After getting up in the morning and having the mediocre Yanggakdo Hotel breakfast again, we head out to our first stop of the day: the war museum. Or, it's official name: The Great Fatherland Liberation War Museum. As you can suspect, it's a big deal to them, and the museum itself is gigantic. In fact, the whole thing was just rebuilt in a new, larger building, and after the tour they pointed out the old building next door that used to house it to us.
A selection of Japanese children's books in the hotel bookstore.
The view from the glass elevator of the hotel.
The Pothonggang Circus, a different one from the one we went to.
The entrance to the museum.
Just inside the entrance.
A map of the complex and our museum guide.
Overall, the quality of construction of the exhibits was really impressive, definitely matching the quality of the best US museums. First, we visited the half of the outdoor exhibit containing many of the
captured vehicles, tanks, and planes of the US and other UN forces,
which were appropriately bombed out and shot up to show the level of
destruction the Koreans inflicted on the enemy. (The other half that we
didn't see was the similar weaponry of the Korean Army, which I would
guess is displayed in pristine condition.) The little path that led down
to these exhibits was made up like an log-lined entrenchment.
The path to the exhibit.
The gun is built into and made of the same material as the wall, but pretty realistic.
Then we visited the USS Pueblo and were given a short tour of the inside of it, including the crypto room. Here, the Korean propaganda is actually true. The US operated a program of "environmental research vessels" (the GER on the side of the ship stands for "General Environmental Research") which were supposedly just conducting benign scientific research, but were actually military intelligence-gathering vessels ("spy ships"). When they told us that we couldn't take pictures inside the museum, I thought they meant this ship too, so I didn't get too many pictures. But I didn't miss anything super interesting, they just had a couple exhibits showing where the ship had made its numerous intrusions into Korean waters and such.
The US apology for the intrusion. They retracted it as soon as they got their soldiers back.
The crypto room.
The ship's library.
The main entrance to the museum.
After the outdoor exhibits we headed inside. This was one of the few places where we weren't allowed to take pictures for some reason. There were tons of rooms and exhibits in here, so we only went through a whirlwind tour of a few of them, usually the ones most relevant to our group (for example, I hear online that there's a room dedicated to the Chinese forces which the Chinese tourists are taken through), meaning for our group the ones which showed how badly the invading forces (the US in case you didn't know) got their asses kicked. First, in the entrance hall was a giant color statue at the top of a fancy staircase showing who we thought was Kim Jong Un, but it turns out it was a young Kim Il Sung. Then they showed us a short film with a number of references from American sources which proved that it was the US that started the war and not the other way around before starting through the exhibits. The ones that stood out enough that I specifically remember them were one dedicated to the US defeat, where they had a diorama of a field of dead Americans, one with his brains being picked at by a crow, and only one man standing, they said who specifically, but I don't remember his name, but who they had nicknamed the "general of death" or something because he got his whole unit killed in the battle, with his hat off and clasped in front of him and his head bowed in shame as a small fan at his feet ruffled his hair as if it were blowing in the wind. It was a really good diorama.
The entrance hall with a young Kim Il Sung.
I don't think we saw this diorama, but it's typical of what they had.
The diorama for the US defeat.
Then there was the exhibit of Height 1211, which was a series of winding paths, starting with those made up like a forest showing the camps with tents and campfires, first in the warm season, then in the winter. Then it moved on to the underground bunkers that had been dug out showing the barracks and storage rooms for food and munitions. This position is apparently fairly legendary among the Koreans, and there were a couple small exhibits or dioramas here of the heroes that fought there, like the guy who had two broken arms and used his mouth to fire his gun for a full fifteen minutes, killing I forget how many hundreds of Americans.
The summer and winter camps of Height 1211.
The defense of Height 1211.
The bunkers of Height 1211.
Korean war heroes.
Somewhere in here was also the car that Stalin gave to Kim Il Sung, and eventually we went through a connecting hallway that was lined with portraits of heroes of the war and their exploits to the building that housed The Panorama. This was a panorama of the Liberation of Taejon, where we climbed some spiral stairs to enter into the round room that housed the panorama all around its wall. Then they dimmed the lights and the whole thing rotated, with lights projected onto the painting showing gunfire and explosions and fluttering flags, as the battle progressed from the initial invasion, through the battle, to the celebration at the end as the enemy was routed.
