I wasn't able to attend the sports festival of my middle school since it would be held the same Saturday that I was arriving in Pyongyang (and actually it was postponed until Sunday due to rain). I live right next door to the town's main elementary school and I heard them having their sports festival the weekend after I got back from Korea. But then a couple weekends later the countryside elementary school that I teach at on Thursdays was having theirs, so I was finally able to go to one.
The sports festival is one of the two big festivals that schools have every year (the other being the cultural festival in the fall). Generally it's just the parents that attend, but because of the falling rural population this and the other rural elementary school here are merging with the main one in town next year, so being their last sports festival they opened it up this year for all the people in the area to come. (But since I'm a teacher there I could go regardless.)
The way the competition works is that they split the kids up into three teams, red, white, and green, with a few kids in each grade on each team. Then some of the competitions between the three teams are done by grade, with the best individual getting points for their team, and other competitions are done by entire teams, all grades included. (The teams for the middle school were Chokai (the mountain), Kujuku (the set of islands that used to be here when the area was underwater), and Otori (I think a legendary phoenix, but I'm not sure its significance to the area).
The opening ceremonies started Olympic-style, with the the three teams marching around the track next to each other in three columns, led by the sixth-graders and decreasing by grade to the first-graders in the back. After stopping in front of the announcement platform, one of the sixth-graders came out with a "torch", with red pom-pom streamers on top for the flame, and ran around the track to the flagpoles and "lit" the main flame, which actually was a real fire and was lit by one of the teachers. Then they raised the flags, the national, town, and school flags.
Then the principal and PTA head each said a few words, along with some city official who was there with the town mascot, Nikahoppen. ("Nikaho" is the name of the town, the "pen" is short for "penguin", and the "hoppe" in the middle means "cheek", whence comes its bulging cheeks.) After the speeches a couple young guys in their twenties came out with a guitar and played a song. I've seen guys like this in anime before, wannabe musicians who are stuck out in the country so have no one else to play with and nowhere to play except for new store openings and the like, so I was amused to see that that's a real thing and we have our own version.
Then the games started out with each grade doing their sprint, then a couple PTA-arranged events. First, a true/false quiz where everyone stood in the field on one side of a line or the other based on their answer, and they asked questions until only the winner remained (I think it was a couple of the middle school girls who were the last standing). Then the adults split into teams based on which village they were from (plus a teachers' team that I was on) and played a ball-passing game where we all stood in a line and passed a ball alternately over our heads and between our legs, with the fastest team winning.
After that was the cheering contest, so each team had some unique cheers they had come up with, and they were scored on I think creativity, energy, and some other category.
Then there were events that the kids did with their parents, a little different for each grade, but there was always some sort of running portion, and a part where there was a bag of snacks hanging off a pole by a clip that the kids had to grab and pull off with their teeth. (The latter is a typical event at sports festivals, evolving from a bread-eating contest where it's a bun of some sort that hangs.) Then for the not yet school-aged children and the grandparents they just put some bags of snacks on the ground in a line and had them race up to grab one and continue to a finish line.
Next was the tug-of-war, which was done three times so that each team could face each other, and then something that was written in the program as "maimu maimu". It turned out to be some kind of dance done in a circle, and after the kids performed it once, they had to grab people from the audience to join them for it, with the teams with the most people getting the most points, so I got pulled in by the green team and did the dance (and we won). From the sound of the music and the few words that they were singing I thought it might be a Russian dance, so I googled it when I got home and found out it's actually a Jewish dance.
After that we broke for lunch, and when we came back they had a drum and whistle parade.
After that was another adult event, a relay where we had to run around the track with a ping-pong ball on a ladle, also divided into teams by village, with a teachers' team, so I played in that as well. Then the third and fourth graders did a sort of planting relay, where they had to put on farming clothes (boots, baggy pants, and a hat), take a wheelbarrow across the field, load it with "carrots" from a bucket, bring it back, and "plant" them.
Then the fifth and sixth graders did an event where the teams faced each other across the field where there were a few colored poles in the middle, and had to run up and grab them and bring them back over a line on their side. This was the most fun to watch because after most of the poles had been taken there would be multiple kids teaming up to pull on the remaining poles, sometimes just dragging other kids on the ground the whole way across the field, and always ending up with each entire team on each end of the remaining pole doing a tug-of-war on it.
