A grey short-sleeved nylon jacket, the uniform of the Workers Party of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, hung in a window of one of Pyongyang's many squat apartment blocks, backlit by the dull yellow tinge of a bare lightbulb. It was one of the few windows that could be seen into. The lights were off in many of the neighbouring apartments, and the view into the majority of the remainder was featureless. The jacket was therefore a rare glimpse into a North Korean home, or about the closest we were going to get to it.
The streets outside were dark and quiet, bereft of streetlamps, advertising and shop fronts. A young couple stood talking in the shadows. Others walked or cycled along the wide, sparsely-trafficked streets, at a pace that seemed 10-15% slower than normal. Others still vanished into the underpasses, their blue signposts, one of the few flashes of light and colour against the darkened city, showing a man walking jauntily down a set of steps.
We were on our way to our hotel, the Chongnyon, from a modern fairground near the triumphal arch in the centre of the city which is a direct rip-off of Paris' Arc d'Triomphe. Only 11 metres taller, as our guides were quick to point out. At the fairground, we went on rollercoasters and rides as adrenaline-inducing as any I have tried before. Joyful screams of the local people in military, civilian and Party (with a capital P) clothes filled the air. Three men in grubby dark blue overalls squatted on their haunches near one of the rides, observing our tourist group. They were the only sign of poverty. We were otherwise barely afforded a second glance.
It is difficult to know what is real and what is not in Pyongyang, a city that warps time. We had taken the train into the DPRK from the Chinese border. As I stepped on to the platform in the North Korean capital, I felt like an extra in an old WW2 film. The brown-tiled platform floor was wide and open. Soldiers queued to board another train. Pretty young women wearing polka-dot dresses and pencil skirts and with wavy, lacquered hair looked like the ancestors of their equally elegant counterparts in Seoul. I had been in the other Korean capital just one week earlier, separated by a couple of hundred kilometres and several decades of history.
In the countryside, there are no cars. It was impossible not to notice their complete absence as we sat on the train, trundling along from the border post at Sinuiju. No cars, and no roads either, save for the gravelly tracks on which the people - surprisingly numerous considering how rural the surroundings - travelled back and forth on foot or by bicycle. The landscape was green and verdant, rice paddies giving way to emerald mountains, free of heavy industry or development. Children bathed in the rivers, heavy loads were being hauled by oxen. This could have been the 1920s.
At Sinuiju, our first glimpse inside the hermit kingdom, we stood glued to the windows of the train as it left the border post and progressed through the town. There were a few cars here. There was a big, white, clean-looking square with one of the obelisk-shaped war memorials frequently seen all over the country. A large portrait of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il overlooked the square, its pale colours reflected in the sunlight. It reminded me of a 1940s imagining of a utopian future.
Second World War, 1920s, imaginary utopian future. So which one is it? None of these and all of these, and all the things I didn't notice too. The North Koreans live in a world which is so isolated it has become a parallel universe. But their reality is as logical for them as ours is for us. It can be found behind the grey shirt in the window, screaming on a rollercoaster under a Pyongyang night sky, sitting on an oxcart in the fields.
The streets outside were dark and quiet, bereft of streetlamps, advertising and shop fronts. A young couple stood talking in the shadows. Others walked or cycled along the wide, sparsely-trafficked streets, at a pace that seemed 10-15% slower than normal. Others still vanished into the underpasses, their blue signposts, one of the few flashes of light and colour against the darkened city, showing a man walking jauntily down a set of steps.
We were on our way to our hotel, the Chongnyon, from a modern fairground near the triumphal arch in the centre of the city which is a direct rip-off of Paris' Arc d'Triomphe. Only 11 metres taller, as our guides were quick to point out. At the fairground, we went on rollercoasters and rides as adrenaline-inducing as any I have tried before. Joyful screams of the local people in military, civilian and Party (with a capital P) clothes filled the air. Three men in grubby dark blue overalls squatted on their haunches near one of the rides, observing our tourist group. They were the only sign of poverty. We were otherwise barely afforded a second glance.
It is difficult to know what is real and what is not in Pyongyang, a city that warps time. We had taken the train into the DPRK from the Chinese border. As I stepped on to the platform in the North Korean capital, I felt like an extra in an old WW2 film. The brown-tiled platform floor was wide and open. Soldiers queued to board another train. Pretty young women wearing polka-dot dresses and pencil skirts and with wavy, lacquered hair looked like the ancestors of their equally elegant counterparts in Seoul. I had been in the other Korean capital just one week earlier, separated by a couple of hundred kilometres and several decades of history.
In the countryside, there are no cars. It was impossible not to notice their complete absence as we sat on the train, trundling along from the border post at Sinuiju. No cars, and no roads either, save for the gravelly tracks on which the people - surprisingly numerous considering how rural the surroundings - travelled back and forth on foot or by bicycle. The landscape was green and verdant, rice paddies giving way to emerald mountains, free of heavy industry or development. Children bathed in the rivers, heavy loads were being hauled by oxen. This could have been the 1920s.
At Sinuiju, our first glimpse inside the hermit kingdom, we stood glued to the windows of the train as it left the border post and progressed through the town. There were a few cars here. There was a big, white, clean-looking square with one of the obelisk-shaped war memorials frequently seen all over the country. A large portrait of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il overlooked the square, its pale colours reflected in the sunlight. It reminded me of a 1940s imagining of a utopian future.
Second World War, 1920s, imaginary utopian future. So which one is it? None of these and all of these, and all the things I didn't notice too. The North Koreans live in a world which is so isolated it has become a parallel universe. But their reality is as logical for them as ours is for us. It can be found behind the grey shirt in the window, screaming on a rollercoaster under a Pyongyang night sky, sitting on an oxcart in the fields.
