Since I had crashed so early the night before, I was already half awake when the music started. It was five AM, the sun was just starting to rise, and the music was creepy as hell. It was coming in the window of the room I had left open, and you could tell it was being played from loudspeakers across the city. I rolled over and tried to fall back asleep.
Not my video, but the same music:
After an hour or so of going in and out of sleep, I finally got out of bed around 6:15. The creepy music wasn't playing anymore, but there was some Korean coming out of a loudspeaker somewhere. Breakfast wasn't going to be served until 7:30, so I just sat in the room and read a magazine I had brought. My stomach was feeling fine today at least. I forgot to charge my phone the night before, so I plugged it in now, but there was no power in the room. I left it plugged in while I was reading and the power was finally switched on at about 7:15.
Breakfast wasn't great here, but no worse than at the Pyongyang hotel. If I recall, the bread wasn't even toasted, but there was a fried egg, some of that greasy sausage-esqe meat, and some kind of boiled greens, and tea. I ate about half of it in case my stomach was still weak.
The dining room of the hotel.
Of course there was a Kim picture in the lobby.
Outside as we were getting ready to get on the bus, there was a speaker right there on the hotel steps that was playing the Korean broadcast that we were hearing from inside the hotel. Someone asked Miss Kim what it was saying and she said it was just a weather report. It probably was too, because every day she had been starting out our bus rides with a weather report for the day, and I was always kind of wondering where she was getting it from, and if this thing is blaring through town every morning I guess it would be hard not to know the weather report for the day.
The gate of the hotel.
The hotel.
Next door to it.
The city stadium.
These were interesting because they're all handmade. I wonder if they were part of a contest or something?
The city obelisk.
So our first stop of the day was at a prestigious "middle school"
named after the wife of Kim Il Sung that I think was sort of a magnet
school for science. Although they translated the name of it as a "middle
school", it was high school aged students, so maybe that's just what
they call prep schools or something. Just as we were approaching the
entrance of the school there was a burst of laughter from out the window
of a classroom above us. Imagine! Laughter in North Korea!
English!
"Kim Jong-suk 1st Middle School"
So we met the principal and he took us to a room with a bunch of educational posters and a model of the school grounds in the middle of the room that he pointed out the features of the school on (greenhouses, dorms, a nice little park to study outside in, etc.). Then he took us to another room that had math awards the students had won in an international contest year after year, as well as pictures of all the current students on the wall. Someone on the group remarked on how few girls there were compared to boys, and the principal made a remark about girls not being as smart as boys, which didn't go down well with the group, but we agreed to disagree and moved on.
You knew there would be one of these, right?
These posters were all along the walls of the room with the school model, but I don't know what they were. Student research projects maybe?
The campus. We're in the building on the left. The ones in the back right are dorms.
International Math Olympiad medalists from the school. It's legit, I googled it.
Winners of various national contests.
So we went up to the classrooms and peeked in the windows at some of the classes in progress. The hallways in the school were all unlit, as is common here to save energy, but there was enough light coming in the windows that it wasn't dark. As we went down the hallways we went past a bunch of English materials on the walls of the halls,
which of course I had to get pictures of them all. Eventually we came to an English class and the teacher invited us, in English, to come in and talk with the students. So we mingled and struck up conversations, and I went up to a couple of girls near the front and started a conversation. Their English was really good! After a little chatting they asked me what was the difference between a trip and a tour and I said that a tour was pretty much a type of trip where you had a guide, and I think the one girl didn't know the word guide, but the other girl explained it to her in Korean. Basically they were just like my students in Japan, but with a higher level of English.
A bunch more English activities were in the hallways.
Not the English class. But look, technology in the classroom! In North Korea!