Then they did the adults tug-of-war, by village again, but this time with no teachers' team since we'd be so outmatched in numbers. Then it wrapped up with the regular baton-passing relays.
The closing ceremony was just a few more words by a couple of the adults, and then they called on a few of the kids to give their thoughts too. This is something that they do at the end of a lot of classes in elementary school too. Sometimes they'll have a journal where they write some thoughts at the end of each class, or sometimes they'll stand up and give their thoughts instead (or sometimes they just don't do anything like that, depends on the school and class I guess). Overall the whole thing ran from nine to three.
Then the same weekend was the town festival. These festivals generally always have a shrine festival at their core which they grew out of, so aside from the shrine activities, the main attraction is a street lined with stalls with food and games, just like any other street festival. Most festivals have the same types of stalls, so the traditional games are goldfish scooping, where you use a thin paper scoop to try to get a goldfish into a cup without breaking the scoop, a game where you try to fish water balloons out of the water, and they had the old darts and balloons game too. Then all the normal festival food like yakisoba, chocobananas, crepes, etc.
It was very small, just one short street just off of the main street, but it was interesting to see. But there were also lots of my middle school students there too, so it was nice to see them outside of the school for a change.
Then the next weekend, today, was a festival out at the shrine by the elementary school called Chokurairo. It ran from about eleven to one. When I got there I saw the elementary school teachers sitting in the crowd in front of the "stage", just a raised earthen platform, so went to sit with them. Way up the stairs at the main shrine building I'm told prayers had been going on since about 9am. Based on what I know of Shinto, I assume the prayers were to transfer the spirit of the god from the main shrine into the portable shrine, which was then marched down the stairs and set up in front of the platform. Then they did some dances, I assume for the entertainment of the god. And when they were done everybody left. They must take the god back up afterwards.
They passed around a handout with the history of the festival and a little about each of the dances, and what I can gather between it and the Japanese Wikipedia is that there was a demon around that no one could defeat so Emperor Montoku called on Jikaku Daishi to defeat it (which places this about 1200 years ago), who called on the gods of Mount Chokai and Mount Yoshino and was able to defeat it, and then the dances were performed as thanks and continue to this day.
All of our days were packed with destinations and things to see and
do, but this was probably the busiest of them since it's the day when we
saw most of the basic tourist sights in Pyongyang. Two of the biggest
ones we wouldn't be able to see at all though: The Kumsusan Palace of the Sun (the mausoleum of the Kims) and the Mansudae Grand Monument
(the giant bronze statues of them). We were actually told that we
wouldn't be able to visit the mausoleum at the orientation on Friday,
that just the day before they had been told this, but as with most
government directives not given a reason as to why, although the
excuse/speculation was that there was some renovation happening. The
statues we didn't even find out about until we got there, and we drove
past them a few times as we went about the city, so it was obvious that
there was no renovation of them, or ban on Koreans visiting them. My own
speculation was that some tourist did something disrespectful and
ruined it for the rest of us, but it could just have had to do with the
recent international tensions too. In any case, they found plenty of
other things for us to do with the time instead. The thing that
disappointed me more though was that the Chollima Statue
is right by the Kim statues, so we wouldn't be able to visit it either,
and that's my favorite looking of all the monuments in Korea.
So
anyway, our first stop was actually not even in the city, but right
outside of it at the collective farm. On the way out to it we could see a
truly gigantic radio dish
in the distance (the farm is the complex just north of it), but
assuming we wouldn't get a good answer, no one bothered asking about it.
It was nice to actually have a farm as a destination to get a view of
how the farmers live instead of just the more relatively well-off people
in the city. Although the cynics will say that this must be the best
farm in Korea since they're willing to show it to the tourists, we
actually visited another in Nampo later, and drove past a few others en
route to other cities, and they all looked pretty much the same.
The main plaza of the farm.
The facilities and layout of the farm. It matches what can be seen on Google Maps.
It wouldn't be a proper Korean village if it didn't have one of these.
Strawberries!
There were lots of little white butterflies here, but they're hard to pick out in the picture.
