My Holiday in North Korea (16 page)

Fresh Handler and I need to use the bathroom. As this is not a scheduled event, it takes them forever to decide which bathroom we should use and then forever again to find the key. The musty-smelling facility reminds me of a junior-high bathroom, only with no lights or running water. As I pass Fresh Handler my hand sanitizer, I ask her if she ever tires of never being able to wash her hands after using the toilet. She makes a face that I’ve come to understand means, “I cannot say yes,” then gratefully applies the gel like an old pro.

As we exit Panmungak Hall and head for our cars, I suddenly remember I’ve brought my instant camera with me but left it in the car. I often travel with my instant camera, especially to countries where cameras are rare or a luxury. I take many photos of people who so generously pose for me; I love returning the favor by giving them photos of themselves.

I’ve been using my instant camera as an icebreaker in North Korea. No one has ever seen anything like it before, and each person I photograph stands amazed, staring at the magic of the photo developing right before their eyes. I originally hoped to take two photos of me with each person I met—one for me, and one for the person—as a sort of a bridge-the-divide project. But that’s proven impossible, and it’s turned out to be much nicer and more fun to just watch the surprise and joy on each person’s face as they see themselves appear, without asking for anything in return.

I plead with Older Handler for just a few more minutes so I can retrieve the camera to snap photos for Non-General and a few of the soldiers. She says okay. She’s a big fan of the instant camera.

There’s a pervasive sense of nervous energy in the air as I flail around animatedly, trying to explain the mechanics of the instant camera and what I’d like to do, as the uncomprehending crowd of soldiers debates whether to shoot me. For once, Older Handler has nothing to say.

With my life on the line, I implore Older Handler to translate, which she does reluctantly, putting a welcome end to my one-woman show. Since no one seems to know if the taking of instant photos is allowed or not, the soldiers all remain at their assigned posts, and for a minute or two no one moves a muscle.

Non-General, being the stand-up guy I have suspected him to be, bravely makes the first move and steps forward to be photographed. We stand next to each other as he clutches the blank piece of film, waiting for the magic to happen. The smile that breaks across his face as we watch his image come together almost makes me weep. It definitely makes me tear. He shows the photo to the soldiers standing closest to him first and then to more soldiers a few steps away. Their excitement is unmistakable. Words are exchanged from one soldier to the next, and like that, all the soldiers—literally all of them—leave their posts and queue up, waiting for me to say “Say cheese!”

And I thought the poster in the gift shop was going to be the high point of the day.

My surreal visit to the DMZ comes to a close. I’m awash in emotions and conflicting thoughts, and the part of me seriously disinclined to take anything too seriously is not disappointed. After all, I’ve managed to disarm and distract NoKo’s entire DMZ security detail with a $98 instant camera.

All this she took in like a picture…and listening, in a half dream, to the melancholy music of the song.
—Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass

CHAPTER 15

THE DAY I HIT THE WALL

I
didn’t remember selecting “Concrete Wall” from the list I’d been given when choosing activities for my customized itinerary. And a concrete wall certainly didn’t sound like something that would normally have piqued my interest (akin to choosing “watch paint dry”). But it was on our agenda for the day after the DMZ, and quite frankly it sounded better than some of the other shit I’d been dragged around to (can you say, Victorious Fatherland Liberation War Museum?), so it felt like a win.

For a minute it seemed like Fresh Handler was trying to talk me out of visiting the Concrete Wall—not that I was dying to visit it, or even had any idea what the Concrete Wall was, aside from the obvious.

FRESH HANDLER: You want go Concrete Wall?

ME: I don’t know. What’s the Concrete Wall?

FRESH HANDLER: It’s a concrete wall.

ME: I don’t understand. It’s just a concrete wall?

FRESH HANDLER: Yes.

ME: Why would we go look at a concrete wall?

FRESH HANDLER,
giggling, shrugging shoulders while making a face that says, “You got me…I don’t know why we’d go look at a concrete wall”
: You can’t see wall.

ME: What do you mean we can’t see the wall? I don’t understand. I thought you said we were going to see a concrete wall?

FRESH HANDLER: Wall is very far. You can’t see it. You look at wall through hole.

ME: What do you mean we look at wall through hole?

FRESH HANDLER,
giggling, covering her mouth with her hand while looking to the sky for the right word
: Ahh, wall is very far away. You look through, ahh…

ME: Binoculars?

FRESH HANDLER,
delighted
: Yes! You look through binoculars to see wall. But can’t see wall.

Okay, got it. We look through binoculars to see a concrete wall that we can’t see. I’m so happy I understand her that I momentarily forget I don’t understand her.

ME: So we’re going to look at a concrete wall that you can only see through binoculars, but you still can’t see it?

