The Hidden People of North Korea Read Online Free

night except for the lighted monuments. The wide and empty streets bordered by tall apartment buildings give visitors an eerie feeling. Behind the main streets are acres of small homes crowded together on narrow, winding streets such as would be found in most Asian cities, but these neighborhoods are off-limits to foreigners. There are no advertisements other than billboards and banners with political slogans. There are few stores or restaurants. The recently constructed public markets and the semiauthorized open-air markets are hidden from view and generally off-limits to tourists. Visitors who take bus tours to nearby cities comment on the scarcity of traffic except for the occasional black government Mercedes and open trucks loaded with freight and people. The roadsides, even after dark, are lined with people walking from one town to another carrying all manner of goods on their backs. The phrase dubal-cha (“two-legged car”) is used to refer to these people, who think nothing of walking twenty or thirty kilometers just to pick up a sack of potatoes.
    A Russian visitor, frustrated at not being able to meet any ordinary North Koreans, satirically relates an incident that occurred one night as he looked out of his Pyongyang hotel window:
A filthy-drunk man was reeling in the deserted street and muttering under his breath. “You lush,” I shouted. The Korean looked up, said something in his own language that sounded like a “meow” [probably mwuh , meaning “what?”], and ran away. I was proud of myself. A colleague who lives here had complained to me that he had never had a chance to talk with a local resident. This required permission from the Foreign Ministry for a meeting with a specific individual. Sometimes the authorities even granted the request. Of course, the Korean would afterwards disappear. Forever. For this reason, all attempts at official communication (the [North] Koreans have not had any unofficial communication with foreigners for about 60 years now) were abandoned for humane reasons. Now, however, I had heard an unofficial “meow.” Even if it probably was a local obscenity, we had made contact! 14
    American tourists are rarely granted visas. This travel ban is not unreasonable in light of the fact that most Americans are probably hostile toward the Kim regime (although not toward the North Korean people) and in that sense represent a threat to it. Those Americans who have the best chance of receiving a visa include staff members of aid organizations (although if they speak Korean their chances are significantly reduced because they might learn too much about the country) and entertainers. Notably, the New York Philharmonic played a concert in Pyongyang in 2008, and the American Christian band Casting Crowns played there in 2007. A handful of Americans who function as unofficial interlocutors between the North Korean and American governments and who are relatively sympathetic to the Kim regime (and, by the same token, critical of U.S. policies toward North Korea) are also welcomed in Pyongyang. The authors of the present book are not included in this sympathetic group.
    The one hundred thousand tourists do not include visitors to the Mt. Kumgang tourist reservation built and financed by one of South Korea’s Hyundai companies. By 2007, almost two million people, mostly South Koreans, had visited Kumgang by boat, train, and private car. Kumgang tourists hardly get to see the real North Korea. A German visitor speaks of a “hail of prohibitions upon entry” and characterizes the resort area as a zoo where foreigners are separated from North Koreans by a fence, and she wonders what goes on in the minds of the North Koreans standing along the roadside and watching the tour buses pass by. 15 The only natives that most tourists come into contact with are tour guides and hotel staff. Many of the staff are actually Korean residents of China, and the authentic North Koreans are specially chosen members