The
things we saw here were the greenhouses, where they were growing
tomatoes, and one of the farmer's houses. On top of each house you could
see some kind of rig, which the guides told us was for solar water
heating. The farmer's house was very small, just a small kitchen,
bathroom, narrow hallway, and two rooms, one of which was the living
room and doubled as the parents' bedroom, and the other which was their
son's bedroom. It had a fridge though, and an entertainment system,
although the TV screen was covered with a decorative quilt, probably
because the two state-run TV broadcast channels aren't very interesting.
Also, this was the apartment of the top worker on the farm, so some of
these things were probably rewards for that which wouldn't be found in
every house. There was also a little speaker in the entryway which the
guides weren't shy of saying that it was the state speaker system for
broadcasting messages and that every house had one. Probably the morning
music, about which you will hear more from me later, was piped out of
these.
It wouldn't be a proper Korean house if it didn't have these.
The entertainment system is just for decoration I guess.
I took a picture of this because it's Chinese-made and I wanted to try Google Translating it later. It's apparently related to the hot water system.
The kitchen. I assume this is the traditional Korean style.
Plenty of nice dishes at least.
I saw a random cute thing, so I took a picture of it.
We did come across a small tractor while we were here, and
these were in short supply in the country. I would think that
agricultural mechanization would be near the top of the list of things
to do in Korea, but for whatever reason, maybe a lack of fuel, many of
the fields we saw out in the country were plowed by oxen rather than
tractors. In front of all the houses were gardens too, and these might
have been private gardens, which you'll find a lot written about if you
go reading about the agricultural policy of Korea.
I wanted to know what it said, so I took a picture of it. I still don't know what it says.
The greenhouses, and some temple-looking thing in the far background. Notice the planters on the shaded side of them too.
Fertilization info I guess.
The greenhouse tomatoes.
How they start seedlings.
The outside of the greenhouses.
Gotta have something for the kids.
One of the country's few tractors.
So after the
collective farm, in lieu of being able to visit the mausoleum, we
visited the National Gift Exhibition House. There's two of these gift exhibitions in
the country: this one for gifts given by Koreans to the leaders, and the International Friendship Exhibition a couple hours north of Pyongyang at Mount Myohyang for gifts given by
non-Koreans and other countries. Nancy had told us the night before that
the long tours visit either that or Nampo, so as our tour was going to
Nampo we wouldn't see the international one, but I didn't mind because
honestly it didn't sound all that interesting to be worth the long
drive, and I much preferred going to another city to see as much of life
outside of Pyongyang as possible rather than just some other tourist
attraction.
A little village outside the collective farm.
A small soccer game in the distance.
Typical playground.
That's the Yanggakdo Hotel we stayed at.
I just wanted to get those smokestacks in the background.
The Ryanggang Hotel. My fingers are in frame in a lot of pictures, because there was often only a couple seconds to pick up the camera and snap a shot as the bus flew by things.
There's a street that's just lined with all the sports halls, which are meant to be designed evocatively of the sport they represent. The badminton hall here resembles a shuttlecock.
The swimming hall. There are more and better pictures of these later; we drove by them a few times.
Typical street scene with these two-story storefronts, snack huts, and tram stops.
One of the trams.
The Mangyongdae Schoolchildren's Palace. We visited this later.
So the gift exhibition was a really big deal to them
and they treated it like a fairly high security site, so while we could
take pictures of the outside (so long as there was no military in them,
which was difficult because there was a gaggle of military guys around when we got here), we
couldn't take any pictures inside and they had us leave our
cameras/phones in lockers at the entrance. Also, just walking into the
place we had to line up four across and march up to the doors like that,
I guess so the military guys could get a count of us and make sure that
everyone that went in came out again.
There were I think four
floors in this place: the first was for gifts from Koreans in the north,
the second was for gifts from Koreans in the south, and the other two
were for gifts from other Koreans around the world. So starting at the
first floor they opened the door into the first room, at the end of
which was a big white alcove filled by two giant Kim statues (maybe about four
meters tall?) with bright backlighting. (It was roughly similar to the picture at the top of this article.) They had us bow to these, but everyone on this trip knew
we would be doing things like this so no one made a fuss about it.
