The human side of North Korea.
That’s what the title of this article should be, but I guess I’ll stick with the naming conventions I decided weeks ago – nevertheless the trip to the Taesongsan Park & Funfair was hands down my favorite part of the eight days / seven nights I spent in North Korea – although I most likely contracted food poisoning there…
After finishing the first ever *Fun Run* in the DPRK everybody went back to the *Yanggakdo Hotel* for a quick shower and some hearty breakfast. From there we drove to the Mansudae Memorial for a deep bow in front of two gigantic statues and a couple of photos of the area with a great view at the city, directly down to the *Workers Party Foundation Monument*; nice, but not interesting enough to deserve its own article.
The Taesongsan Park & Funfair are in the north eastern outskirts of Pyongyang, near the Pyongyang Zoo and the *Revolutionary Martyrs’ Cemetery*, basically right next to Rakwon Station, the final stop on the Hyoksin Line of the *Pyongyang Metro* – nevertheless they are not marked on *GoogleMaps*.
People always say that there are barely any cars in Pyongyang, that the city feels deserted – not on May 1st near Mount Taesong! As soon as we got closer, traffic became quite heavy. Still nothing in comparison to any bigger in an industrialized country, but the traffic policemen were pretty busy and we actually had to wait at intersections. (BTW: Contrary to the internet phenomenon most of the traffic police are male, not female… about 2:1 or even 3:1 of what I saw!) There even was a taxi among the cars. Yes, a taxi! They have taxis in North Korea… The most crowded area was around Rakwon Station, where a constant stream of people left the metro system. Sadly most of the traffic and people photos turned out to be blurry or had window reflections in them, nevertheless I’ll include a couple of them to show you that there are people actually living in Pyongyang and that it is not a ghost town populated by a couple of actors who play “perfect country” for the handful of tourists who visit the DPRK every year…
The Taesongsan Park & Funfair is exactly what the name says – a huge park with lots of funfair rides. We drove about 1/3 into the park and when we left the bus our guides told us to everybody’s surprise that we could explore on our own and that we would meet about 40 minutes later. The announcement was borderline shocking since nobody expected anything like that. Yeah, we were told that we would be able to mingle with the locals on May Day, but everybody thought it would be a group experience. People bolted off in all directions, but I stuck with Jeff, Ben and Jimmie; having a feeling that this could be a great experience if I was able to keep up with Jeff (who had no intentions to shake anybody off!). But first the three decided it was time for a bathroom break, so all of a sudden there I was on my own, in a park in North Korea… completely unprepared, to be honest.
If this isn’t your first visit to Abandoned Kansai you know that I am not much of a street photographer – I take pictures of buildings, abandoned ones usually, to be more specific; not of people. And we were told not to take photos of people directly anyway. Which I ignored right away by taking a photo of one of those tent like food stands that spread all over the park and Pyongyang in general. (Privately operated, BTW! You have to apply for a license to run one, but that’s pretty much all I found out about them.) The woman running the tent immediately waved me over and I thought I was in deep trouble, but instead of yelling at me she had a big smile on her face. Before I knew what was going on I had a cold bottle of water in my free hand – and I had no idea how to manage the situation, because as I told you, we weren’t prepared for that. Was it a gift? Did she expect payment? But how could I pay without having any local money on me? (Foreigners are not allowed to have local currency, although they sell you notes fresh from the press on your last day at the Yanggakdo Hotel, at a ridiculous exchange rate though.) After a quite confusing (not to say panicking) moment I remembered that I had some sweets from Japan in my backpack, so I opened it and gave her some green tea chocolate – and everybody was happy. (It must sound trivial if you weren’t there, but it was a truly amazing situation to me…) Seconds later my fellow travelers showed up again and we continued our tour through the park. (And I found out that we can buy stuff from the tent stands with Chinese Yuan, although I thought it was forbidden for them to accept foreign currencies.)
I knew that it would be impossible to shoot a decent video with the whole group, so a minute later I went on a stroll by myself again, still trying to reflect what just happened. So I walked around for about 10 minutes and as you can see in the video – just a normal park with normal people enjoying themselves.
By the time I got back to my new friends from the States, Canada and Australia the next big thing was going on already. I saw Ben and Jimmie, but Jeff was nowhere to be seen, just some dozen local kids crawling over a table… and Jeff. While I was gone my American buddy sat down, took out his tablet and started to play a flight simulator; much to the interest of almost every Korean coming by, especially the kids. It was amazing! I’ve never seen that many smiling and curious kids at the same time, even a couple of adults stopped by to find out what was going on. Including Mr. Yu, who kind of broke off the spectacle… which turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Mr. Yu was clearly uneasy about the situation, so I talked to him for a minute or two while Jeff headed deeper into the park – I followed shortly after and reunited with the rest of our mini group.
