A banner promoting North Korea’s 150-day economic production campaign in August. Photo: Ben Piven

Part 6 of 6 in our Inside the Hermit Kingdom series on the people and culture of North Korea. Worldfocus multimedia producer Ben Piven writes about the contrast between the North Korean economy and the booming economies of South Korea and China.

“Why does South Korea produce Samsung, LG, and Hyundai?” I asked Jong, our 25-year-old North Korean tour guide.

She said that North Korea will manufacture sophisticated goods once the essentials — electrification and rice production — are covered. But the blank look on her face suggested that she better not discuss the issue.

Then, she perked up when someone asked about her own ideal job. She replied matter-of-factly, “I’d be a businesswoman.”

Jong’s 5,000 KPW (Korean People’s Won) monthly salary is equivalent to around $1.67. The official rate for the North Korean won is 142 per U.S. dollar, but due to severe inflation since the mid-1990’s, the black market rate is over 3000 KPW to $1.

Housing, health care and education are free in North Korea. But with her meager salary, Jong on her own could never afford the television or computer which her family of four (including her mother, father and grandmother) possess. Euros, dollars and Chinese yuan are needed for major purchases.

In North Korea, tourists are not permitted to enter non-tourist shops or purchase the local currency, since a negligible amount of foreign currency could buy out an entire store. Opening up shops and currency to the market would cause economic humiliation.

North Korea’s GDP is $1,700 per capita, 1/15 of South Korea’s, according to the CIA Factbook. Tied with Cote D’Ivoire and just a tad wealthier than Chad, North Korea is poorer than Laos and Cambodia. North Korea went from one of the most prosperous East Asian countries in the 1970s to the least prosperous today.

A Yalu River bridge once connected North Korea with China but was bombed out by the U.S. during the Korean War. Photo: Ben Piven

It wasn’t always this way. Having relied on the Soviets for economic inputs, North Korea developed faster than South Korea in the aftermath of the 1953 armistice that concluded the Korean War. The country’s infrastructure was mostly built from the late 50s to the early 70s, when the Soviet system was strong.

But by the 1980s rural South Korea had transformed into a tech-savvy urban tiger, and the stunted north turned more repressive after a number of aborted attempts to liberalize the economy.

The Juche state ideology — which emphasizes economic self-reliance  — intensified around 1982, almost certainly in response to South Korea’s explosive economic growth. Today, the paradox is that North Korea may be isolated,  but it’s not self-reliant. The authoritarian state relies heavily on food and fuel aid from abroad — as well as, some say, criminal activities.

David Rose explains in Vanity Fair how the Office 39 slush fund supplies Kim’s personal coffers, his inner circle and the missile defense program. Annual revenues from decidedly un-Juche activities, including crystal meth sales and human trafficking, may surpass $1 billion.

North Korea suffers economically from a strict economic embargo. Photo: Ben Piven

According to Rose, the D.P.R.K. is also the world’s top producer of “supernote” counterfeit $100 bills. Since the government cannot legally borrow cash, military sales and criminal rackets generate enough hard currency to keep the regime from collapse.

Since Kim Jong-il implemented songun (military-first budget policy) in 1994, the nuclear program has propped up the regime but stunted the people’s health and welfare. And economic sanctions have further impoverished ordinary Koreans.

On our officially-sanctioned tour, we gawked at workers burning rubber shoes to pave roadways and saw only one functioning crane in five days. Like the country’s infrastructure, corn and rice plots were orderly but dilapidated. Peasants worked in large groups, then napped individually in tiny wooden shacks.

Except for one rainy day, our bus was lonely on the roadways. Endless queues of people waited for antique Soviet trams and buses, while government officials drove fancy German cars. The only billboards advertised Pyonghwa Motors, co-owned by Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church and under license from Fiat.

Officially, 2012 (Kim Il-Sung’s 100th birthday, known as Juche 100) will mark the completion of several projects, including the pyramidal Ryugyong Hotel, begun in 1987 but halted in 1992 due to severe shortages. Though the country’s tallest structure, the 105-story building is absent from tourist maps.

A North Korean phone on the country’s only cellular network. Photo: Ben Piven

The top two floors are being renovated as an office for Egyptian telecom magnate Naguib Sawiris, whose Orascom employees are also installing the nation’s first cell service, KoryoLink. The company has already enlisted over 50,000 subscribers at $25 per month. Sawiris also recently launched Ora Bank, another joint venture with a North Korean government partner. (North Korea’s ties with Egypt date back to the 1973 Yom Kippur War. In return for air force squadrons, North Korea later received scud missiles).

