North Korea Undercover (11 page)

I tried to ask some boring questions about the barrage, but got no where and gave up. As ever in North Korea, it’s virtually impossible to get at the facts, but there are concerns that, far from adding to arable land, the dammed river has backed up upstream, losing land. As at the Three Prongs, the Mausoleum and No Animal Farm, by osmosis one sensed our hosts would have appreciated a more positive response from us; I felt like a truculent spotty Herbert teenager in a sulk. Yet the dam was falling apart, and it was hard to see any real benefit it had made for ordinary people. The force of the regime‘s propaganda was beginning to have entirely the opposite effect on us: the louder the taped soundtrack of praise for there gime, the more hollow the reality.

Along the road out of the barrage, we saw our very first disabled North Korean. He was a young man on crutches, who looked as though he might have fallen off a motorbike. The lack of disabled people in a poor nation is one of those peculiar absences that make one feel uneasy about North Korea. All societies have disabled people, poor ones especially so. If they have vanished off the face of the earth, somebody powerful has made that happen.

Our next destination was the Daean Heavy Machine Complex, a vast industrial eyesore with an enormous smokestack dominating the surrounding area. Roadworks meant we could not take the direct route to the plant, so our coach was forced to make a long detour into the local town, cross ariver, and then go back to the complex. This turned out to be bad news for our minders, because on the long way round we ended up seeing all sorts of things they did not want us to see. No smoke emerged from the chimney of the complex. It was hard to be definitive from the moving coach, but it looked as though the main building was a ruin, empty sockets where there should have been windows and walls.

Although out of the capital, we were in the Pyongyangcorridor, very much the richest area of the country. Some analysts say that North Korean heavy industry is now working at only one fifth of its previous capacity in the 1980s. From what we saw with our own eyes in this complex, it was five fifths dead. Up in the north-eastern city of Chongjin, previously known as the City of Iron, one reporter described the industrial zone as a ‘forest of scrap metal’.
¹

Our coach slowed to a crawl, picking its way along a heavily rutted road, running parallel with a river. The more we saw, the worse it got. Out in the sticks, away from the capital and the tourist-friendly roads, there was real poverty on view: raw and mean and not to be photographed. Underneath a lengthy banner proclaiming: ‘Everyone must strive towards making a better life for the people and to build a strong and prosperous nation’, a woman dragged an immense bundle of clothes behind her on a tiny trolley, a boy walking by her side. Out our cameras came; Mr Hyun hit the mike:‘Please, do not take photographs.’ A woman, squatting by the side of the road, in front of her a small white placard. Was she selling something? Begging? ‘No photos, no photos,’ commanded Mr Hyun.

In the river, a woman was washing her clothes. You see this all the time in Africa, but there the temperature is warm; it was freezing cold here, and in late March lumps of ice were still to be found in places away from the sun. For a woman to do her daily washing in a freezing river tells you things: that there is no regular supply of running water at her home; no washing machine; no cheap launderette. Further on, on the bank of the riverbed, two women were
scavenging for something in the mud. ‘No photos, no photos,’ said Mr Hyun.

Now that we were seeing more of the real North Korea, I felt more irritated that our every movement was choreographed by our minders.

They took us to the Heavy Machine Complex showroom, yet another grandiloquent chunk of concrete hymning public good while ordinary people lived in squalor. At the back of the room was an enormous diptych of Kims Major and Minor standing on a mountain top with wispy clouds caressing their feet, the backdrop dark pink – an exact copy of the portrait of the two Kims in our hotel. Occupying most of the space was a model of the complex, complete with tiny trains and a proud chimney. ‘We make heavy electrical power machines,’ the local guide, sporting a vivid orange traditional Korean dress, said.

And then the lights went out. In the electricity generating machine factory, no electricity.

She carried on in the gloom while we tittered our disbelief: ‘This is embarrassing,’ I boomed. Their film of our trip features the complex model in Stygian gloom: clearly the cameraman wasn’t shooting in the brief moments before the power outage.