The Panorama.
Finally, we went to the gift shop, where I bought a book about how the American Imperialists had started the war, because I don't doubt the veracity of the well-referenced quotes that they brought up in the video of how the US started the war, so I wanted to look up the quotes and their context online later to see how they were able to be twisted to support the Korean version of the story. And I also bought the above picture book of the exhibits of the museum, to see what else it had to offer that we skipped, and also to have these pictures of the exhibits since we weren't allowed to take any. (Is this why we weren't allowed to take pictures? To increase their book sales? They're starting to learn the ropes of capitalism!)
The exit of the museum. The round building is where the panorama is.
The building of the old war museum, currently empty.
The museum from behind.
After the war museum we went to the art studio where they make all the paintings and statues of the Kims. Of course, that's not all they make. So first we went through a small three story gallery building. There were a lot of paintings lining the walls ranging in size from medium to very large, and some small sculptures and pottery as well. A lot of the paintings had African themes like elephants and tigers, but besides making statues of the Kims, apparently a lot of African dictators order their statues of themselves from this studio as well, so maybe the paintings are aimed at them as well. This is where I bought the little tea cup that I got.
After the gallery building we went to the actual studios and workshops. We just visited a couple of rooms where a couple of artists were working and saw the completed works that they had done. These were mostly for sale and and guy in our group really wanted to get a painting of Pyongyang with the Ryugong Hotel in it (since seeing a picture of that for the first time was one of the things that inspired him to come to Korea in the first place), but none of the paintings were quite in the style he was looking for. The guides said that he could have one commissioned, but I think in the end because he couldn't get an upfront price and because it would have to be shipped somehow, he didn't end up doing it.
I couldn't help but want to get those smokestacks in the background.
Facing back towards the entrance.
That's about all there was to do at the art studio, so from there we headed down for our ride on the Pyongyang Metro. We started at Puhung ("Revitalization") Station, which is one of the two grand stations that were constructed to impress tourists. Since these two were for a long time the only stations that tourists were ever taken through, there was a conspiracy theory that the entire metro system was a lie and that all the riders were just actors putting on a grand propaganda charade to fool gullible tourists into thinking that Korea was advanced enough to have a functioning subway system. In fact, it was those who believed that who were the gullible ones falling for anti-Korean propaganda, because there is in fact a full working metro system, and now tourists, including us, are taken through a bunch of stations on the line rather than just the two grand stations.
They used to use a paper ticket system until relatively recently, but by the time we got there they had already installed an automated electronic system with contactless cards. The fare is only 5 won (about 5¢, same as for the trams and trolleybuses) and Miss Kim swiped us all through with her card. On the display on the gate it tells you how many fares you have remaining. I think this is still in parallel with the paper ticket system though, because they also gave us all one of the paper tickets as a souvenir (although maybe they just keep them around for tourists these days). There's also someone stationed at the ticket gates, I suppose either to check paper tickets if they're still used, or else just to prevent gate jumpers.
The ticket gates at Puhung Station.
On the ceiling above the ticket gate.
So then we rode the famous escalators down into the subway. Since it was also built to double as a bomb shelter, this is one of the deepest subways in the world. I used to ride the escalator in Buffalo's University Station every day, and looking up and down the escalator as we descended, I'd say that this escalator was about twice as long as that one.
Down on the platform there are various reliefs and murals along the walls, including a big one with Kim Il Sung at the end, and then there were a couple newspaper displays in the middle of the platform where people could read the daily news, and many people were. So we wandered around the platform for a few minutes taking pictures before the guides told us that we'd be getting on the next train.
The hallway at the end of the escalator.
Nice mosaic in the hallway.
Nice light covering on the ceiling.
The platform.
The chandeliers.
The train doors weren't even automatic, and it was up to the passengers and the conductor ladies on the platform to slide open and closed the doors when the trains were in the station. The trains came every five to ten minutes it seemed, so we got on the the next train to arrive and off we went. This was a terminus station and wasn't as crowded as later stations, so the car was fairly empty aside from us. Of course, as any patriotic train should, it had portraits of the leader at the end of each car, so we all made sure to get our pictures of those.