Some Americans believe that more economic engagement is the best way to bring North Korea in from the cold. There are some signs that the Juche nation is slowly bending to Western commercial pressures - witness the Taedonggang beer ad, Pyongyang pizza craze, and a new Singaporean-owned fast food restaurant.

But for now, despite the rapid globalization on its borders, North Korea remains in an economic deep freeze.

- Ben Piven

Air Koryo stewardesses with delicately coiffed hair and impeccable red suits directed us to our seats in the stuffy Tupolev aircraft. Flimsy seat backs folded completely forward onto the seat cushions. Pyongyang-bound tourists, businessmen, and North Koreans fanned themselves ferociously, as the temperature hit 80 degrees.

Forget Bill rescuing Laura and Euna in a private jet. Our Soviet-made plane first arrived in Pyongyang when Richard Nixon was conducting ping-pong diplomacy with China.

Banned in the E.U., Air Koryo is the only international carrier with the lowest 1-star Skytrax rating. Luckily, flight JS 156 from Shenyang was only 50 minutes.

We touched down, sweaty and relieved. The head stewardess announced, “Welcome to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea!” We blue-state Americans were ready to challenge the hermit kingdom’s concept of “imperialist dogs.”

Fearlessly led by three 2009 Brown University graduates, our Five Passes group had 18 scholarly Americans — including a Berkeley sociologist and an assistant director at the Asia Society — and 1 Chinese citizen. The tricky visas for the five-day North Korea tour had been arranged through North Korea’s consulate in Shenyang by a Chinese travel agent of North Korean origin.

After landing, airport officials escorted one of our guides and me to a back room to take our temperature. (Back in New York, I had half-joked whether a senator would rescue me from ping-pong with the dictator). They said we were warm - probably false - but maybe the result of the steamy plane ride. Twenty minutes of detention were disconcerting.

We had left forbidden items in China - several iPhones, a Blackberry, Star of David necklace, and a large zoom lens. Our group was anxious that customs officials might find a New Yorker cartoon of Kim Jong-il.

After leaving the terminal, we boarded our old tour bus and saw five half-smiling North Korean hosts - our guide, guard, minder, driver — and cameraman. We instantly became the subjects of a government travel documentary. Our tailor-made Truman Show had begun — in a 1950’s dystopia behind the Korean curtain.

We stayed at the grand Yanggakdo Hotel, on an island in the middle of the sluggish Taedong River. While the rooms looked like those in a 1970’s Ramada, we delighted in the 9-hole golf course, revolving rooftop restaurant, and Chinese-owned casino.

We mingled with Westerners and local families at the outdoor bar on the island’s edge. Bar matrons tended tables until after midnight — and even remembered our Koreanized names when we stepped into the fluorescent light of the breakfast hall by 6:30 a.m.

On the third day of our 92-hour time warp to the world’s most secretive country, we drove to Mt. Myohyang, 90 miles north of Pyongyang. Bob, a University of Colorado professor and our most quintessential American, bowed awkwardly at a waxen Kim Jong-il inside the International Friendship Exhibition. We chuckled about Bob’s homage to the “dear leader.”

Walking past thousands of treasures received by the reclusive leader and his late father, our guard commented on the U.S.-D.P.R.K relationship. “When the general plays with that ball, it proves that he controls the whole world in his hands,” said Lee, glaring at the Michael Jordan-autographed basketball Madeline Albright gave to Kim Jong-il in 2000. We then nicknamed our guard “Serious-Lee.”

His diametric opposite was our baby-faced 33-year-old minder with Buddha ears - also Lee - whom we called “Happy-Lee.” Neither Lee told us his first name, enabling our good cop/bad cop monikers. “Naive-Lee” versus “Stern-Lee.” And “Nice-Lee” versus “Malevolent-Lee.”

Nice-Lee charmed us with awkward English, using “representative” and “condensed” to describe our experience. But Serious-Lee, who stars in the 2008 Vice Guide to North Korea, prevented us from causing real trouble.

Nice-Lee fondly recalled the American and North Korean flags displayed side-by-side at the February 2008 Pyongyang performance of the New York Philharmonic. He was also impressed by the orchestra’s many Asian-Americans.

Our guide was an pretty 25-year-old woman who cheerfully promoted government dogma but tired of our questions. Our postmodern sensibilities overwhelmed her, especially when we spoke candidly about diplomatic rapprochement. But we did our best to transcend ideology by discussing nonpolitical issues.