The tragicomedy of North Korean power supply is that there isn’t enough home-grown energy in the country to maintain full power; the country does not trade enough to make good the energy deficit through imports; and the demands of the palace are so warped they deprive the rest ofthe economy of the energy it needs to thrive. That last element was beautifully explained by Hwang Jang Yop, the highest-level defector ever. Hwang, who fled in 1997, recalled a revealing moment at the Party’s Central Committee meeting. After a series of blackouts in Pyongyang – Hwang isn’t
clear but most likely back in the 1980s – Kim Il Sung asked the Minister of Electric Power to explain why he had been inconvenienced by brown-outs or decreases inelectricity supply when watching movies. The minister stood up to reply: ‘Currently, there is not enoughelectric power to meet the requirements of the factories. Because of the heavy load in transmission to the factories, the voltage of electricity supplied to Pyongyang tends to drop.’ Kim One replied: ‘Then why can’t you adjust the power supply transmitted to factories and allocate more to Pyongyang?’ The minister explained: ‘That would stop operations in a lot of factories.’ Kim cut him off and ordered:‘I don’t care if all the factories in the country stop production. Just send enough electricity to Pyongyang.’
²

On our visit, the only place where warmth and light seemed guaranteed was the Mausoleum – an absurd distortion of priorities which would never happen in a functioning democracy. The brown-outs and power cuts always led to a muffled cheer or sardonic grins on our trip: proof positive that the regime’s propaganda was dross. But it speaks a deeper truth about the abject failure of acommand economy to deliver economic satisfaction to the greatest number.

Hwang set out the fabulous bureaucratic merry-go-round under Kim Jong Il when rival bits of the state wanted their lights on and there wasn’t enough power to go around. The defector wrote that in 1996, North Korea produced 2 million kilowatts of electricity, only a fifth of what was required. Back then, there were 15,000 factories needing 10 million KW. Of the 2 million KW available,
0.8 million was needed for vital facilities where the power supply could not be cut. Wastage through faulty and ancient wiring burnt up 0.2 million KW en route, leaving only 1 million KW. This dire shortage of electricity meant that the key government agencies – one would assume thesecret police, the army and the Party – went directly to Kim Jong Il, without going through the cabinet or the National Planning Committee, to ask for priority in power supply. Their requests were sanctioned by Kim Jong Il and his word was law. The agencies took Kim Two’s orders to the Ministry of Electric Power and demanded that they begiven top priority in electricity supply. The ministry could not meet Kim Jong Ils orders. Instead, it went back to the Dear Leader, telling him that there was nothing the ministry could do. ‘Kim Jong Il’ wrote Hwang,‘handed the appeal to the secretaries in the Party central committee and gave them the task of resolving the problem through discussions.’
³

Not for nothing does former British ambassador John Everard compare the North Korean regime to Kafka as performed by Dad’s Army.

We asked for a tour of the Heavy Machine Complex. In the unlit gloom, Miss Jun heroically translated for the local guide: ‘Now the Korea peninsula situationis getting worse and worse, on the verge of civil war. So now they’re producing military things, so they can’t show the whole factory.’ This may have been true. Most defectors say that all the military factories are in the mountains. To us, it seemed a pitiful excuse, like telling the schoolteacher:‘I’m sorry, sir, but the dog ate my Juche homework.’

What kind of industrial complex is it that has no smoke, no power and no noise? In the early 1980s I worked on the
Sheffield Telegraph
, before the high-volume steel industry died, and many a night I went to sleep listening to the rhythmic banging from the steel mills. The Daean complex was silent. No sound of any work being done.

In the blackout, the male toilets were impenetrable, sowe pissed outside. The manufacture of urine was the only product of the Daean Heavy Machine Complex that day. Ourroute back to Pyongyang took us through the poor area of Daean town again. An ox pulled a meagre cart, old people moved hither and yon, seemingly without purpose, a man pulled a hand-cart, his breath ballooning out as the temperature dropped below freezing. The poverty of wealth and soul was grinding, and grindingly obvious. Mr Hyun and Miss Jun were even more on their guard. ‘No photos, no photos,’ they cried out, as joylessly as the scene in
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
when they call out: ‘Bring out your dead.’

John Everard suffered from this censor complex so much hecalled his book
Only Beautiful, Please.
He recalls that the security forces did not follow him and hisstaff every where, because North Koreans policed them well enough.

The moment the foreigner did anything upsetting a crowd formed and the security forces appeared quickly. The most common trigger for this was illicit photography. Koreans are very conscious of their country’s image and any attempt to photograph any aspect of their country that wasless than flattering of their country angered them. A Korean People’s Army officer, proud of his English, once explained the rule to me as ‘Only beautiful, please.’
⁴

Is this a display of patriotism? Or is this regime brainwashing at work, so deep in peoples minds that even foreigners must conform at the national lie factory?