The very next station was Yonggwang ("Glory") Station, which is the other grandiose station constructed to impress. This wasn't our final destination, we just got out here to take pictures. This station had fancy chandeliers which were supposed to represent fireworks. Up and down the walls of the platform were murals of the city, and all the sights that
we had been seeing were there, like the Grand People's Study House,
Juche Tower, and the Workers' Party Monument. There were also the same type of newspaper holders here.
The firework chandeliers.
Murals of the city.
When we had been here long enough to finish taking our pictures we got back on the train and continued down the line. There were a couple more stops along the way but we stayed on the train through them. From what I could see out the window they still seemed like nice stations, just not quite as grand as the first two. But still bright and clean with high ceilings and marble. Better than most of the stations in Buffalo and New York City (and Tokyo for that matter).
A couple glimpses of the other stations as we stopped briefly.
Eventually we got off at Kaeson "Triumph" Station, so named because
it's near the Arch of Triumph where we were headed. We took more pictures here too before finally heading out of the Metro.
Less grand than the first two, but still pretty damn nice.
Random group of kids we saw that everyone wanted to get pictures of.
A view of the blast doors in case of nuclear attack.
The exit of the platform
Some kind of map with buttons to find stations or destinations or something.
Outside we took a few pictures of the Arch of Triumph before getting back on the bus and heading out to lunch. The novelty of the meals was wearing off by this point, so I don't have any particular documentation of this contents of this meal, but we got treated to some more live music!
Outside the station, with the TV tower nearby.
The Arch of Triumph.
The station building.
Kim Il Sung Stadium nearby.
Selfie!
The stadium again.
The Sino-Korean Friendship Tower. We didn't stop here, just drove past it.
Some street work being done.
The restaurant.
After lunch we went to the waterpark. I took a couple pictures of this as we drove past it once before, before knowing that we'd be eventually be going there. Since it was still early in the season the outdoor portion wasn't open yet, but the indoor park was in full swing. This place was relatively recently built, and just inside the entrance was a diorama of a seaside scene and beach, and a color statue of Kim Jong Un standing on the beach smiling at us. Fully clothed though, no trunks and sunglasses for him. I think this may have been one of the few statues where they didn't even ask us if we wanted to bow our respects to it.
The fountain park. We would visit this later.
The bowling alley and shooting gallery.
The Central Youth Hall.
The orchestra hall.
The water park.
So then we proceeded to the reception desk where we traded our shoes for sandals and those who wanted to could pay for the park and rent suits. Only a couple of people opted to, but most of us didn't want to bother since we were only going to be here for an hour. There were a bunch of other amenities here, like a barbershop and beauty salon, a masseuse, and of course a bar. So a few of us just got some beers and sat at a table on the balcony overlooking the park for the whole time. One of the guys actually went for a haircut, and then a massage afterwards, which unfortunately we had to interrupt halfway when it was time for us to leave.
The swim store inside.
At the beauty salon.
And the barbershop. The famous poster of example haircuts which spawned the "These are the only legal haircuts in North Korea!" myth.
Some liquors at the bar.
Randomly, we came across a wedding party! It was the first of many we ended up seeing on the trip.
Some cutouts outside.
Giant empty plaza in front of the river. There were a lot of these around the city.
The Ryugyong Health Complex and Open-air Ice Rink.
It was a normal waterpark affair, some wading pools, waterslides, and things. It was mainly women and children here on a weekday, but there were men around too. The whole place was pretty busy. It was also nice to have a place where we were all split up for a change and could just hang out and chill without rushing around from place to place. After the beer I headed to the bathroom before we left, and this was the cleanest, brightest, best bathroom I had seen since we got here! I used it with earnest, and praised its virtues to the others, some of whom took me up on my recommendation.
Next was the kindergarten/daycare. This place was a pretty large building, one section was maybe eightish stories, and the other was three stories. Out front was the playground and the kids waved at us as we got off the bus and everyone took pictures of them. The guides explained that this place had both a daycare (for younger kids) and a kindergarten (for older kids) and told us how many kids were in each. I don't remember exactly, but it was at least a couple hundred in each. They said that there's a system of daily daycares set up that parents who are busy can drop their kids off at for the day and pick them back up in the evening, but that this one was different because it was a weekly daycare for extremely busy parents, where the parents dropped the kids off on Monday morning and they stayed here all week, overnights, and only got picked back up by their parents on Saturday, to spend Sunday together (the North Korean work week is Monday through Saturday, 9am-6pm).