On our tightly managed tour, objectivity and authenticity were in short supply. Though culturally sensitive, we critiqued claims about the economy and the allegedly hostile U.S. government. Bearing our American soft power, we were lucky to visit in the footsteps of our ex-president. Although we feared becoming pawns of Pyongyang’s public relations campaign, we hoped that our educational tour benefited the broader diplomatic thaw.

On our last day in Pyongyang, we said goodbye to plentiful Kimjongilias and Kimilsungias, the country’s revered flowers. At the airport, we noticed only two flights listed that day.

The return flight was the most terrifying part of the entire trip. Taiwanese passengers twice shrieked when the plane dropped dramatically. The plane was a microcosm of the country: in complete disrepair, while most people inside remain mum about their plight.

We cursed that the embargo prevented Air Koryo from updating its ancient fleet. I’ll wait until new jets arrive for my next voyage to the perfectly preserved Cold War museum, our beloved Hermit Kingdom.

- Ben Piven

On my second day in North Korea, our guide asked if it was true that Michael Jackson had died. We pictured her doing the moonwalk as Michael blared from her in-house PA that never sleeps.

After we confirmed the star’s death, she asked whether Michael Jordan had also passed away. She was relieved to hear that America’s greatest basketball player was doing fine - and was about to be inducted into the Hall of Fame.

The following day, our guard tried to impress us as we boarded the bus. “I hope you slept well last night,” said Lee. “I had sweet dreams about Beyonce and hope you did too!”

Exposure to foreign culture remains extremely restricted. As a child, our guide, Jong, had learned Ray Charles piano tunes at the Children’s Palace where we saw elite students perform. Lee had heard Auld Lang Syne and seen My Fair Lady. Jong said cutely that her favorite “popular music” was Ponchonbo Electric Ensemble, a Stalinist military-style band.

With outside media forbidden, citizens rely on domestic TV and intranet - which has instant messaging capabilities.

We were given the Pyongyang Times and Korea Today, English-language publications that resemble high school papers. “The flame of upsurge is kindled” in bold letters prefaced Kim Jong-il paying homage to the key components of Juche society: farm, factory, academy, and military. Our favorite photo showed Kim providing “on the spot field guidance to a gumball factory.”

Despite their national poverty, North Koreans love to picnic next to serene waterfalls. They also enjoy reading the newspaper before boarding the metro. They even find time to bicycle leisurely. However rare these moments seem, outsiders cherish those mundane instants where politics disappears and humanity triumphs.

The 23 million proud inhabitants of North Korea call their country the Land of Morning Calm. The nation is feisty in Northeast Asian geopolitics, but the actual place is indeed peaceful, orderly, and even sterile.

No armed security presence exists in most areas of the country, save for guards at major monuments, museums, and government installations – and of course the massive contingent of one million soldiers within several kilometers of the border with the southern nemesis.

Our guides revealed nothing about the reclusive dictator with a penchant for cognac and caviar. (They also vehemently denied the alleged Kim Jong-il ailments: heart disease, diabetes, and pancreatic cancer).

DPRK cuisine was uninspired and repetitive. and made China seem a gastronomic paradise. Tourists are treated to excessive portions of derivative Western cuisine. Tasteless fish, lukewarm schnitzel, and hard toast made regular appearances. The two authentic Korean meals were more appetizing, even if the kim chee was over-fermented and the baked clams saturated with lighter fluid. Ori bul go gi (grilled duck) on the last night was our favorite.

I brought American cigarettes and dried fruit to our guides, but they were not appreciative. I also brought a bag of jelly beans for schoolchildren. But they would not accept a foreigner’s gift, fearing they would appear selfish.

Our beloved local beer was Taedonggang, made in a brewery transported whole from England. The DPRK’s first-ever commercial was a 150-second Taedonggang promotional video. It first aired in July on Korean Central Television, the government network that reaches 1 million homes, broadcasting for 7.5 hours most days.

Women in North Korea were sharpest in neon pink or green choson-ot dresses that overpowered their malnourished frames. Three-inch platforms were the norm. Men wore matching navy or beige jumpsuits, often accentuating their stocky frames.

A phrase from the Korean-language book that I picked up in North Korea captures the essence of government propaganda: “Korea is a socialist paradise where there are no beggars and all of the people study all of the time.”

- Ben Piven

North Korean Major Im Dong-chul. Photos: Ben Piven

Part 3 of 6 in our Inside the Hermit Kingdom series on the people and culture of North Korea. Worldfocus multimedia producer Ben Piven writes about his encounter with Major Im Dong-chul while on the north side of the Demilitarized Zone that separates the two Koreas.

