My Holiday in North Korea (8 page)

Come, we shall have some fun now! thought Alice.
—Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

CHAPTER 7

THE SIMULATION CINEMA

T
here was a change to our schedule, so we had an hour to kill before lunch and our afternoon drive to Kaesong.

“Waterpark?” Older Handler suggested.

“I don’t have a bathing suit,” I said. Never in a million years had it crossed my mind to bring one with me to North Korea.

“You rent one,” Older Handler shrugged.

Ewwww. “No!” I shot back, perhaps too quickly. But the thought of sharing a rental bathing suit in a country that lacked running water held little appeal.

I abruptly changed tack, attempting to maintain our precarious détente, “That sounds fun, but I don’t know how to swim,” I lied.

“3-D movie?”

That sounded easy. All I’d have to do was sit and keep my clothes on.

“Great!” I replied enthusiastically.

A short ride later we pulled into the empty parking lot of the Runga Funfair, “A Wonderland for the People!” next to the Taedong River.

It was closed, I guess for the day, but it looked more like it had been abandoned forever. I could practically see the tumbleweeds rolling by. As I stood taking photos of nothing, my handlers entered into intense negotiations—DISCUSSIONS—with the employees sitting inside the glass booth at the entrance. Eventually Older Handler tells me to pay a euro, and we’re allowed in.

As we walk through the deserted amusement park toward the Simulation Cinema, Older Handler keeps insisting the Funfair is normally open seven days a week and is always very busy.

I don’t know what to say.

“Then why is it closed now?” I ask.

OLDER HANDLER: They didn’t know we were coming.

ME: What did you just say?

OLDER HANDLER: The people, they come later.

ME: What time does it open?

OLDER HANDLER: Yes.

Good chat.

When we arrive at the theater we are, as is often inexplicably and arbitrarily the case in NoKo, required to cover our shoes with oversize, opaque, blue, protective caplike things like the ones doctors in operating rooms are required to wear on their heads to cover their hair. The trouble is, in NoKo these things are themselves dirty, having never been washed, and you put them on over your shoes while still standing outside, then walk from the outside in, thereby eliminating all chance of keeping the outside out.

And there I am—standing in the lobby of an empty movie theater in an abandoned amusement park in North Korea, surrounded by handlers, wearing blue protective personal equipment over my feet to prevent contamination.

We walk over to the ticket counter, which looks more like a desk, and I’m instructed to pay. It costs four euros, but I only have a five-euro bill. What happens next is a bona fide shit show. No one is prepared to make change! No one told them I was coming! Making change is not on the schedule! You can’t just get change for a five-euro bill any old place! This is North Korea!

An urgent and unpleasant-sounding exchange takes place as I stand there impotently, confused by who exactly is in trouble for not having the correct change: me, my handlers, or the cashier.

Abruptly, Older Handler turns to me and barks, “You get change after movie.” That answers that. I’m the one in trouble.

We walk through the lobby and into the tiny theater.

There’s a small rack off to the side where I’m told to put my day bag. Since all of my money plus my camera and cell phone are in my bag, there’s no way I’m leaving it unattended off to the side in a darkened room. “That’s okay. I’ll hold it,” I say.

“But the movie is very dangerous,” Older Handler replies.

“What the
fuck
are you talking about?” I think but I’m pretty sure don’t say out loud.

Sensing my uncertainty, she clarifies, “The movie…it moves.”

Ah, I get it. It’s one of those 3-D immersion movies where the seats move in tandem with the film.

“That’s okay. I’ll hold it on my lap.”

Undeterred, she stands staring with her trademark tight smile, waiting for me to capitulate.

In that moment I have the profound realization that Older Handler is actually as annoyed with me as I am with her. Still, there’s no way I’m leaving my bag.

There are two elevated rows, five seats across, and I’m astonished to see people sitting in each. If my handlers are likewise surprised, they aren’t showing it, but Older Handler moves quickly to reorganize the seating chart, and three comfortably seated moviegoers are jettisoned from the theater.

Sorry about that.

As we take their seats and fasten our seatbelts (!), the man sitting next to me asks where I’m from. I smile and tell him America. Then he asks if it’s my first time visiting Korea. “It is,” I answer cheerfully. “Do you like Korea?” he continues. “I do (not)!” I respond, incredulous that we’re allowed to speak freely. I wonder how many rules he’s breaking, and I start fearing for his safety.

Older Handler stands up and walks out, ostensibly to fetch our 3-D glasses, but moments later she returns with a man who says a few words, and then the entire audience of North Koreans stands up and leaves.

“Why did everyone leave?” I ask, already knowing the answer.

“Wrong movie,” she replies.

Thirty-five minutes of logistics behind us, we put on our plastic yellow 3-D glasses, and the movie, a race-car-themed film called
Winner
, begins. Our seats vigorously shake and pitch forward and backward, as we narrowly avoid crashes and fly off cliffs.

Fresh Handler squeaks and squeals, “Ooohh!” She’s legitimately enjoying herself (“Shit I Think Might Be Real” list). And I’ve got to admit that Older Handler was right; hanging onto my bag with all of the jostling and lurching is not at all easy.

The movie lasts maybe four minutes.

The lights come up, and I smile at Fresh Handler, who’s so cute and sweet wearing the clunky, ill-fitting, yellow-plastic 3-D glasses. “Did you like the movie?” I ask. “Oh, yes!” she answers enthusiastically. I love her.

I turn to Older Handler and ask her the same thing. “I feel sick,” she says and stands up to leave.

We walk back through the lobby and out the front door, where we pause in front of the theater to remove the anti-outdoor-indoor-contamination shower caps from our shoes.

We make it a few more feet when a voice beckons us to stop. It’s the cashier from inside with my one euro in change.

Well, now that we HAVE seen each other, said the Unicorn, if you’ll believe in me, I’ll believe in you.
—Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass

CHAPTER 8

NEXT STOP: NORMAL PEOPLE

I
was sitting on the Pyongyang Metro interrogating Older Handler. As usual, I was trying to get to the bottom of things.

ME: Who are these people on the subway?

OLDER HANDLER: To be honest, normal people.

This was how it would go. She would reply to my question with such absurd nonsense that I would either have to just suck it up and stop asking questions or prepare to dig in, and let the baby-talk roll. But getting past her rehearsed lies—no matter how reductive my questioning—was impossible. And this exchange was no different.

And from what I’ve been told, “normal people” must work Monday through Saturday (Sunday is their day of rest, but they must do volunteer work then for the Party). It’s midafternoon on a Thursday, and this place is packed. And since there are no dry cleaners, or shops, or banks, or other errand-type places, and the only let’s-do-lunch crowd in town is me, I’m hard pressed to understand exactly who all these “normal” people are.

ME: Why aren’t they at work?

OLDER HANDLER: They are.

ME: Then why can I see them?

OLDER HANDLER: Yes.

Unfortunately, Q&As in North Korea are a zero-sum game.

Some people probably find digging for answers fun. But I find the painfully slow extraction of information from an unwilling and therefore purposely obtuse source to be aggravating as all fuck—especially when that someone, in this case Older Handler, had an unbelievably ironic vocal tic of starting half of her responses with, “To be honest…”