As I mentioned in a previous article, the Taesongsan Park is a popular spot for BBQs. A blanket, a gas heated pan plus lots of food and alcohol. Fun for the whole family. Dozens, probably hundreds of groups were spread all over the park, enjoying the blessing of a late spring under still blooming cherry trees. It kind of looked like home (which currently is Osaka, Japan), it felt like home. We were passing by quite a few groups when Jeff decided to approach one of them, us three still in tow. Almost instantly Jeff was offered a seat and before we knew what was happening all four of us sat down. Jeff gave me 20 Yuan and asked me to get some beer – I tried to find some at the food tents, but since I don’t drink beer I didn’t even knew what it looked like; of course nobody there spoke English. Except for Mr. Yu, whom I met again, but only for long enough to find out that we would meet half an hour later than planned since everybody enjoyed themselves so much.
With good news (but without alcohol) I returned to the group and sent Jimmie on the beer mission. By that time Juliette came by and was invited to join everybody, too.
The group we joined was a big family, at least three generations from toddlers to grandma. Jeff was in his element, showing pictures on his tablet to our hosts, introducing everybody, translating parts of the conversations – and what got lost was made up with nice gestures and big smiles. By the time our bottoms hit the ground we had chopsticks in one hand and a paper cup of soju in the other. Meat was sizzling in the pans and the scarf wearing grandma next to Juliette was cutting up delicious baechu kimchi; from a big plastic bag, the napa cabbages still in wholes.
Those 10 to 15 minutes we sat with that group of locals was the best time I had in the DPRK and I still don’t know how to describe the way I felt. (Not only myself, but everybody involved – we talked about this experience for the rest of our trip.) I grew up with a certain image of North Koreans, which is probably pretty similar to yours. Partly based on North Korean material (like parades, official news reports, interviews with average people after Kim Jong-il died), partly based on Western media portrayals – and here I was eating and drinking with (random!) locals on a sunny day in a beautiful park in Pyongyang; sharing THEIR food after THEY invited us. The nicest, most open-minded people I’ve ever met. Not a single negative word, not even a single negative vibe. Jeff, him being American by definition an oppressor and arch enemy, was actually the most popular one of us. Those people were nothing like the image I had of North Koreans before the trip! There was no way they could have been nicer or could have made us felt more welcome…
(Of course we didn’t take advantage of the situation and contributed some bottles of beer as well as sweets we brought from our countries to the feast. BTW: When our Austrian group members Anton and Veronika passed by halfway through our time there, our hosts invited them over, too – nobody was left out, everybody was welcome!)
All good things must come to an end, so after a while we had to leave to get back to the bus, but not without Jeff chatting up some more people on the way, all of them reacting very friendly and interested. Sadly I didn’t get a good end, but a rather bad one. I was feeling a little bit under the weather all day, but it got worse on the bus ride to the city center, where we had lunch on a boat. By the time we sat down I was freezing and sweating at the same time, feeling seriously sick. With Jeff’s help I was able to lie down in the cabin of a crew member and when I got up again I almost fed the fishes across the ship’s rail – luckily my stomach was almost empty and my body seemed to appreciate the gesture. I was feeling a bit better, nevertheless I stayed in the (boiling hot) bus while the others explored Moranbong Park for more interaction with locals; afterwards everybody said Taesongsan Park was way better since this time it indeed was a group experience again. I guess I picked up an undercooked piece of bulgogi and contracted food poising, which I literally sweat out for two hours or so. Which was another blessing in disguise as the evening bus ride to Nampo was the shakiest and bounciest you can imagine, but that’s a story for another time. (Oh, and just in case you wonder – although I could have done without the food poisoning, it was totally worth the experience at Taesongsan Park! No regrets whatsoever…)
(Please *click here to get to Abandoned Kansai’s North Korea Special* and *here for a map about the tour at GoogleMaps*. If you don’t want to miss the latest article you can *follow Abandoned Kansai on Twitter* and *like this blog on Facebook* – and of course there is the *video channel on Youtube*…)
It even surprised me that there were indeed cars on the streets would be talked about.
Also maybe the people were instructed to be hospitable to people who were clearly tourists.
Just being a devil’s advocate.
I really believe though that they really treat the head of the country like he is a god, based on what I’ve seen so far….. jumping up and down, clapping. I don’t think their actions are for show.
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Yeah, according the fellow travelers who have been to the DPRK a second the amount of cars is a lot higher now than six, seven years ago. Still not many, but it’s progress.
I really don’t think the people in the park were instructed to be nice to us. It wouldn’t make sense at all to tell them to hate all Americans, but if they see some, they should share the little food they have with them… It’s like everywhere in the world: You have nice people and you have not so nice people – and you have people who “just follow orders”. When we drove to the countryside we got all kinds of reactions. Some people waves at us, some greeted us with a socialist / party gesture, others just looked away – if there were clear orders on how to react to tourist buses their reactions would have been a lot more consistent.
Fantastic write-up, and look forward to reading more…and exploring your blog. Cheers!
Thanks a lot, much appreciated!