Without You, There Is No Us (11 page)

I began to notice that some of the less savvy boys were paired with sharper ones, who not only roomed with them but sat next to them in class. Naive Choi Min-jun, for example, was never without Park Jun-ho. Ryu Jung-min, who seemed to be without guile, sat with Ri Jin-chul, who never deviated from scripted answers. These duos, which at first struck me as close friendships, seemed, as time went by, more like assigned pairings in which one watched over the other with something more loaded than simple affection.

Yet they were still young, and their discipline was not absolute. Things did slip out. One student admitted that none of them had cell phones, though his roommate quickly added that they all owned cell phones but had willingly given them up upon entering PUST so that they could concentrate on their studies. Yet another student said that he had not seen or talked to his mother since he came to PUST in April, three months ago. He paused, as though he regretted admitting this, but then another and another said that they too had had no contact with family and friends since then. From their dormitory windows, downtown Pyongyang was visible, so close that they could almost hear the sounds of the city, but there was no such thing as a visiting hour. One student’s father stopped by the campus to see him but was turned away. All he could do was leave a note.

Just as I began to feel that they were relaxing their guard, I read their next set of letters, which suddenly focused almost entirely on Kim Jong-il. As a group, they became preachy about his greatness, which they called his “solicitude.” If they got a good grade, it was thanks to his solicitude. If their English improved, that also had to do with his solicitude. One of them told a story from his childhood, in the late nineties, when he saw people shouting “Please receive my blood” in front of a hospital. He ended the letter with his own translation of the song “We Envy Nothing in the World.”

Another student wrote about the country’s CNC (computer numerical control) technology, and how the news of this invention had echoed throughout the world. The reason for this breakthrough, he wrote, was the leadership of the Great General Kim Jong-il. After the collapse of socialism in Eastern Europe, my student wrote, Kim Jong-il led the world’s progressive nations to victory. The real meaning of “utility in economy” was different from what I, Dear Professor Kim Suki, must assume to be “profit in economy.” Comrade Captain Kim Jong-un had taught them that, as scientists, each of them was a “utility,” and that by coming up with great inventions they helped build a powerful and prosperous nation, which pleased the Great General Kim Jong-il.

There seemed to be some confusion about how to refer to Kim Jong-il in English. Even the guides were uncertain. In Korean, they usually called him the Great General, but in English, he was referred to in all sorts of ways: Great Generalissimo, Great General Comrade Leader, Great Leader Marshal, Great General, Great Leader, Dear Leader. Great Generalissimo seemed to be a new one; I did not recall hearing it on previous trips. Had it been adopted in anticipation of Kim Jong-un rising from Captain to Great General?

The student’s letter was the first time that I’d heard any mention of Kim Jong-un, other than the red sign that read “Captain Luck” in the hallway on the way to classrooms. But what seemed most peculiar was the way nearly all the students suddenly chose Kim Jong-il as their main topic, and the use of identical words and phrases such as
solicitude
,
single-unified people
, and
powerful and, prosperous nation
. I wondered whether they had gotten a firm lecture from the counterparts during their most recent Saturday meeting, known as
Saenghwal chonghwa
(Daily Life Unity), where, according to Dr. Joseph, they confessed their mistakes and critiqued themselves and others.

THE
TEACHERS
ALSO
had a weekly gathering where confessions were made. Every Sunday morning, in a room on the third floor of our dormitory, we held a makeshift service. Although the students sang all the time at the top of their voices, we were told to sing quietly so that no one would hear. Usually, one teacher brought a keyboard and played hymns while another played the flute. I sang along, but I could not help noticing that if you replaced the word
Jesus
with
Great Leader
, the content was not so different from some of the North Korean songs my students chanted several times each day. In both groups, singing was a joyful, collective ritual from which they took strength. Often I thought how absurd it was that the missionaries and the students could not sing together.

Our service inevitably included testimonies—tearful stories in which personal things were revealed, as if it were group therapy. Stories—this world seemed full of stories. It was rare for anyone to actually see Kim Jong-il, so everything we heard about him was a story. And my Christian colleagues had their stories too, in their Bible.