The ice rink from the side.
May Day Stadium in the background. Have I mentioned yet that it's the biggest stadium in the world? 114,000 capacity.
The Pyongyang Students and Children's Palace. Not to be confused with the even grander Mangyongdae Schoolchildren's Palace that I showed pictures of earlier.
The Mansudae Art Theater.
Our welcome party.
So they started by taking us to a couple of the classrooms where the kids were having lessons. The first one the teacher was just talking and asking the kids some questions and they responded, so we couldn't really understand what it was about, but the second one they had a board with a map of a town at the front of the room and some cutouts of street signs and things with magnets on them, and the kids would go up to the board and put the sign in the right spot. A couple times they called on a tourist to do it, but of course we couldn't read the Korean signs, so they'd mess up and the kids would laugh.
The tiger is in the shape of Korea.
The building in the background is this daycare/kindergarten.
Pretty sure the one on the left is Kim Il-sung's birthplace, not sure about the one in the middle, and the one on the right is Kim Jong-il's supposed birthplace on Mt. Baekdu.
Playing games in one of the classrooms.
Then they took us down a curved hallway that had models of plants and animals all along both sides of it, and there was a group of kids there, learning I guess about the animals. The teacher would describe something and the kids would point at I guess the animal she was describing. They did the same thing here where they called on a couple of us tourists, including me, and blathered some Korean at us, but we somehow managed through the context to do what was expected of us correctly.
There was some Hello Kitty print on one of the floors.
Then there was a big playroom that had some arcade-style games which we hung out in for a few minutes watching the kids play with the various toys and things. Then we went to another playroom/hallway that had various riding toys and where they were doing a circular dance to a traditional Korean song,
and some of the tourists, including me, got pulled into it, so we picked
up the basic moves of the dance quickly. Then they took us off to see a
couple of performances. First was a bunch of little girls doing ballet,
which was fine, but the thing that made it super creepy was that they
were apparently taught to put on a big smile throughout the whole thing,
but only a couple could really do it halfway convincingly, and the
others just had on these terrifying grimaces the whole time. Anyway, the
dancing was good though.
The cartoon military stuff aimed at the kids was one of the creepier things we saw here.
One of the big playrooms.
With military-themed arcade games.
Another playroom with rides and dancing.
Didn't expect to see this here.
Then they took us to the cafeteria where they had a big popcorn machine in the kitchen (which was visible through the glass window). They said that the popcorn machine was a special gift from someone, maybe one of the leaders, but I almost think it was someone else. In any case, they brought out a cup of it for us and we all had a few kernels. They said the kids each get a cup everyday.
We saw some calligraphy in one of the classrooms.
And some drawing.
The school cafeteria.
Something about serving sizes I guess.
And something about nutrition.
The popcorn machine.
Then they took us to the auditorium where we watched a couple short acts with music and songs. They had a bunch of girls playing gayageum in one act, and then a bunch of kids playing keyboards, and one girl on drums, during another act. Eventually they had a couple of solos, and the girl on drums was pretty damn impressive! After the performance one of the guys in our group who worked for Lego brought out a big tub of them that he was giving to the kindergarten, and we stuck around and watched the kids play with them on the stage for a few minutes before leaving.
After the performance.
The outside of the school.
And the dorm tower.
This was the last stop of the day in Pyongyang, so now we left for Nampo on the west coast. This is the sort of thing I was looking forward to as being off the beaten tourist path, where we might get a chance to see a more authentic and less sanitized Korea. Incidentally, "off the beaten path" is exactly the wrong phrase to use, since after driving just a short way down the same highway towards Kaesong that we took before, we took an exit and were soon literally on the beaten path in the form of a dirt road. Now, instead of just seeing villages from afar like we had on the highway, we were going directly through them. Most of them, as we flew through the middle of town, had a big signboard with some kind of chart or graph on it. Production targets?
At one point while crossing some train tracks we saw a couple of tanks on top of some ramps that were apparently waiting to be loaded onto a train. Later on we saw some women spraying something onto the fields that I assumed were pesticides, but since nothing was even growing yet, looking back maybe it was some sort of fertilizer? And at one point, off on top of a hill, we saw a couple of small wind turbines, the only ones we ever saw in the country.
