The following is an excerpt from "See You Again in Pyongyang: A Journey into Kim Jong Un's North Korea," (Hachette), by Travis Jeppesen
We cruise through the city streets. Although it’s Saturday, there’s a steady flow of traffic and a lot more taxicabs than I ever recall seeing before. After dropping Comrade Kim off at his office on the willowed banks of the Potong River, we make our way to the hotel. Situated on an incline overlooking a football stadium and the surrounding palaces devoted to tae kwon do and gymnastics, the Sosan’s towering, thirty-floor, salmon-colored presence unmistakably connotes hotel in international functionalist lingo. The building underwent renovation last year for the seventieth anniversary of the founding of the Workers’ Party, and the empty lobby is grand and palatial, much like the other Pyongyang hotels I’ve stayed at in the past. In place of the usual souvenir shop, there is an outlet vending sportswear and gear.
As we wait for Min and Roe to check us in, I’m reminded by the row of international clocks posted above the reception desk that my watch is off by thirty minutes — yet another change from my visit to the country just two years ago. On August 15, 2015, the seventieth anniversary of Korea’s liberation from Japan, the North officially set its clocks back thirty minutes, creating its own time zone. This was to revert to the time the country kept before the occupation. But this modification can also be seen as yet a further notch in North Korea’s idiosyncratic manufacture of time; rather than referring to the birth of Christ as their way of marking the years, North Korea marks the first year, Juche 1, as 1912, which saw the birth of Kim Il Sung. So here we are in Juche 105, 6:46 p.m.: thirty minutes behind South Korea, thirty minutes ahead of Beijing. One thousand nine hundred eleven years behind the rest of the world.
My room is on the twenty-eighth floor, across from Alek and Alexandre, who are sharing to cut down on costs. We drop our bags off. I’m grateful to find that the renovations weren’t restricted to the lobby. My room has two brand- new queen-sized beds and glittering made-in-China furnishings, a big closet, a balcony overlooking the city—and a leaking air conditioner. So much for the renovation work. I don’t have much time to take it all in, however. The comrades want us to come down for dinner.
Min had frowned when Alek told her in the van that we wanted to make some changes to the itinerary. So Alexandre suggested we offer to take them out for pizza that night to help smooth things over. Min and Roe smiled at the idea. Things are going well.
They’re eager to show us the newly opened Mirae Scientists’ Street, where there is also a new Italian restaurant. The street occupies six lanes between the Taedong River and the main railway station. Replete with the snazziest new apartment buildings—with their strange but endearing blend of postmodern skyrise and retro-futuristic seventies housing block—it’s an architecture you can’t really see anywhere else. The street, which is meant to house scientists and institutes from the Kim Hwak University of Technology, is the city’s latest showpiece. Here we are in the twenty-first century, it seems to say: we’ve finally made it.
Inside the restaurant, we order pizzas for the table. Driver Hwa eyes the strange bread with bloodred sauce and white goo suspiciously. He has never seen or tasted pizza before. We cut a slice and put it on his plate, encouraging him. He picks up a pair of metal chopsticks and pokes at it before digging in for his first bite. He smiles. Not bad!
We order beers and soju. Since Alexandre’s not drinking, there’s more for the rest of us. Min chatters away idly. “Ahh, sometimes I really miss Cuba,” she says absentmindedly.
What?! Cuba? I was just there!
“I lived there for eight years,” she tells me.
Eight years? I’m shocked. It’s rare to meet a North Korean who’s even traveled, let alone lived, abroad. Especially one so young. “So were your parents diplomats?” I ask.
She shakes her head no and then looks down embarrassed. Too much information, too soon.
Suddenly, music comes blasting through the PA system, the triumphant opening bars to “Dash Towards the Future,” the latest Moranbong Band hit. Our waitresses step in front of the karaoke machine with wireless microphones in hand and fall into a synchronized dance routine as they sing the opening bars.
In this proud era we reached our youth There is nothing we cannot achieve/
Dash towards the future—a new century is calling/
My country—a strong and prosperous fatherland, Let’s cultivate it into a paradise!/
The North Korean guests at the tables surrounding us clap their hands to the rhythm, drunkenly elated.
