A return to North Korea

“She’s called Kim i Sim.
Miss Kim I Sim lives in Pyongyang 평양. She is dressed in uniform but she is not a soldier. She is the french speaking guide the “Victorious Fatherland Liberation War Museum”. It is a huge war museum. The museum is dedicated to the DPRK’s struggle against the Japanese and the Americans. It has over 80 halls exhibitions. It is not heated up because they have energetical problems. It is very cold in winter. All the lights are off to save energy. The rooms are lighted one after another once the visit is over.
In the museum, you find a lot of weapons. You can see military equipment. During the visit, someone will explain to you the North Korean War. It is not the same explanation as the american’s one. North Korean who meet the rare tourists are severly controlled.
The museum is visited all day long by kids and soldiers. It is propaganda. Like every official site, the museum is visited by the people several times in their life.
Miss Kim has met only 25 tourists in 2009.”

Image from Eric Lafforgue’s amazing Flickr set on North Korea

I posted about North Korea briefly, some time ago. Recently I watched Newsnight’s harrowing documentary again. I also watched one that was new to me – perhaps even more eerie and disturbing than the last – “Welcome to North Korea”, where guards direct traffic in a city that has virtually none, enormous hotels have just three guests, (in this case, the film crew), where children are brought up to believe that their leader is great, as he lives in luxury far and above North Korean citizens who are starving, dying, and being taken to political prison camps where they are treated disturbingly inhumanely, where a convenient new history is painted, reflecting all other countries as the enemy, in particular the United States, despite providing essential food aid. It’s baffling.

It is apparent that all footage and imagery is only scratching the surface. Apparently conditions in the countryside of North Korea are by far the worst, and they are almost completely hidden from the rest of the world. The country does not produce enough food to sustain itself, and with aid lessening, it appears primarily to go to the government and higher classes of North Korea, while the lower classes are, apparently, largely being left to starve and die, resorting to cannibalism. Apparently it is not uncommon to find inflated corpses of North Korean’s washing up on the shores of China.

The food situation is dire for many reasons – severe drought, flooding, North Korea’s lack of investment in these areas (it instead has priority for the military), the fact that so little of the land itself is actually capable of producing food, that the government is unwilling to allow trade of food from other countries, and that working citizens can barely afford rice from the government with their entire wages.

Above is Ryugyong Hotel, in North Korea’s capital Pyongyang. When I last wrote, the hotel was an abandoned, failed project, that had cost the struggling country dearly. It may be gleaming glass today, but this is just a glossy shell. From NGO Life Funds for North Korean Refugees: (as a warning, there are some extremely distressing true stories on this web site)

“Pyongyang is the capital of North Korea. Foreigners visit there and foreign legations and mass communication media facilities are concentrated in the city. Pyongyang is the face of North Korea.

There are extreme restrictions in North Korea on the people’s freedom of movement and on travel. Without a special permit specifically indicating the necessity for a visit, ordinary citizens of North Korea are prohibited from access to Pyongyang.

They long ago expelled every physically handicapped person from Pyongyang, calling them disgraceful. This is highly aberrant, especially in view of today’s international trend in which symbiosis between physically/mentally handicapped persons and physically unimpaired persons is accepted as a barometer of social welfare.

Even in Pyongyang, however, the people recently have grown increasingly vocal about food supplies being in such short supply.”

What can we do, though? You can donate money, which may go towards food rations and supplies such as clothing and blankets, but once inside this secretive, totalitarian dictatorship, how do we know it will go to those who need it most? How do we know we are doing the right thing when the people there are not allowed a voice?

And what about the bigger picture? North Korea should not be sustained by continuous aid. The government only appears to care for itself. The people will still suffer brutally as long as the country is run in this manner.

I have thought for a while, that when I find a job, the first thing I will do is treat myself to a new pair of trainers. In light of all the viewing and reading today, which has planted itself permanently in my mind, when I find work, I will endeavor to find the most reliable way I can help with what extra disposable income I will have.

I think what I have found most shocking is the complete lack of action towards finding ways not to just help the people of North Korea temporarily, but to find a permanent solution to their plight. The only thing I can do right now is point it out and hope more people observe it, and feel moved enough to do something.