but when we saw a
particularly thick cluster of them we reached for our maps and found
that we were passing close by Yongbyang, the centre of North Korea's
controversial nuclear industry.
A visit to the International Friendship Exhibition is almost obligatory
in any tourist itinerary in North Korea. A train-ride away from
Pyongyang in an impressive mountain setting, the IFE stores the
thousands of gifts and tributes the Great Leader and the Dear Leader
have received over the years from governments, organizations and
individuals the world over. While travelling through the countryside
we'd noticed the odd AA gun installed on a hilltop,
but when we saw a
particularly thick cluster of them we reached for our maps and found
that we were passing close by Yongbyang, the centre of North Korea's
controversial nuclear industry.
The IFE gets rather tedious rather quickly (most gifts are numbingly mundane - letter openers, ghetto blasters, chairs), but it is worth seeing just for the fleet of black bulletproof 1950's sedans (a gift from Stalin) and to check out what honours YOUR country has bestowed upon a ruthless dictator. We reluctantly agreed to bow to the statue of the Great Leader, but drew the line at the Dear Leader.
During this outing we also visited some nearby mountains where I marvelled at the sight of a frozen waterfall and Erwin was divebombed by a white eagle. Some very organised vandals had painted a large portrait of the Great Leader and one of his inimitable sayings on one of the rock faces. We also viewed some relics from Korea's more distant history, but most of these were replicas due to the mass devastation of the Korean War.
As the trip progressed we started talking more and more politics with our guides. We thought that the 3 of us were allocated 2 guides just so that they could keep tabs on each other, but even when we got them alone they would still never stray even an inch from the party line. Not so surprising in a society where political correctness is a matter of personal safety, but after a while I started to believe that they believed these obvious untruths they were expounding. For us in the West it's difficult to imagine a country with no serious crime, no poverty, no AIDS, no prostitutes, no homosexuals and no women who smoke, but maybe not so for people who have been told this all their lives - and don't have access to foreign magazines and newspapers. At the Grand People's Study House in Pyongyang, which we also visited, locals have to register with name and address in order to just look at a book. When we requested to see some foreign newspapers (to look up a football result!) they said that yes, of course, they had them but no, we couldn't see them.