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il, stop briefly for some more photographs of monuments then finish the day with a traditional Korean duck barbecue in a restaurant.