Afterwards as we were heading back out of the school I also overheard one of the women of the group saying how the students had asked her about the difference between "walking" and "going on foot". So it seemed like these weren't spontaneous questions, but that they had probably been prepared ahead of time for us. Was this a chip in the facade shown to tourists? A sneaky prepared show that was just acted out for us, rather than just a normal English class? The cynic would say yes, but I doubt it. If my school was going to have a tourist group visit, knowing that they'd be talking to students, they would probably prepare some kind of conversation topic or questions for the native speakers ahead of time too, as probably would any any American school too. In any case, there was no deception about the English abilities of the kids: it was great, and equal to that of Japanese highschoolers. Maybe this was just the school with the very best English in the country though, and that's why they specifically brought us here, says the cynic. Probably it's one of the best schools, judging by the nice campus and the international awards, but as I said earlier, it was more a science oriented school, and didn't seem all that different from any Japanese school I've seen. So I think it was representative of a Korean prep school, but probably not every student in the country has access to such a school. Even in Japan the best high schools are tested into, and that's how they said this one worked too. I imagine a lot of students go to technical schools too, as it's still a very industrial country. The guides said that 25% of students go to college though, for what that's worth. Also, someone asked if the students are free to pick their jobs after they graduate, or if the government just assigns jobs to them. Miss Kim said that most of them just job hunt on their own, although maybe some of the best in specific fields would be specifically recruited to certain positions. I asked if there was some kind of centralized job office that they could use to look for jobs, but she said no, they just apply to individual companies.
From the steps of the school.
The steps down into the "park".
So after the school we went to the biscuit factory. As we were driving out to it, just outside the city there were a couple of big buildings next to each other that Miss Kim pointed ouf as the orphanage for the whole province. Did the kids' parents starve in the 90's? Were their parents in prison? No one asked. But she said the biscuits made at the factory we were going to mostly just went to the orphanage.
One of the orphanage buildings.
And the other half of it next door.
And a school-looking building next door to that. Not sure if it's related to the orphanage complex or not.
And a second school-looking building next to that.
Some people doing laundry in the stream.
Doing some kind of work by the railroad tracks.
Some cows.
Some goats.
So at the biscuit factory they first took us to a room that had supposedly all the products that were made at the factory that we could buy, although it seemed like too big a selection for just this one factory, but who knows. Then we went over to the factory floor. It was like the bottled water plant where there was the double door with the blowers that they just opened up and let us through, and the hallways were all filled with glass windows where we could see in and see all the machines. And they were all stopped, just like in the water plant. Some people got suspicious at this. Did these plants really run at all? Or were they just shut down and idling most of the time? Waiting on materials from another plant that was waiting on materials from another plant that was...? Or was the state just pretending to pay them, as the joke goes, so they were just pretending to work?
The entrance to the plant.
Labels of the products they make.
A selection at the "store".
The factory floor.
Motivational posters.
There were always employees on site though and they started up the lines for us after a minute and fresh biscuits came off the line. Like with the water plant, our guide from the factory went in and got us some samples to try. They were just slightly undercooked, maybe because they were still cooling off, or maybe the ovens just weren't quite up to temperature yet. Anyway, they weren't bad. Someone asked what the initials in the middle of the biscuit stood for. "WFP". Miss Kim translated the question and the answer: "World Food Program".
The assembly line.
World Food Program
This was probably the most shocking, unexpected thing on the whole tour. Here's the North Korea that's always so concerned with its image, supposedly shepherding tourists through only the nicest facades in the country and hiding the reality of the citizens daily plight from us, and they're freely, nonchalantly telling us that they can't feed their own population and depend on food handouts from foreign charities (in so many words). We couldn't believe it. And when we took a closer look, sure enough all the boxes stacked up inside the room had World Food Program written on them. The ingredients came from the program they told us, but the factory belonged to Korea and actually produced the biscuits.
So we left the factory and were waiting out front because part of the group was still inside, and they eventually came out through some other exit all talking excitedly about something. Apparently they had continued down some other hallway, with the other guides it sounded like, and were taking pictures and some kind of guard came out and started telling them off and they got hustled out a side entrance. No idea what happened, and they didn't seem to know either, so that was interesting.
"Cultural Revolution." Just a long hallway to somewhere.
Workers' garments at the entrance.
The double doors with blowers.
After this we headed out to the Revolutionary Site of Kim Il Sung University. It had been based in Pyongyang (and still is now), but after the Korean War broke out was moved out here to the countryside so the students could safely continue their studies. In the parking lot were a bunch of elementary schoolers on a field trip who were waving at us the entire time until we walked out of sight. There was a small traditional building which was where Kim Il Sung stayed when he visited the university, and they showed us his bed and chair and writing desk, and the room where he continued to direct the war when he was here. After that we went on a walk around the grounds. The place was sort of park-like, a little like Kim Il Sung's Native House was, and Miss Kim said the route we were walking was the same route that Kim Il Sung took on his daily morning walks when he was here. At one point on the path was a monument to something, and eventually the path looped back and we came back to the parking lot and got on the bus.