After dinner, I suggest we finish the night off with our own round of karaoke at the Taedonggang Diplomatic Club. With its somewhat deceptive name, the club was built in 1972 to host diplomatic relations of a very specific sort—meetings between North and South Korean nationals.
When the frequency of such acts of diplomacy dwindled and showed no signs of increasing, it was time to turn the building into a restaurant and recreational facility for foreigners and their hard currency. It is located in the vicinity of the Taedong River and the diplomatic quarter; it is not, however, the exclusive domain of diplomats — all foreigners, whether they be tourists, diplomatic staff, NGO workers, or students like us, are permitted to use its facilities, which now include several restaurants, an indoor swimming pool, karaoke rooms, and bars. The Diplomatic Club also functions as a sort of continuing education center, with foreign residents able to take classes here in the Korean language, painting, calligraphy, swimming, and tae kwon do.
Mostly, however, in a city all but devoid of nightlife options in the conventional sense, the Diplomatic Club serves as a haven for drunken debauchery. On an earlier trip to the country, one of my guides, an older woman who had lived abroad in the 1980s as an employee at the DPRK Embassy in Vienna, was hopped up to get down to “Dancing Queen” the moment she checked that the door to our private karaoke salle was tightly secured. Throughout the course of the night, she proved herself to be familiar with ABBA’s entire repertoire. Even more astounding, she smoked several cigarettes. It’s common for men to smoke in the DPRK (it is believed that the country statistically has the highest rate of smoking-related deaths in the world) but it is verboten for women to partake — in public, at least. North Koreans of both sexes, however, love to drink, much like their Southern counterparts, and it is among the few activities that know no restrictions here.
Oddly enough, tonight I’ve been delegated to give a tour of the premises. Neither Min nor Roe has been here before, nor have Alek and Alexandre. Even though it’s Saturday night, the place is eerily deserted. We make our way down the dimly lit marble corridor into the karaoke bar. Two waitresses chat with a single customer, a middle-aged man from Nepal.
Alexandre and Alek take advantage of the empty room to impress our hosts with their extensive repertoire of DPRK pop songs. A waitress turns on the karaoke machine, and Alexandre bursts into a rendition of “Whistle.” A love song, highly unusual for North Korea, it stems from the late 1980s and early 1990s, reflecting somewhat of a relaxation from the heavy ideological content that infuses most cultural expression. The era could hardly be recognizable as a perestroika—the DPRK leadership watched the transformations under way in China and the Soviet Union with a combination of shock and dread—but it was also during this period that Kim Jong Il was at the height of his obsession with modernizing his country’s film industry.
Up until the late 1980s, romance had never been a big theme of DPRK films, music, or literature. The only time the word “love” was meant to be uttered was in reference to the Leader, the Nation, the Revolution. “People love love,” Kim Jong Il reportedly complained. “We must show it on the screen!” What followed from this directive was a set of films featuring storylines in which attractive citizens would fall in love with one another for their selfless patriotism and devotion to the revolution. In literature, the “Hidden Heroes” movement of the period turned its fictional narratives away from the exploits of Kim Il Sung and his guerilla fighters and toward everyday characters like factory workers and farmers. Accompanying this wave was a spate of love songs, of which “Whisper” is the most famous and catchy. Its lyrics boast almost no political referents whatsoever. Today, the release of such a song would be unthinkable.
Alexandre strikes up a conversation with the Nepalese guy. He’s been living here now for seven years, working for a children’s charity, one of many NGOs stationed in Pyongyang. Alexandre asks him where all the action is—after all, it’s 11 p.m. on a Saturday night, and this is the Diplo Club; surely some of his fellow expats are eager to let loose? He tells us that the happening spot right now is the Friendship Club. “But I don’t think your guides will let you go there,” he warns us.
The preceding is an excerpt from "See You Again in Pyongyang: A Journey into Kim Jong Un's North Korea," Hachette), by Travis Jeppesen
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