One evening, I saw Rachel, a thirtysomething Korean Canadian teacher, walking through the small muddy area beside the teacher dormitory. I followed her and asked what she was doing, and she told me that she was looking for the site where “the bell” used to be. According to her, this bell had belonged to the first church in Pyongyang. In the late 1800s, a Welsh Protestant missionary had sailed here from China, but when he arrived, his ship was set on fire by Koreans, and he was stranded here, along with a stack of Bibles. He was soon killed, but a local man found the books and used the pages as wallpaper, and people soon gathered at his house and were converted to Christianity by reading the pages. This was how the first church was born and flourished, only to be shut down once Kim Il-sung came to power. Decades later, while excavating the foundation for PUST, workers found the bell that had belonged to the original church. Until then, no one had a clue that the school’s foundation belonged to God.

“That’s what’s called divine,” she whispered.

The cynic in me thought what a good story it was from a PR standpoint. This school needed a lot of money just for its daily operation. Most of it came from churches, and nothing sells better than the story of miracle. Still, at that moment, I must admit that I wanted to believe the story. I wanted a divine force, any outside force, to intervene here. I very much wanted to believe in this God who had devised a private treasure hunt for believers by hiding a bell under the PUST foundation.

9

T
WO
WEEKS
HAD
PASSED
,
THOUGH
I
WAS
LOSING
my sense of time. Most of us were not only tired but restless. “Okay, I’ve had enough. I like the students and all, but I need to breathe,” Rachel said. At times, Katie said, she felt desperate to go home. An American teacher from the Midwest said, “I just want to get in my car and drive to a store when I want to. That seems like such a luxury.” They had come to PUST because of their deep faith in God and their desire to spread his gospel, but even they were being worn down by this place.

We found a bit of relief in talk of a teachers’ field trip to Myohyangsan (Mount Myohyang), a common tourist destination outside Pyongyang. Mount Myohyang was one of only a few mountains open to foreigners. All others were said to be denuded and barren, due to the economic crisis and famine of the mid-1990s, during which people collected everything for food and fuel and left nothing for the soil, and perhaps also to Kim Il-sung’s Find New Land Campaign of the late 1970s, which led to widespread deforestation. My colleagues were excited by the prospect of hiking on the mountain, but to me, a mountain suggested an isolated tourist spot from which I was unlikely to learn anything new about North Korea.

The trip to Mount Myohyang began at 7:30 a.m. Not all teachers joined; some were not interested and some did not want to pay for it. Each outing cost money, from gas and entrance fees to meals. Katie and I sat near the back of the bus in order to avoid the hawk eyes of our two minders, who were like a caricature of the good cop and the bad cop. Mr. Ri was the seemingly easygoing one while Mr. Han was testy, with a penchant for Korean history. Katie whispered to me that I must be careful because Mr. Han tailed me at all times. I could not even go to a bathroom without him asking me where I was going, to which I would answer, “You can just follow me in there if you are so curious,” which would shut him up.

Dr. Joseph told us that we must not take photographs without permission during the bus ride, since if anyone outside saw us taking pictures and reported our vehicle, our minders could get in trouble. But there was nothing worth photographing along the 98-mile highway that connected Pyongyang and Mount Myohyang. The scene on either side of us was just as peaceful and immaculate as the scene on the way to the apple farm. Occasionally I spotted what seemed to be farmers working the land, people bicycling or walking alongside the highway, or dirty-looking kids sitting in groups in the middle of the highway as though it were a playground. Every now and then, in the distance, I saw what looked like villages—identical rows of houses and one big concrete building that looked like a school, as well as the inevitable slogans and portraits on buildings and billboards. Most of the houses were one story high, the color of pale cement, with darker, shingled roofs, but some were three to four stories, big enough for several families. They could have been shabby model houses that no one had moved into, or ghost towns from which people had fled. We did not pass a single car during the ninety minutes it took us to get to our destination.

We did, however, pass two checkpoints, where guards with metal batons waved us down. At each one, the bus stopped and Mr. Han showed the guard a document he kept in his front pocket. These guards had on the same uniforms—blue with a white collar—worn by Pyongyang traffic controllers, who are always female and often photographed by foreigners making carefully choreographed, almost robotic movements to conduct relatively little traffic. These guards clearly had nothing to do with traffic.