Actually, most places where they had statues or pictures like this the
guides would always say that we "could" pay our respects, but "didn't
have to". We all always did, because that's part of the experience of
visiting North Korea, but I never got the feeling that there'd be a big
fuss if we didn't.
So we had a guide from the museum who
described all the highlights in Korean, and then Miss Han translated for
us. The place was fairly large, so we didn't see every room, and even
in most rooms we just walked past most of the things and only hit the
highlights. But right there in the first room was probably the biggest
highlight: a painting of Kim Jong Il in a colorful military uniform,
riding a big white tiger! I had read about this in someone else's blog
where they said that it took everything in their power not to burst out
laughing at it, so it was a treat to be able to see it myself, as
pictures weren't allowed. Otherwise, there were a lot of tea sets in
this room, and a couple of big vases (~2m tall) given by the military,
and a big irregularly-shaped rock in the corner (~2m around and ~1m
tall) which I think they said was a giant block of unpolished jade. Also
in this room was a basketball given to Kim Jong Un which had been used
in the Chinese basketball league. (Remember, this museum was for gifts
given by Koreans, so it must have been from a Korean player on a Chinese
team; any basketballs from Dennis Rodman would be in the international
exhibit.)
There was another museum employee who went ahead of us
turning on and off the lights so as not to waste electricity. Other
rooms had things like furniture sets and various types of artworks like
jade statuettes or embroideries, and then there was a bunch of
run-of-the-mill electronics like TVs and old computers from Samsung,
which felt fairly tacky and out of place among all the artwork. The
other highlight was this big throne-like chair from Russia (or some
Korean in Russia I guess) made out of deer antlers and deerskin. It was
pretty badass looking and I would love to have one. There was also a
table there which had a Guiness World Record for something, but we couldn't
quite figure it out from Miss Han's translation of the museum guide, and I couldn't really find anything about it on Google afterwards either. The last thing to comment on is a smartphone
which had been given to Kim Jong Il, and which they specifically noted
that two were given: one to display at the museum and one for him to
actually use day-to-day. After going through everything we were going to
be shown, they took us to the balcony where we were allowed to take
pictures from, so they let us run back to the lockers to get our cameras
for that.
Shot from the balcony. It was at the end of this road nestled in the hills.
A shot to one side from the ground showing the hills and shrubs.
After the gift exhibition the group split in two.
There was an option that a lot of people chose for the tour to take a
helicopter ride over Pyongyang. While it would have been cool, I
preferred not to do it so as to not miss out on some of the sights in
the city, and I'm glad I didn't, because they ended up missing the
Workers' Party monument to do it. So anyway, they took the long tour bus
off to the airport, and those of us not doing that took the short tour
bus, and we headed back into the city and went to the stamp exhibition.
The circus building. We would go here later.
The train station. It was always busy here when we passed it.
An interchange with the Juche Tower in the background. They were all painted with blue trim like this.
One of the famous traffic ladies in the intersection. I have to imagine that this just exists as an easy job for the daughters of high officials, although we saw men doing the job in other cities.
The
stamp exhibition was basically just a second floor room with a bunch of
display boards set up with practically every sheet of stamps the DPRK
has ever published, and I didn't find it that interesting. This is where
I bought the postcards that I mailed to my parents and myself the next
morning though. After this we went off to lunch.
This is the
point where we had been around the city enough that I was starting to
make some general observations. First, the roads were not all
unmaintained and full of potholes, they were just full of filled-in
potholes. So basically similar to Western New York roads, except repaved
less often. (By the way, they drive on the right here.) There were
speed limit signs even on the city streets, but they were marked to show
different speed limits for different lanes, so the fast lane might be
70kph, and the slow lane 40, or for three lanes 70/50/40. The rightmost
lane was where the streetcars and electrified busses ran, so maybe the
split speed limits had to do with them too. There were also a few
double-decker busses around, but not so many since they used precious
gasoline. And other than those there were loads of bikes and
pedestrians.
Everyone around the city was well-dressed; no one
had dirty or torn or unkempt or sloppy clothes. There was also a lot of
cellphone use. I couldn't really tell if most of them were smartphones
vs flipphones, but our guides had North Korea's Arirang brand
smartphones.
