Comparing Koreas

Well, where to start?

I gave some hints in my last posts as to the truly weird experience linked with applying and obtaining a North Korean Visa, that and the truly bizare experience of flying into the country on an airline littered with propaganda and the strangest flight attendants I have ever seen.

Regardless, being in North Korea was an experience I shalt forget and it did not really hit me until I went to South Korea after to visit my friend Alisha, and in this article I shall explain why...

Like any plane ride, they go through the motions, the safety, hello from the captain, flying time, etc. Except on this plane ride the only news paper available was about the DEAR LEADER and his son, and the only movie was a North Korean patriotic film, "Love on the Taedong River". They were also explicitly clear on the fact that we were NOT TO TAKE PHOTOS FROM THE PLANE. However, much like the students I teach(teenagers), I was clearly tempted when they said that, and to add to it, the land was the most barren waste land I have ever seen from a plane. A Swiss man was caught by the secret police taking pictures and forcefully told to DELETE them, I was "caught" by a flight attendant who proceeded to ask me where I was from and later tell me that I have a nice body..... I was just glad she did not report me, and our innocent conversation about Canada was interrupted when I asked about how the country was dealing with the death of the DEAR LEADER, and she went on a very "scripted" patriotic rant about the resilience of the Korean People. All of this and we had not even landed!

We arrived and went through customs, all the Europeans had their phones confiscated at the airport, to be returned to them upon departure from North Korea. We then went into town during "rush hour", when all the people WALK home from work, as no one in North Korea owns a private car. I have never been in a city home to millions without cars, at least the air was clean compared to Beijing.

Another thing that struck me was the god like vistas of the "Eternal President" Kim Il Sung and his recently dead son Kim Jong Il(The Dear Leader). There was also not a single advertisement or shop open that we saw.

That was the beginning of a wild week in the DPRK. We visited the DMZ, to see the North Korean side of the war, sitting at the negotiation table with some other chinese tourists was ironic, as 60 years ago, we would of been enemies trying to kill eachother on behalf of our ideologies. Everything we did was scripted, dinner at the selected restaurants, no public transit what so ever, we could not leave our guides at anytime, except on the island where our hotel was. I as many of you know like to go jogging and was afforded the "freedom" to jog around the island at will each morning before breakfast, I got some weird looks from the locals, as I was sporting Nike shirts and shorts and Adidas shoes, things they had clearly never seen before. I did notice by day three of jogging that the same guy would watch me from the bridge each morning and only leave his post when I returned into the hotel compound gate, I guess even jogging around an island could be dangerous for "their security.

We did manage to get our guides very drunk, opening up a few windows into what their lives were like, and the structure of North Korean society. When we warmed up to them, they took us out to a "BEER HALL", which I must admit was some of the best beer I have ever had, no offense to Germany, Belgium or Portland.

As we embarked on our train back to Beijing, most of us sat in anticipation as to what the border would be like, and one member of our group was especially quiet, a man from new zealand who often sported pink pants and green rimmed sunglasses, a rather odd fellow who, while my guide was wasted drunk off of Jamesons admitted that they were "very concerned about". This man was an undercover journalist, who actually brought his lap top with numerous published articles, including some of which he has written for the Economist. The North Korean guards were unable to work his "MAC" computer, god bless Apple, lol and he managed to escape the possibility of a hard labour camp, which was the fate of the two american journalists that Bill Clinton had to rescue a few years ago.

Once we crossed the border we all let our a sigh of relief and celebrated with wine and russian Vodka, spoke openly about our experiences and puzzled over the weird place all of us had ever been. I enjoyed my experience in the DPRK, the guides were very kind to us, and once you looked past the truly bizare things, one realized just how special that experience was. I shall be interested to see, as many of us were, can the regime last? What will happen if the two countries unify? To get a bit of an inside look at the experience please check the youtube links below.

Short video link into our North Korean trip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?hl=en-GB&v=RW1iBuOpY2Y

Myself participating in MAY DAY in Pyongyang: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-NJO-q5Pnk&feature=relmfu

After a short break in China I flew over to South Korea to visit my friend Alisha, whom is teaching in Seoul. I have seen contrast before, short hops from Morocco to Spain, Israel and Palestine, the USA/Mexico border were all experiences with huge disparity, but none of those could have prepared me for THIS!

When I arrived in Pyongyang there was only soldiers, guns and pictures of the dear leader to be seen. In Seoul, I saw adverts EVERYWHERE.... SAMSUNG, HUNDAI, STARBUCKS, banks, models, anything you could ever want. In North Korea where no one owns a car, I saw on the luggage carousel a brand new Hundai available in a contest. I got on a air conditioned bus, I could go where ever I pleased, I could drink anything I wanted, eat anything I wanted, speak to anyone, read anything.... It seemed so weird, as these were Koreans, and a week prior I had been 70 KM away at the border, where all this seemed impossible.

Alisha took me to a soccer game, packed at an OLYMPIC stadium, we partied the weekend away for her birthday in down town Seoul, indulging in a way similar to any first world nation. We travelled by high speed train to the Southern tip of South Korea in two hours, rented bikes, met Koreans, drank what ever beer we wanted. I loved every minute of it. As Alisha knows I kept saying "WOW, they do that here????", "In North Korea there is NO WAY!"... etc.... I was in shock the whole time.

I can say this, that despite their vast differences in quality of life, the korean people on both sides of the border are very kind people, hospitable and hard working. Despite their efforts being directed in very very different ways.

I have had numerous conversations on my trip so far about this experience in "Korea" and also many conversations about the state of the other countries I have visited thus far. I have seen a recurring theme among many of the western people I meet, they all seem to point fingers at Americans, saying how this poverty is caused by them and their "wars", and that the world would be better off if America just STAYED OUT of everyone business.

I can honestly say that after seeing the difference between North and South Korea, two countries DESTROYED in 1953, one that lives with some of the highest standards of wealth, education, health care and opportunity in the world and the other with the lowest. One embraced the help of the Americans both militarily and economically and the other chose a path of extreme socialism and dicatatorship. I am not saying that everything the Americans do is good, but I am saying that when people say that they do no good, they are being very naive and sometimes we need to look a little deeper than what is just on the surface of a situation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-NJO-q5Pnk

I had to dig deep to get into North Korea, but having seen this comparison now will forever last in my memory, as I continue to ponder this vast contrast and see how it evolves over the 21st century.

Wishing everyone well back home and abroad. William