Since 1953, it has been the world’s most militarized border. Bill Clinton has called it the scariest place on earth. Undoubtedly, my most compelling moment in North Korea was at the DMZ — Demilitarized Zone.

Many Americans visit the south side of the 2.5-mile wide buffer zone that runs across the 38th parallel, dividing the Communist north from the democratic south. But our group was given a rare glimpse of the north side, where more than one million soldiers lie in waiting.

Our tour guide, Im Dong-chul, was a 21-year veteran of the Korean People’s Army with a sharp jaw and oval eyes. He offered us our only opportunity to engage in real political conversation with a North Korean soldier. Although the dialogue began with tremendous tension, we moved toward a cordial rapport during our 90 minutes together.

Speaking in Korean, Major Im fielded questions about war and peace. The major and I squared off, with two dozen others crowded around, and I seized the challenge of bilateral hardball. I was simultaneously engaged as a journalist and a diplomat. And since Americans of neither profession are common in North Korea, the task at hand was immense.

Promoting the elusive two-party talks sought by North Korea, I asked what message I should relay to President Obama.

Major Im, with the line of control and U.S.-administered building on the South Korean side in the far background.

“The U.S. should end its hostile attitude towards the DPRK by withdrawing its forces from the Korean peninsula. This is the biggest issue blocking reunification,” he said.

“As a representative of the American people, I know that we voted for a new president because we wanted big changes in foreign policy,” I responded. “President Obama is sincere, but he’s busy with a dozen other problems.”

“If every American were like you, there would be peace,” he concluded. “And I hope Obama’s policy shift happens soon.”

I apologized for American bombers leveling Pyongyang during the Korean War, and the major responded to my empathy. I then reiterated the bottom line of denuclearization: the north needs to implement security guarantees for the south.

It was shocking that Major Im even tolerated our input. Apparently, American tourists had never engaged him before. We too felt the pressure, especially in the DMZ meeting room straddling the Korean border.

I wondered about the significance of the exchange. I had come to terms with our contribution to the tourist economy but hoped that we were not becoming apologists for the state’s Juche ideology.

Back at the hotel that night, we noticed signs of diplomatic progress on BBC World News. But the process is cyclical: the North relaxes its stance, opens to talks, and then postures militarily after making impossible demands. The leadership clams up, afraid to risk humiliation at the bargaining table.

Later in the trip, we heard endless misinformation at the Korean War museum and during our tour of the captured U.S.S. Pueblo spy ship.

In the conference room that straddles the line of control between the two Koreas.

We were told repeatedly that the Korean War was used to lift the Americans out of the depression and that the U.S. had initiated the war.

Yet, we heard not a peep about the American role in liberating Korea from Japan in World War Two, though we often heard more animosity toward the Japanese than toward the sworn American enemy.

During five days in the DPRK, North Korean people never reacted contemptuously to our group as Americans. While anti-American dogma figures into museums and monuments, strangers were deferential and usually avoided us. Tourism workers were often excessively nice, especially if we addressed them in Korean or Mandarin.

My conversation with Major Im was a small but promising victory for the prospects of diplomacy aimed at bringing the world’s most isolated, nuclear-armed regime in from the cold.

- Ben Piven

North Korea is a Cold War relic, but its communist roots alone do not explain the widespread adoption of the ideology knows as Juche — essentially a hybrid of East Asian Confucianism and East European Stalinism.

Despite the fact that state literature decrees “man is the master of all things,” Juche (”self-reliance” in Korean) is relentlessly collectivist.

Juche emphasizes rigid hierarchical authority and the harmonious arrangement of highly deferential individuals. Economic independence and military self-defense are its primary goals.

Juche is the main philosophical component of the political system known as Kimilsungism, which emerged from the leadership of Kim Jong-il’s father, Kim Il-sung.

The Kim Il-sung cult overshadows reverence for Kim Jong-il, whose image is scarcely seen on monuments. Scholars debate whether Juche qualifies as a religion, but the North Korean government certainly permits worship of no other gods.

Omnipresent Juche obelisks and Kim Il-sung immortality towers memorialize the “eternal president” who died in 1994 after almost a half-century in power. His portrait adorns every major public space, as Mao and Stalin’s did in their respective societies.

But subordination to the dead emperor is more theocratic than in Maoism and Stalinism. Pyongyang is Juche’s Jerusalem, and Kim’s birthplace, Mangyongdae, is the North Korean Bethlehem. His presidential palace, Kumsusan, is a sprawling compound with intimidating right angles and exquisite marble interiors, where his body lies in state - like Mao in Tian’anmen Square.