At a bridge over a river, we had to stop because our coach was too high to pass underneath a pole stretched across the road for some reason. Our driver got out to have a row with whoever was manning the checkpoint. A lorry full of hay overtook, but riding on top of the load was aman, who would surely come a cropper. As the lorry got up to the pole he stood up and nimbly jumped over it, and landed back safely on the hay, and the lorry sped on, into the dusk.

It was as nimbly executed as the Buster Keaton stunt when the front of a house falls on top of him and he emerges, unscathed, through a window. A light, silly moment, but also proof that these people, under another system, might be bright and fun and full of life. But of that, in the Daean Heavy Machine Complex, we saw no sign.

¹
Philippe Pons: ‘Incursion en Coree du Nord’,
Le Monde
, 4 December 2006.

²
Hwang Jang Yop: ‘The Problems of Human Rights in North Korea’, http://www.dailynk.eom/english/keys/2002/8/04.php

³
Hwang Jang Yop, ‘Problems of Human Rights’, http://www.dailynk.com/english/keys/2002/8/04.php

⁴
Everard, p 131.

5

Jimmy the Gold-Smuggler

Alejandro Cao de Benos’s website sings the praises of the ‘ Juche-oriented socialist state which embodies the idea and leadership of Comrade Kim Il Sung, the founder of the Republic and the father of socialist Korea’ on one page, and the joys of doing capitalist business in North Korea on another.
¹
The Hermit Kingdom, says Cao de Benos, will become the most important trading hub in North-East Asia in the next few years, boasting the lowest labour costs in Asia and workers who show the utmost loyalty: ‘As opposed to other Asian countries, workers will not abandon their positions for higher salaries once they are trained.’ That might be, perhaps, because they and their families could be sent to the gulag for three generations if they do. On and on Cao de Benós goes: ‘Lowest taxesscheme in Asia... A government with solid security and very stable political system, without corruption... Transparent legal work.’

None of that is true.

In the Big Zombie we endured a surreal and surreally boring meeting with three North Koreans who were selling the idea of business opportunities in the country. A PowerPoint presentation followed, with Venn diagrams sporting gnomically entitled spheres such as ‘Economic Investment’ and ‘Joint Venture Committee’. Business gibberish had arrived in Pyongyang, big-time. I didn’t want to bring attention to myself, because the entrepreneurs had email and, therefore, either in Pyongyang or more likely in Beijing, access to the internet. They were clearly in the elite of the core class, especially licensed by the regime to come and go at will. Remember, there are only two flights between Beijing and Pyongyang a week, so this licence covers just a few thousand people. All of them will have family in North Korea; all of them know that if they defect, their family will suffer, horribly.

But I couldn’t quite forget the sight of the poor North Korean woman doing her washing in the freezing river, so I put up my hand and asked: ‘Why would anyone invest in a country if its leader is threatening thermo-nuclear war against the United States?’

Silence followed.

After a long pause, someone mumbled something about not being involved in politics – a statement that doesn’t quite wash inside the world’smost totalitarian regime – and the meeting droned on.

Leaving aside the threat of Armageddon, North Korea ought to be a smashing investment opportunity for the more icy-hearted capitalist. In 2007 a worker’smonthly wage in the comparatively wealthy region around Pyongyang was estimated at around £40
($60, €50), before tax.
²
If you can get away with paying your work-force £1.50 a day, then why isn’t everyone piling in?

The downside – apart from the government beingas crazy as a box of frogs – is that everything else doesn’t work or costs an arm and a leg. The power supply is a joke. We experienced at least one power cut every day we were in North Korea, some days more than one. The railway system is largely electrified, so delays of several days come as standard. As far as shipping goes, the West Sea Barrage restricts ships to 50,000 tonnage – pitifully small in today’s world – and the locks can only handle one ship a day. Worse, the docks are comically old-fashioned and controlled by themilitary, who charge extortionate rates. For example, one container shipped from the South Korean port of Incheon toNampo costs $US1,000, almost as much as a journey to Europe. The round trip takes twenty-four hours for a journey of only 60 miles.
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That means business investors have to fork out enormous sums on simple logistics, so the vast majority don’t bother.