Like Japan, at major intersections there were
sometimes walkways over street so pedestrians didn't have to expose
themselves to traffic or wait for lights, but more often than those
there were just stairs leading down into the ground. At first I thought
these were metro entrances, but there were too many of them for that. I
finally realized they were underground walkways to cross by going under
the street rather than over it. This was probably the best feature I saw
in all of North Korea and I wish other countries did it. They're better
than the raised walkways because those have to be high enough for
vehicles of all heights to get under (and the electrical wire for the
trollys), but these just had to be a little deeper than the height of a
human, so a lot fewer stairs to climb. They also had a flat slope next
to the stairs for wheeling bikes down and up too. I'm not sure what
they're like when it rains though. Also, I don't know where they put the
sewers, maybe even deeper, or maybe those are why some intersections
had the raised walkways. Or maybe they're under the sidewalk, since we
did see some smaller pipe repairs happening at the edge of the side
bordering the street. That's actually a good place to put that stuff to
avoid disrupting traffic with repairs, and leaving a seam in the road
later that will cause more potholes. Anyway, I really wanted to go
through one of those tunnels and didn't think we'd be able to, but we
actually did later.
So anyway, we had hotpot for lunch, which was
we each had a pot of water on a stand in front of us that they lit a
sterno under, and a plate full of the vegetables and meat that we just
boiled ourselves when it got up to temperature. And in the meantime they
brought out loads of side dishes for us to eat. Suddenly--
we
were treated to live music during our meal. This was probably the most
popular song in the country, at least, it's the one we heard performed
the most. I can't find the lyrics anywhere online, but the name of the
song is Pangapsumnida, and it means "Nice to meet you". The guides said
it's played when cross-border family meetings take place, so I'm
guessing it's a song about Korean reunification. Anyway the food here
was much better than the hotel food, and that was true wherever we went
throughout the trip: the restaurant food was always much better than the
hotel food. At the gift shop here afterwards I bought my t-shirt with the
North Korean flag saying "Welcome to Pyongyang". Later we saw t-shirts with the same design saying "See you
in Pyongyang", which I would have preferred, but oh well.
Knock-off items at the gift shop: Doraemon, Hello Kitty, a minion, and the Paul Frank monkey.
I think this is the back of the Grand Theatre?
So after lunch we went to the Workers' Party Monument. Like the symbol of the Soviet Communist Party, the Workers'
Party symbol incorporates a hammer and (rice) sickle, but also a writing
brush to represent the working intellectuals. The guides said a little
bit about it, but mainly it was just a sight to see and take pictures
of. At the gift shop here I got my embroidery of
Mt. Kumgang. There's a little circular park surrounding this that seemed to be popular with the locals. Also, while we
were leaving here we saw the other group's helicopter go by overhead.
The words on the buildings in the background say "Ever victorious".
A view down the street facing the monument, with the Ryugong Hotel in the distance. If you zoom in you can see the Kim statues right in the center and the Chollima Statue just to their left.
These three bronze reliefs were in the center of the monument. This one represents the history of the party with the anti-Japanese guerrillas.
Represents the present-day unity of the Korean workers under the Party.
Represents moving towards a socialist future.
Some kids playing on the rocks in the park. I was using the digital zoom for this, so the quality isn't great.
A view of the back.
I just liked the trams, so I wanted to get another picture with one going by.
Selfie!
The
next stop was the Flower Exhibition Hall. After we got off the bus
there we could look right up the boulevard and see the Workers' Party
Monument. We could have just walked here! At this point I figured we
wouldn't be able to do any walking around the city if we couldn't even
take this short walk, but luckily we did get a couple walks in the city
later in the week. Apparently they had just had the big exhibition a
couple weeks earlier for the Day of the Sun (Kim Il Sung's birthday)
celebrations, but they still had a big room full of plants and flowers,
backed by a painting of the leaders. The two flowers that are
highlighted are (can you guess?) Kimilsungia (an orchid cultivar) and Kimjongilia (a begonia cultivar). Some buildings that we visited later
would have banners of these two flowers flanking their entrances, but
neither is the national flower of North Korea, that would be the
magnolia. Afterward they offered to sell us seeds of them, but I have
nowhere I'd be able to grow them, plus someone mentioned how things like
that are usually not easy to get through customs.