FRESH HANDLER,
motioning with her hand to indicate something close to “Yes…I told you this was a stupid idea”
: Sort of.

She looked a little embarrassed.

Sensing that my current line of questioning was likely to end up with Fresh Handler in tears, I changed tack.

“Is it close to where we are now?” We were still at the DMZ.

FRESH HANDLER: Ohhh, nooo. Very far. More than one-hour drive back to Kaesong, and then one-hour drive back to wall. And road is very bumpy. Road not so good.

This was sounding fucking
awesome
.

“So we drive from here all the way back to Kaesong, then we drive another hour on a bad, bumpy road to a concrete wall that we can only see by looking through binoculars? But we can’t see it. So what do we see?”

FRESH HANDLER: Just wall.

She smile-giggle-shrugged.

I was in, and we were off. We left the DMZ and drove back to Kaesong.

Somewhere near the center of town, Driver pulled over in front of a small building, and an older gentleman who looked to be in his seventies (hard to tell) and was dressed in a military uniform exited the building, ambled over, and joined us in our car.

There was something about him that made him immediately endearing. Maybe it was the kind look in his eyes or the warmth he emanated. Or maybe it was because he looked so sad-cute in his two-sizes-too-big military uniform that I wanted to squeeze him. It was like he’d shrunk but was stuck wearing the same uniform.

He cordially shook my hand, introduced himself as General So-and-So, and immediately started asking me questions, but not the normal rapid-fire questions almost all North Koreans hit you with in an unfriendly interrogation style immediately upon making your acquaintance: Your first time come Korea? You been to South Korea? You speak Korean? You been to Japan? Where you from?

Instead his questions were sweet, like he really wanted to get to know me: Did I like kimchi? Did I like Korean music? Was I traveling alone? Why was I traveling alone? Did I enjoy traveling alone? Was I ever afraid? Did I read the newspaper?

His gentle line of questioning continued unabated as we serpentined slowly through the countryside toward the Concrete Wall.

What was my job? Did I like my job? Was I good at my job? How many people worked for me? What did I study in school? Where did I live? Did I like where I lived? Was it cold where I lived? What was my favorite thing to do?

In between questions he told me about his daughter and little bits of this and that. Older Handler and Fresh Handler took turns translating, with Fresh Handler filling in the blanks.

Then he started congratulating me, telling Fresh Handler to tell me, “You are very brave woman. Come very dangerous place alone.”

Older Handler rolled her eyes upon hearing of my bravery.

We carried on chatting like schoolgirls throughout the ride, with General speaking directly to me whenever Fresh Handler wasn’t keeping pace with the translating. Between his genial disposition and his comely looks, chatty General was winning me over big time.

After about an hour we turned onto an unmarked, steep, bumpy road and chugged up bends and turns until we finally reached the summit.

We climbed a flight of stairs to a small, plain building set among trees, fields, rolling hills, and random scrub. It was completely quiet except for a breeze. It was as lonely as I imagined General to be, in the fake, sad life I was inventing for him.

He directed us into a room on the left. We took our seats and watched as he starred in a high-school performance of
The Concrete Wall.
His showmanship was outstanding. He tapped and pointed and gesticulated until he could gesticulate no more as he solemnly explained (in the male version of the urgent, hushed-whisper voice that all local guides employ) everything about said Wall:

In the late 1970s, at the behest of the American Imperialists (he looked at me apologetically while uttering this phrase), the South Koreans built a concrete wall along the entire length of the DMZ. The wall is sixteen-and-a-half to twenty-six feet tall at various points, as thick as sixty-two feet at the bottom, and as wide as twenty-three feet at the top, or the other way around—it wasn’t completely clear since Fresh Handler was translating. And for some reason the Wall is invisible from South Korea. This part wasn’t completely clear either, but not because of Fresh Handler’s translation skills. Rather because the explanation didn’t make any sense.

At the top of Act Two, it occurred to me how strange it is that I’ve never heard about this Wall before. I mean, I’d heard more about the Wall on
Game of Thrones
, and I’ve missed half the episodes. Wouldn’t the Korean Wall have come up at some point in history—say when the Berlin Wall was coming down?

But since General was now my boyfriend, I felt like I had to support him, even if he was asserting that the Wall was an “American Imperialist belt (again, he apologized with his eyes) cinched around Korea’s waist” (or something like that—Fresh Handler again translating) or that it was a symbol that the American Imperialists (sorry eyes again) “don’t want the reunification of our country.” And he looked so lonely in his big-people clothes. So I zipped it and carried on watching the show.

When he was done we stepped outside onto the patio (a.k.a., the very serious viewing deck), along the perimeter of which were four or five binoculars attached to poles. The binoculars had to be 700 years old. And they were all scratched up. One pair was worse than the next.