Our schedule was, as usual, mapped out to the smallest degree. First we had to order lunch at Hyangsan Hotel, then head to the International Friendship Exhibition Hall before going back to eat. Hyangsan Hotel was a distinctly eighties-style structure with a marble interior and the generic feel of a dated, second-tier Hilton. In front, I saw five or six women squatting and cutting the grass with scissors. This was a familiar sight by now, but still strange. At PUST, and even in Pyongyang’s parks, I had noticed workers doing the same. Lawnmowers were used in the rest of the world, but not here. Was it about control or was there simply a shortage of gas? If people were perpetually squatting in public spaces for the glory of their Great Leader, would they come to believe in him more deeply? I had heard that the Mayans purposely made the steps of their pyramids very steep so that people had no choice but to climb on their knees.

The previous week, as our bus pulled up to the school after a shopping trip, I had seen my class outside, squatting and pulling weeds, not unlike the women outside Hyangsan Hotel. In his next letter to me, one of them wrote: “You might find it strange when you saw us near your dormitory gardening, but we like it, and it is good for us, and it is our duty to our Great Leader.” I thought perhaps his ego had been bruised.

Soon we drove five minutes to the International Friendship Exhibition Hall, which consisted of two similar-looking buildings about two hundred yards apart, designed to look like traditional Korean palaces, each with two soldiers guarding a heavy metal gate. The entrance fee was fourteen dollars per person. As always, we were met by a young woman who served as our guide. First we were told to put cloth booties over our shoes so as not to dirty the marble floors. Then we were told to leave all our things at the coat check and walk through a metal detector. Cameras were not allowed. We were then searched manually as at an airport. Finally, we were led inside to view a set of black cars and a railway carriage given to Kim Il-sung by Stalin and Mao Zedong. A digital display of the number of gifts housed there flashed from the wall: 225,954 items from 184 countries, indicated by flashing red dots on a map. Each room opened into another room full of things, and the guide explained that even if we spent one only minute per one present, it would take one and a half years to view all of them, and that gifts kept pouring in for Kim Il-sung even after his death.

Then she began to describe the presents in front of us, one by one. The replica of Mangyongdae, the house in which Kim Il-sung was born, was made from ivory and had taken ninety-six members of the Communist Party of China one entire year to make. There was a rock from Madagascar that was 100 million years old, she said. There were several presents from Robert Mugabe and Fidel Castro. A silver cup had been given to the Great Leader by Madeleine Albright on October 25, 2000. There was also a figure of a crane given by Billy Graham on April 2, 1992, inscribed “To His Excellency.”

We were then led along an extended hallway decorated with photos of giraffes, elephants, and lions. The guide explained that these animals were also gifts to Kim Il-sung and were now at the Korean Central Zoo in Pyongyang. Finally we came to a room with a big board on the wall, featuring a lot of numbers signifying that Kim Il-sung had visited sixteen countries fifty-four times in total, traveling 52,480 kilometers. Katie and I began to take notes and our minder frowned at us. But when we told him that Katie was interested in pursuing a higher degree in Juche, he softened.

Kim Il-sung had supposedly received 5,050 top government officials and met with 65,000 important people from various countries. In 100 countries, there existed 1,000 Juche research centers. In 106 countries, there existed 69,102,830 translations of Kim Il-sung’s works. In 100 countries, there existed 450 streets named after Kim Il-sung. He had received eighty honorary degrees from universities around the world, as well as 180 medals from twenty countries.

One particular set of numbers puzzled me: the board said that 172 countries had given 166,065 items. When I asked why this number differed from the number of presents cited in the first room, the guide explained that the larger number included gifts to Kim Il-sung, Kim Jong-suk, and Kim Jong-il, and this number represented only gifts to Kim Il-sung.

We were then brought to a big room featuring a larger-than-life wax figure of Kim Il-sung himself, standing against a backdrop of pink Kimilsungias (hybrid flowers bred to honor the Great Leader; the ones named after his son are called Kimjongilias) and what looked like Baekdu Mountain, smiling as though he were saying hello. We were told that it was mandatory to line up and bow to the figure, and I thought how strangely familiar he had become, now that we had spent more than two weeks surrounded by his portraits and his words, hearing his name in every possible context, and for a moment, it seemed true that he was always with us.