A water park we passed on the way. We would go here later.
International acclaim for the flowers. The two on top are from the Indonesia and Japan, where the two flowers were bred.
A view outside the exhibition. This building is the "Central Youth Hall". I don't know exactly what it's for.
The same view from the Workers' Party Monument, but closer.
The Taedong River was lined with these berms. Juche Tower in the background.
From here we
would go to the Tower of the Juche Idea and meet up with the
helicopter group again. On the way over we saw one of the electrified
busses stopped in an intersection where its contacts had come off the
wires or something and the conductor behind putting them back on. An
elevator ticket to the top of the tower was 5 euros, but I'm not sure anyone passed
it up. I joked about taking the stairs instead, but of course that
wasn't an option. For those of us who didn't go on the helicopter ride,
this was the best view we'd get of Pyongyang from above. As with the
Workers' Party Monument, not much to say about it, it was just another
of the main sights to see. At the entrances at the base though there
were all these little plaques from Juche study groups (or individuals)
all over the world. I don't know if they were something that could be
bought when the tower was first built or what. Oh, and here's a fun
fact: the tower was built to be just a hair higher than the Washington
Monument. Take that America!
There were two of these water jets in the middle of the river. Not sure what they were for.
The gift plaques.
The south plaza below.
Facing west. The Grand People's Study House, and the Ryugong Hotel in the background.
Facing south. Our hotel in the middle.
Facing east.
Facing north. The May Day Stadium in the distance where the Arirang Mass Games are held.
The north plaza.
More plaques.
Behind the tower.
The south plaza
I don't know what it says.
The north plaza.
Relief on the side. I think these are the national flower, magnolias. Not sure where that wire was going.
The Study House across the river.
Selfie!
After the tower we went to the
Mangyongdae Native House just outside Pyongyang where Kim Il Sung was
born. They described how he was raised by his grandparents, who
continued to live here even after he became the leader, and made a big
deal (not just here, but this came up a couple other times too) about
how he left the house/village when he was fourteen to fight against the
Japanese and only finally returned after the war (WWII) was won and
Korea gained its independence (well, the northern half anyway). The area
around here was made into a big nice park. Going back to the bus, there
was a little snack stand next to the parking lot, so we bought some ice
cream. We were still in the phase of the trip where every perfectly
normal thing in North Korea was a great novelty, just because it was
North Korean. North Korean ice cream! Ice cream in North Korea! Ha ha!
Can you believe it!?
Not sure what this building is.
The Grand Theatre from before, but from the front.
That Ryanggang Hotel again.
The soccer stadium.
The handball hall.
The table tennis hall.
The gymnastics hall.
The martial arts hall.
The Mangyong Hill park.
Kim Il Sung leaving home to fight the Japanese.
The farm tools of his childhood home.
The storehouse.
The kitchen.
I think this was his grandparents' room and belongings.
His room, and the desk he studied at.
The third room. They said stuff about these three rooms, but I don't remember it.
Better-lit shot of the second room interior.
Better-lit shot of the third room interior.
North Korean ice cream! It was good.
Next we went to the amusement park, or "fun
fair" (I think that's a British term?). There were actually a couple
amusement parks around, and I think we went by one in one of the other
cities we went to as well. There was a little crowd at the entrance, but
not so many people inside. There was actually another side to the park
too, with a cable car going there, but it was only an hour or so from
closing so we didn't get over to it. It seemed like they always had to
go find operators to specifically start up the rides we went on, but
other rides were running intermittently too, so maybe there just weren't
enough operators to go around. We only had time to go on three rides.