A couple of wind turbines in the distance.
Onchon, a town just outside of Nampo and the town our accommodations for tonight were in.
Some clothes drying on a bush to the left.
Nampo isn't even that far away compared to Kaesong, but it still felt
like it took nearly as long to get to, maybe just because the dirt roads
were slower, although the driver was really booking it down them. But
eventually we got to Nampo.
The place we were staying was like a
group of vacation cottages in the woods. There were a bunch of separate
houses (about nine?) and three or four rooms in each house, but each
"room" was like a hotel room with its own bathroom and everything. And
it was nice! Definitely the nicest rooms of anywhere we stayed. They
said that it was like a hot spring resort, so the hot water for the bath
came from a hot spring. There was also one other thing we could pay
extra to do here, that a couple of us, including me, opted for: gasoline
clams. Clams cooked by pouring gasoline over them and lighting it on
fire.
The forested area the resort is in.
Fancy room!
So after getting our rooms and getting our stuff settled, we all gathered at one of the houses and set up a big bag of clams on this round stone stand (to keep the whole thing off the asphalt). They also were saying that you have to drink soju while eating them. Not like a suggestion, but it sounded like a requirement. I've heard that drinking ethanol can prevent poisoning by similar compounds, by binding to the same receptors or something, so I'm wondering if the alcohol in the soju is supposed to prevent trace chemicals in the gasoline from causing problems? Or maybe I'm just reading too much into it and you're just supposed to drink at a clambake. In any case, all the gasoline should burn up anyway, and we set the clams up upside down so no gas should pool in them after they opened, and dozens of tour groups had done this before us, so in the end it ought to be safe enough.
Ready to cook.
So as we waited for the gasoline to be procured we broke out the drinks. There was a case of plastic bottles of extremely cheap (read: nasty) soju that had come from somewhere, but at the department store on the first day I had bought a couple small bottles of flavored soju for eventual evening drinking with everyone, so this was the time to break it out. The peach was actually not too bad, not a very strong or sweet peach flavor, but just enough that you could tell it was peach. The cherry barely tasted of cherry at all, but it wasn't terrible, and was still worlds better than that cheap stuff in the plastic bottles, so everyone was glad my stuff was available and drank it up quickly. One of the guys also had a portable bluetooth speaker that he broke out and hooked his iPhone up to and we had all kinds of Western jams blasting here in the middle of North Korea.
The drink selection.
So Miss Kim came with a couple half liter water bottles of gasoline with little holes drilled in the caps to squirt it out from and thoroughly soaked the clams with some of it and lit it up, and then continued squirting a stream of gasoline on it until the bottle was empty. She wasn't even being particularly careful and was getting a bunch of it on the ground near her feet, which would occasionally catch on fire and burn some. I'm not sure it was actually gasoline, because I think gasoline could burn a little more violently than this was, so maybe it was kerosene or something else. But after the first bottle ran out the bus driver took over and was much more liberal with the gas and burned everything good until the clams finally started opening up.
In the end, not even that many people wanted to eat them. The guides and me and one or two other people were going at it, but we really had to try to force them on the others. In the end I felt like I ate a quarter of them all by myself. Since we hadn't even eaten dinner yet at this point I was already good and drunk and was babbling to one of the other guys about how I was glad there was a full moon that night, because it was symbolic of how no matter what country we're in or what government we're under it's the same moon shining down without prejudice on all of us, and so on. It's fine, because he was drunkenly babbling to me about what a great ideal it is to aspire to having a society with complete equality between people no matter what their age or sex or race, and so on, a couple nights before when we were in Kaesong.
The full moon I was babbling about.
The aftermath.
So after the clams were finally all ate up, we went back up to the
central building for dinner, and more drinks afterward. We hung out
there in the dining room where they had a bar for another hour or two
and really I can't tell you much of what happened because I was smashed.
Good thing I took some pictures. Somehow I made it back to the house
and into my room and crashed, alas, without trying out the hot spring
bath in the end.
Not the usual brand of beer we had been drinking.
The dining room.
Some soju.
A painting in the lobby.
A selection at the bar.
I guess they rent rollerblades to skate around the grounds.
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