The guide explained that there were two hundred rooms in total, that the gifts were divided up according to the years and months they had been received and the country of origin, and that the rooms held so many things it was impossible to see them all. So we would see only two rooms, which held presents from the United States and New Zealand. She took us down the corridor and tried one door, which was locked, then disappeared for a few minutes. When she returned, she told us that today the rooms she had intended to show us were locked, and that we would instead visit the other building. One of the teachers whispered that considering the admission fee had been fourteen dollars per person, it seemed almost ungracious that they would not even show us one of these special rooms. But we had no say in this matter and had to move swiftly outside.

Just across the way, the other building looked a little smaller but was identically set up. Again we put on the cloth booties and were searched, and the display of presents began in much the same way. Our tour began in the general room with gifts from South Korea, including 850 items from Kim Dae-joong, the former South Korean president known for his Sunshine Policy of greater economic and political cooperation with North Korea. The South Korean Ace Furniture Company, whose president hailed from the North, had given 350 pieces of top-quality furniture including desks, chairs, and armoires, which, the guide explained, was their entire output for five months. (This could not possibly have been true; the company was South Korea’s leading furniture maker and surely produced more in that span of time.) There were also the familiar flashing numbers on a screen: 170 countries and a total of 59,864 presents. We were told that the number denoted only gifts for Kim Jong-il and was distinct from the first set of numbers in the other building. But at this point, so many numbers were jumbled inside my head that I did not much care about any of them.

We were then led along a corridor, again decorated with photos of wild animals, into a room where the presents were divided by countries. There was a silver tray and a gold watch from the U.S. House of Representatives, a blue flower vase from U.S. congressional delegates, and a pink crystal figure from the National Council of Christians. Here also were two familiar names: on April 1, 1992, Billy Graham had given the Great Leader a globe surmounted with white doves, and in 2006 Madeleine Albright had presented him with a Wilson basketball signed by Michael Jordan. The endless recitation of gifts was beginning to make me feel dizzy.

Finally we were brought to a room with a marble statue of Kim Jong-il sitting in an armchair in front of a wall illuminated to look like a sunrise, his face expressionless. I thought of the words that adorned the top of the IT building at PUST:
LONG
LIVE
GENERAL
KIM
JONG
-
IL
,
THE
SUN
OF
THE
21ST
CENTURY
. We had to bow here too. Our tour again ended without a look at any of the other rooms.

Mount Myohyang was beautiful, however. Nature did not lie, although it occurred to me that here even nature might, since we were being shown just one part of the famed mountain as we began hiking. The guide told us we were near Bohyunsa, the Buddhist temple where the famous monk Suhsan had gathered with his followers to counter the attack by the Japanese in the sixteenth century, although we would not be stopping there. Though the temple does exist, I saw no evidence that Buddhists had ever been to this mountain, only the enormous words
THE
LEGENDARY
HERO
,
KIM
JONG
-
IL
carved into the rocky side of the mountain. Otherwise, the mountain was empty. Nearly anywhere else in the world, a mountain like this would be filled with families on a Saturday afternoon. Yet we saw only one group of schoolchildren the whole time we were there. They crowded around us and posed with us for pictures, but soon their teachers came down, stopped our picture taking, and took them away.

I fell into a chat with a few of the older teachers who were taking a break while the younger teachers climbed higher. One of them was in his seventies and originally from Pyongyang. He said that his father had been one of the richest men in the country before the war, and had owned a house and other properties where the Grand People’s Study House now stood. Kim Il-sung had confiscated all private property right after the war, and had relocated families all over the country, much the way Mao did during the Cultural Revolution. Families were separated not only between South and North but also within the country. This explained why whenever I asked a North Korean “Where is your
bonjuk
?”—a customary question to ask a stranger in South Korea—the person answered that there was no such thing in North Korea. Instead, I learned, North Korea had an unofficial caste system called
songbun
in which citizens were divided into three main classes and some fifty subclasses, based on a person’s political, social, and economic background, and although they pretended that such hierarchies did not exist, this affected their social mobility. The government had succeeded in wiping out the ancient clan system and replacing it with their own; many North Koreans no longer had the support of an extended family and had no one to rely on but their Great Leader. It was hardly surprising, then, that there were no noteworthy historical artifacts left on this famed mountain, since history itself was an obstacle in bolstering the myth of the Great Leader.