DPRK: A poem

A nod to the new God

The room is high, and long, and cold,
And there, in the centre, the coffin holds
The body of the country's God,
And silently across the floor
They approach him, four by four
To circle, genuflect and nod.
For all who see him there must bow
At feet, at sides, at waxen brow;
An act of worship, seeking grace.
They do not see that this is creed,
If not in name, then sure in deed,
To look upon the saviour's face.
So what is it, if not true faith
To sanctify the leader's wraith
With trappings of a holy writ?
Raise marble temples in his name,
Accord him immortal, true, acclaim
And to his memory submit?

DPRK:Kumusan Memorial Palace

Until now I had been finding the DPRK a little unnerving but not tremendously so. In any war, especially a war that ends indecisively, the two sides are bound to have different versions of events to tell. True, I didn't trust much of what I'd been told in the DPRK, but I have a deep distrust of my own Government's ability to tell me the truth. The war in Iraq when we were given several different sets of reasons for the invasion, all of which turned out to be false, proves that our leaders are perfectly willing to lie to us. So I accepted that the United Nations/United States version of events in Korea while probably more accurate than the DPRK version was likely to contain its fair share of misleading information and half truths. That's that "first casualty of war" stuff again.

So what, I wondered, would the situation at the Kumusan Memorial Palace, add to my understanding of the DPRK?
We all assembled in the hotel reception in our smartest clothes. The rules for the visit were clear. Smart clothes, empty pockets, no cameras, no outer jackets, no inappropriate remarks or humour, lots of respect.
At the memorial palace, which is certainly more of a palace than a memorial, there was a long queue of Koreans. It was clear to see that this was a place that everybody comes. There were groups of soldiers, groups of businessmen, groups of ladies in traditional dress. The queue was at least several hundred yards long. After a few minutes of waiting around, we were marched straight to the front of it and into the buildings. It felt a little uncomfortable but the people waiting seemed to accept it as part of the way things are. Inside we were led through what felt like miles of marble-lined corridors. Automatic devices cleaned our shoes, we were searched and X-rayed, more automatic devices blew the dust from our clothes. Periodically we were asked, for no apparent reason, to line up in three columns, or four columns, or two columns, or single file. As these groupings were inevitably shuffled into some new arrangement the only reason I could come up with was that it was simply to show us who was boss. From this enormous room we were led, this time in fours, into another equally large room. At the far end of it was a statue of Kim Il Sung. The tuneless but vaguely uplifting martial music that had been playing throughout the experience was louder in here. The wall behind the statue was lit with pastel lighting. It reminded me of something and for a moment I couldn't place it. Then it came to me. It was very like the statue of Christ that I had seen in the Mormon Temple in Salt Lake City. The statue, the lighting, the music were all designed to produce the same effect. From that room we were led to another, with another statue and this time we were given audio sets to listen to. It was very hard to listen with a straight face. If the rhetoric on the Pueblo had been overblown this made it sound restrained. Imagine someone with a deep voice, loaded with gravitas, perhaps Orson Wells or James Earl Jones, solemnly intoning "When the Great Leader was taken from us the hearts and souls of the people were filled with a great grief and sorrow and with one voice they rose up and demanded a memorial be built to honour his name."
Now imagine about ten minutes of it.
After another trip through a wind-tunnel to clean us up we were led into another hall, this time with a glass coffin at the centre in which the body of the Great Leader lay. We lined up in fours again and walked to the coffin, circling it and bowing three times to show our respect. After that there was a museum showing all of the honours and awards bestowed upon Kim Il Sung from leaders and universities of the world. Most of them seemed to be from dodgy Central African republics or other Communist countries. The dodgier the source the more elaborate the award. In another room we saw a bullet proof car and a train.


Afterwards we were led back through the corridors and out into the fresh air where we were allowed to retrieve our cameras and take a couple of shots of the outside of the building.
I had found the whole two hour experience deeply disturbing. They may say this is respect for a man, that this is politics, but I know religion when I see it. This isn't hero worship; this is plain and simple worship. It has the trappings and rituals of religion. It has a God figure. It has blind faith. It's a religion.

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: Victorious Fatherland Liberation War Museum

I'd been in DPRK for less than twenty-four hours and seen only three things, the Study House, the Folk Museum and a stamp shop. One thing was already clear. I'd be seeing a lot of portraits and statues of the Great Leader and his son, the current ruler, Kim Jong Il the Dear Leader. As we stood on the steps outside the War Museum I was willing to bet that as soon as we entered there would be another one.

We waited for the group to gather properly - the lunchtime restaurant being just across the street - under the watchful eyes of our guides. One of our guides asked us what news we had of the DPRK in the outside world. It was a tricky moment. The three pieces of news we had were that they had launched what was either a communications satellite or a missile, that they had arrested and condemned to ten years hard labour two American journalists and that they had expelled the United Nations inspectors. I told her that some newspapers had reported a satellite launch but others said it was a missile. Another member of the group maintained that it was a missile and that it had fallen into the sea. She was clearly offended. Subsequent western reports seemed to confirm that it was a satellite after all. With regard to the journalists and the inspectors neither she nor her male counterpart, when I spoke to him later, seemed to have any knowledge of either incident.


We went inside and sure enough the entire wall of the large hall was taken up with a mural of the Great Leader surrounded by victorious soldiers, happy smiling children and loyal workers. No surprise there then.
Also no surprise was the version of history presented to us over the next couple of hours. Roughly speaking it went like this. After years of colonial rule by the Japanese the Great Leader had led a revolution that had overthrown them (no mention being made of the World War taking place elsewhere.) America had then divided the country and placed a puppet Government in power in the south. Over the next several years tensions increased with the DPRK stoically resisting all the frequent cross-border incursions from the South without making any retaliation. Eventually the South mounted a sustained conflict which had to be met and the North crossed the border to fight on 25th June 1950. The Americans were outgunned and outclassed by the heroic DPRK forces and eventually, in 1953 were forced into an ignominious armistice which shamed them even though they still would not admit that they were defeated. In spite of this glorious victory the Americans managed to keep the country divided by suppressing the desires of the South Korean people to unify with their northern brothers. The North has subsequently spent decades on trying to offer plans for peace and reconciliation which would have been successful if not for the Machiavellian schemes of the United States.


We saw displays outlining the course of the war, from the DPRK perspective, displays of weapons - both those of the DPRK soldiers and those captured from the enemy. We saw rooms full of the twisted, wreckage of destroyed helicopters, tanks and aircraft. We saw recreations of the command centres and the underground tunnels from which they engaged the enemy.

Most impressive were the dioramas though of the eighteen that are in the museum we saw only two. One of these though was as impressive as anything that I have ever seen in a museum. A huge room has been used to create a three hundred and sixty degree vision of one of the famous battles of the war. The tricks of perspective used in the model and the stunning painting give it a remarkable realism. On my photographs it looks dull, lifeless and flat but the reality is different.

It was interesting to hear such a wildly different version of history and, frankly, the generally accepted version probably contains its fair share of inaccuracies, deceptions and downright lies. Hiram Johnson is generally credited as the source of the aphorism "the first casualty of war is truth". Whoever said it, it remains just as true whether you are on the winning side or the losing side.