North Korean society is organized into groups. Citizens rarely do anything alone, and there is no concept of pluralism. Self-esteem and personal confidence come from conformity and compatibility with the Juche ideological framework.

The mass culture of North Korea is stunning due to its high level of coordination and the sheer numbers of participants in events such as the Arirang Games, the mass games spectacle involving over 100,000 performers — including 20,000 schoolchildren who form a human television.

Ironically, Pyongyang was the center of Korean Christianity prior to the Korean War, but currently religious freedom is limited to three Christian churches in the capital and a handful of state-run Buddhist temples. Pohyonsa, a Buddhist temple complex near Mt. Myohyang, is designated as #40 on the “national treasure” list. A vestige of once-flourishing Buddhism, the site is reminiscent of Holocaust memorials to extinct communities.

In the Hermit Kingdom, Juche trumps all.

- Ben Piven

(View full post to see video)

State of Mind, a 2004 prize-winning British documentary funded in part by Worldfocus parent company WNET, follows the lives of Arirang Games performers and their families.

Worldfocus discussed the meaning of the Arirang Games with two North Korea experts: Charles Armstrong, a history professor and director of Columbia University’s Center for Korean Studies and Leon Sigal, director of the Social Science Research Council’s Northeast Asia Cooperative Security Project.

What are the historical roots of Arirang?

Charles Armstrong: Mass choreographed spectacles are not unknown in the West. They were popular in the middle of the 20th century in totalitarian and militarized states, such as pre-World War Two Japan, Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, and China. These countries had a very big influence on the formation of North Korean culture. But North Korea has taken it to a whole new level of size, precision, and spectacle.

The “Arirang” song is the most well-known folk song from Korean history. It’s the unofficial national anthem for both Koreas. But when [North Koreans] use that name, they’re demonstrating that it’s not just a North Korean song - that it’s an all-Korean song demonstrating the unity of the Korean people. It originally became an emblem of nationalism during Japanese colonial rule from 1910 to 1945. The very first Korean movie from 1927 was called “Arirang.” This is mass, modernized folk culture.

Is Arirang popular culture?

Leon Sigal: Yes, absolutely. Pop culture in societies like ours tends to be generated more from the bottom up than from the state down. Yet Arirang clearly involves mass participation. It’s hard for an outsider to gauge how much enthusiasm is generated, but there’s definitely some genuine enthusiasm.

Why does North Korea invest so much time and resources in this mass gymnastics performance?

Charles Armstrong: It’s a way of demonstrating the solidarity of the North Korean people and their common sense of purpose with the regime. It also demonstrates the discipline and skill of entertainers and dancers through the glorification of the state, the leaders, and the system as a whole.

Leon Sigal: Arirang has a number of different elements. The appearance of mass participation is important for regimes like this. That’s a way to keep people happy in a society that’s pretty gray and grim. It also keeps people busy when they aren’t fully employed. Arirang is more than a public spectacle. It really is a mass mobilization event. The event is the one-party state’s showcasing a different face to the world. This is not just these school kids - but thousands of adults too. Every day, they’re practicing for these events at stadiums and sports centers in Pyongyang and beyond.

Why are Western tourists only allowed to tour the country during Arirang?

Charles Armstrong: This is a way of making a lot of money. Foreigners pay quite a bit to attend. Also, there’s been a shift in how they’ve been dealing with the outside world. Since the Clinton visit, they’ve been more open to the south and toward the West in general. North Koreans have learned that outisders coming in - from both friendly and not-so-friendly countries - are very impressed with their mass entertainment. The great leader himself has been known to attend on occasion - not every year but once every couple of years.

Leon Sigal: They like to put their best face forward, and Arirang is North Korea’s show piece.

Are the games successful in achieving their goal of mobilizing support for the Juche idea?

Charles Armstrong: One of the most common North Korean slogans is “il shim tang gyol” - which means “one heart united.” The Arirang Games are more for foreigners, but there are other mass games during anniversary ceremonies. Arirang creates a certain political reality of indivisible unity. When people from liberal western countries go there, it can be frightening. Although North Korea is a totalitarian society, it’s not expansive and aggressive.

Leon Sigal: It is successful. The participants appear happy to take part in the event. Arirang festival days are nice days. The government even tries to get outsiders to compete. It is also used to send political messages: when Madeleine Albright attended in 2000, she witnessed the flip-card unit’s depiction of a Taepodong missile launch.

- Ben Piven