A village on the way to the Revolutionary Site.
Kids in the parking lot.
I don't know what this building was and we didn't visit it.
At least we got to visit this statue.
Kim Il-sung's residence while he stayed here.
His desk and chair.
This was at the end of our walk. Don't know what it is.
The previous building from another angle on the way back from our walk.
So we had another inside joke that developed during the trip. When we left the hotel at Kaesong a couple days earlier, Miss Kim held up a towel on the bus and said that it had been left behind on one of the chairs in the hotel dining room and asked whose it was. No one spoke up, and assuming someone was just embarrassed to admit it was theirs, said she'd leave it on the seat at the front of the bus and whoever's it was could just pick it up when no one was looking or something. We joked about how it probably belonged to the hotel and she had inadvertently stolen it. The next day it was still sitting there at the front of the bus, unclaimed. Now we were pretty sure she had stolen it. Even she was kind of embarrassed by it at this point.
So when we got back on the bus after visiting the Revolutionary Site, there was this giant hornet flying around one of the windows! (Probably one of these.) So Miss Kim, after trying to swat it out with some papers, bravely took the stolen Kaesong towel in hand and grabbed the hornet with it, and halfway out the bus with it got stung and dropped it. But then picked it right back up and continued out of the bus with it. She was okay, and didn't complain, and a few people asked after it later in the day, but it was fine. In any case, that sad, stolen towel had finally served a purpose.
So then we headed back into Pyongyang from there and our first stop was the Science and Technology Center. This was a big complex that had just recently been built on one of the other islands in the Taedong River. Viewed from above it would be in the shape of an atom, which those who had gone on the helicopter ride confirmed that they had seen.
The Sci-Tech Center from afar.
The Sci-Tech Center from anear.
The plaza in front of the entrance.
Bet you didn't expect to see these guys here!
A model of the center.
I assumed it was going to be a research center, and it probably was that too, but the things we visited inside were lecture rooms, e-libraries, and a science museum hall for kids full of interactive exhibits.
A 360° TV and seating area.
But wait, what's that placard on that seat? One guess as to whose ass sat there!
A model of a carbon nanotube.
A model of a missile! Neat! We asked if it was a full-sized model, but the guide said she didn't know, because she'd never seen a real one.
The library surrounding it.
One of the many e-library halls.
They made a big deal about CNC in the country. There was even a song about it that was sung for us at one of our lunches before.
The guide said this was just a sort of "break area" where people could sit and chill and look out the windows.
Didn't see any National Geographic posters though.
Guess what that placard means? Someone asked if people are still allowed to use that computer and the guide said yes, but that no one actually does out of respect.
More CNC propaganda.
Some exhibit about the brain.
The three rings around the earth are the orbits of North Korea's three satellites.
Part of the foreign language section of the library. They had just the randomest books, seemed like just whatever they could get their hands on.
The Japanese books.
Just like at the bookstores, Chinese, Russian, and English were the most represented languages.
A dinosaur that was found in North Korea.
Which path gets the ball to the end the fastest?
The lights showed various things, like the paths of rivers and watershed boundaries.
Not sure what the guns and periodic table had to do with each other...
How DNA is folded into chromosomes.
That model forest area in the back was pretty cool.
A tank arcade game.
They totally had a Kinect.
This is the study room for the blind and deaf.
Sign language interpretation and a braille keyboard.
A braille printer.
A buckyball with scandium inside.
The plaza out front from the steps.
Also, the logo of the center is an eye in the middle of an atom (you can see it below the Kims in the above pic) and our guide lady (who spoke English, so didn't need our guides to translate) asked us to think about what the meaning of it could be and she'd tell us at the end of the tour. It's quite simple, she said, repeatedly, and after we heard it we'd be able to see how clear it is, she said, repeatedly. Well guess what? It was so simple and clear that I don't even remember what it was. Something about the atom being scientific research (with you so far), and the eye being the single-hearted unity of the people (umm, okay, sure), so the logo represents the advancement of the country through self-reliance. Maybe something was lost in translation...
After the Sci-Tech Center we went to the fountain park. This was just a big plaza with lots of levels and a bunch of pools and fountains and waterfalls all through it. The only thing to do here was walk around and take pictures, so we just stayed for fifteen minutes or so. It was a little chillier today, so the spray from the fountains was a little cold.
