DPRK: Revolutionary Martyrs Cemetery

From the Palace we took a short drive to the Revolutionary Martyrs' Cemetery which is located on Mt. Taesong. The cemetery contains rows of busts of soldiers who died in the liberation of Korea from the Japanese.

You approach it up the hill, with some members of the group being required to lay flowers, all the time surrounded by more of that stirring music from speakers mounted around the cemetery. A couple of quotes from a leaflet that I picked up in the hotel may give more of a flavour of the experience.



"The cemetery contains the busts of the anti-Japanese revolutionary martyrs who devoted their lives to the liberation of their country, to the freedom and emancipation of their people and to the victory of the cause of Juche."

"It was built in Juche 64 (1975) AND EXPANDED IN Juche 74 (1985) thanks to the warm affection of President Kim Il Sung and leader Kim Jong Il."

DPRK: Another brief history lesson

Hands up if you've heard of the Pueblo Incident.
No, me neither, but I'm not American and I was only eleven at the time so it's hardly surprising.

The Pueblo was a United States spy ship that was captured by the North Koreans on 23 January 1968. One crew member was killed in the action and the others were captured. They were held for eleven months. Eventually the United States apologised for spying and the captain signed a confession and the crew were released. After the release the US and the captain recanted their words. The Pueblo was kept by the DPRK who now have it moored in the river in Pyangyong and take tourists around it.

So much for the bare facts. There are all sorts of other disputed "facts". The US say that it was well outside DPRK waters, the DPRK say it wasn't. The US say that the crew were kept in bad conditions, endured torture and mock executions to make them confess and were generally mistreated. The DPRK say there was no torture, the crew were kept in good conditions and the confessions were genuine.

After our visit to the War Museum we went to see the Pueblo. We were shown around the ship by the same guide that we had had at the museum and given the North Korean version of events. It was a rather eerie experience that reminded me a little of the trip around a captured U-boat that you can do in the Science Museum in Chicago. They have done very little with the ship apart from painting red circles round every bullet hole and shell mark on the ship to draw attention to the effects of the battle. Every area of the ship is paraded to the public to show what the DPRK claim the Americans were up to. We saw the electronic surveillance equipment, the arms lockers, the gun deck guns, the code room and so on. We were also shown a video about the incident. It was actually quite hard to keep a straight face during this as it was delivered with a stirring musical background and an overblown pomposity that undermined the message it was trying to give. We would come across more examples of this kind of misguided rhetoric later. Someone really should explain to the people who produced these videos for them just why they would achieve a better result with a less theatrical style.

On the dockside there is also a glass case containing a spy-torpedo packed with electronic equipment, allegedly captured some years later.

After our visit to the Pueblo we were informed that our luggage was now in the DPRK and waiting for us back out at the airport. This meant that any other activities planned for the day would need to be abandoned while we fetched it all. I don't think anyone was too bothered by that, so we climbed into the bus, and drove out to the airport.

I'd been expecting a long-winded process but all we had to do was pick them up and sign for them and we were on our way. The drive to the airport took forty minutes, the drive back another forty and the actual collecting of the luggage no more than two. This meant that we had time to visit the Victorious Fatherland Liberation War Monument as a coda to our day of military sightseeing. This monument consists of a large area paved in white flagstones with rows of bronze statues along each side depicting heroic military figures engaged in battle with the DPRK's enemies. At the end of the park is a large statue of another, single heroic figure. Unfortunately the pose makes the soldier look as if he is about to burst into a quick rendition of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" which rather undermines the dramatic gravity of the memorial.

By the time we saw the memorial, twilight was falling and the park was empty and we could only spend a few minutes there before we had to hurry off to another meal, then back to the hotel for a shower and a change of clothes, and a couple of beers.
It was fortunate that we had our luggage back. Tomorrow we needed our best clothes, smart trousers and shirts, and - if we had them - ties. We were going to visit the Kumusan Memorial Palace, the Mausoleum in which Kim Il Sung lies in state.

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.