Yet another wedding party we saw.
Kids were playing all over this right before we came over to take pictures.
The next stop after that was bowling! Even though we had turned it down before to depart earlier for Kaesong, we ended up getting another chance anyway. Only a few of us actually even ended up playing though, just enough to fill two lanes with one of the guides, and the others were off at the bar or something. It took me a couple throws to warm back up and I still wasn't doing great by the end, but I hadn't played in years, so what do you want? It was still a fun time. We were kind of disappointed that it only lasted for one game though.
Students at the school next door to the fountain park weeding the lawn.
The bowling alley on the left, a shooting range on the right.
You can't see our scores, but it's just as well, they were terrible.
A decoration just inside the entrance.
They had Japanese kakitane at the snack bar!
A decoration next to the entrance.
The skating rink across the street.
The outdoor part of the waterpark.
After the bowling we went for another short walk through the city, this time down Future Street, which is the host of the newest and most impressive-looking skyscrapers in the city. So the bus dropped us at one end of the street and we walked down the whole thing to our destination. At one point someone asked why one of the big signs said "012H", but it didn't, the font just made it look like that and it was actually just the Korean word "미래", meaning "future". Actually, like Japanese, Korean gets a lot of its words from Chinese (and wrote them the same too, when Korean still used Chinese characters), and the pronunciation has stayed similar to Japanese too: Korean "mire" (me-ray) vs. Japanese "mirai" (me-rye).
From the pedestrian overpass at one end of the street.
So at the end of the street was our destination: the pizza restaurant! The chef had trained in Italy and the pizza oven was imported, so it was supposed to be some pretty authentic pizza. There were just a bunch of set types you could order, it wasn't a choose your own toppings thing like in the US, but there was a decent variety, as well as a few pasta dishes. It took a while for the pizzas to start coming out, since there was only one oven, and it was busy enough that Miss Kim acted the job of waitress bringing them over from the counter when they came out of the oven. The clientele looked pretty upscale too, no families here, as I imagine the prices which were fairly cheap to us were probably a bit on the high end for the average worker. There was also a store downstairs selling random stuff with furniture overflowing out into the hall.
The menu.
Hello Kitty scale for sale.
Random furniture in the hall for sale.
We also got some live music here, although rather than the singing and dancing women we had gotten used to seeing, this was just one woman on the piano singing, but the songs were a bit of a surprise. Among other things, Can You Feel the Love Tonight, and Beauty and the Beast (both in heavily accented English).
The pizzas were pretty good, although a little skimpy on the cheese, so this was a great last supper for our last night in Korea. On the bus on the way back the guides gave their short goodbye speeches. Miss Kim sang a song that's sung when cross-border family reunions are over and the families have to go back to the south again, and Miss Han said a few words too. And Mr. Lee led off with something that was very close to the following: "Of everyone in this group, I think the most handsome person was Justin. And not because of his hairstyle. But because he always wore the Korean flag t-shirt and pin everyday." (As I wrote earlier, it was warmer than I expected and I had only brought long-sleeved shirts, so I wore that t-shirt every other day just because it was short-sleeved.) And then he said how he hoped that we all learned a lot and were leaving with a good impression of the country and he hoped we would all come back again, which is the same sentiment that the other guides expressed too.
So then we made all three of them promise to join us for karaoke a little later in the evening and after getting back to the hotel we all went to our rooms to do our packing. Those leaving by plane had to depart the hotel at 6:30, those going by train not till a couple hours later. So after packing we all trickled down to the karaoke room in the basement.
This was actually the first time I went to the basement and it was an intersting place itself. It was just one long, winding hallway with a low ceiling and a bunch of random amenities, like shoe repair, bowling, massage, billiards, a barber, beauty parlor, table tennis, a snack shop, and at the very end the karaoke room.
The creepy entrance to the basement tucked into a corner of the lobby.
There were already some other European guests there singing, but our group joined in and eventually all the guides joined us and those of us who had brought them gifts semi-privately handed them over. A couple of us had tried to do it earlier in the week but they would just wave it off and say "later", and it was even sort of awkward to do it now, so I got the feeling it wasn't really all that expected, despite most sources suggesting it.
So I bowed out early, as did many of us having to get up early, and went to bed hoping I would be allowed to leave the country tomorrow.
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