First was the roller coaster. This was the second scariest roller
coaster ride I'd ever been on (losing only to the first one I ever had
when I was only eight or something). First, the over-the-head safety
harness was not very tight, and wasn't even locked in place before the
ride started, although I think it locked into place after the ride
started, but someone else insisted that theirs never had. In any case, I
(and I'm sure everyone else) was clutching onto it for dear life the
whole time. (With one hand holding my glasses to my face as well.) Next,
the lift mechanism was very loud and slow and irregular. We felt like
it was just going to stop and send us back down the hill backwards at
any moment. Then once we finally got to the top it got scarier. The
thing was not well lubricated or maintained and you could hear and feel
the wheels grinding on the track. I was afraid the whole time that it
would lose too much speed just to friction and stop in the middle of the
track. And finally, it wasn't that well-balanced, so every turn felt
like we were going too slow and the cars would just tip off the track
from lack of centrifugal force. And yes, there was a loop. The whole
thing was terrifying.
The fun fair. We only went to the part at the very left.
There were only a handful of locals there at the time. I think it was almost closing time too.
A map of the park.
Part of the roller coaster.
We didn't go on this ride.
The boarding area, main hill, and loop of the roller coaster.
They said that carousel in the back wasn't operating.
Next was the bumper cars, which were
perfectly normal, but again, they were North Korean bumper cars! Bumper
cars in North Korea! Ha ha! Can you believe it!? And then there was one
other we went on, also terrifying, this thing that went around in a
circle horizontally, but the individual cars then rotated in vertical
circles upside down, with only a not very tight or well-secured belt to
hold us in, and they went upside down s-l-o-w-l-y, so you were just
hanging upside down by this belt trying to brace your arms and legs
against the inside of the car so as not to slip out. So in the end the
North Korean amusement park was just as terrifying as you would imagine.
The terrifying third ride.
Then our final stop of the day was the supermarket/department store. For whatever reason we couldn't take pictures inside. This place had three floors: the supermarket on the first floor, the department store on the second, and apparently some kind of food court or restaurants on the third (I never made it that far to see for myself). This was the only place in Korea where we'd be able to handle the local currency, which is also illegal for tourists to take out of the country. I read something once about it being because it has pictures of the leaders on it, so they wouldn't trust it to treated with the proper respect or something, but I doubt the real reason has anything to do with that. I really wonder what the real reason is though, because if they let tourists take it they could make some money just off the seigniorage, and letting tourists exchange foreign currency for it would let them make some money by offering crappy exchange rates too.
In any case, there was a booth in the back of the store were we exchanged our money and the exchange rate was something like 1 euro/dollar to 10000 won (I had 6 euro in change from the amusement park), which is about ten times weaker than the South Korean exchange rate of about 1000 won to the dollar. Based on the costs of the products though, the prices were still as if it was 1000 won to the dollar, so basically everything here was ten times cheaper than buying it in our home countries. Who knows what the black market rate is, and besides, after factoring in PPP and government provided services (like food rations, and the fact that no one pays rent for example), it's almost impossible to make any accurate comparison between the values of the two currencies. But in the end I got 50000 won for my 6 euros. I figured this would be the best place to get some kind of bulk snacks that I could bring back to the office for gifts, so I spent most of my time going through the aisles looking for something that would be suitable. Eventually I settled on two bags of individually wrapped wafer cookies for the two schools, and two smaller packs of individually wrapped cookies for the English conversation class and the calligraphy class.
On my way through the supermarket the one interesting thing I noticed was a bunch of Japanese goods on the shelves. They had Kewpie mayonnaise, Kirin beer, and some brand of instant ramen with a Japanese label. I suppose these must be imported through China, unless it's stuff like this that was in the mysterious packages that the Japanese people were bringing in at the airport. Otherwise the supermarket just had the same things you'd find anywhere else: meat, produce, beer and soju, and household goods. I only quickly browsed around the second floor, but there was clothing in the center and various other goods around the periphery: electronics, appliances, and such. Someone actually found a belt that was double-branded as Louis Vuitton and some other luxury band.
I wanted to use the bathroom while we were here, so I visited the men's bathroom on the second floor. The whole store was clean and bright. The bathroom was the polar opposite. If you've seen the movie Trainspotting you'll know what it was like, because it was exactly like The Worst Toilet in Scotland. There was just one dim bulb lighting the whole thing, and it looked like it had literally never been cleaned. Not like it was only cleaned once a week, or once a month, or once a year, but literally not once since it had been built. I just stood in the doorway in shock for a few seconds while the smell wafted over me before just closing it and turning around. I could wait until we went to dinner and hope that this was maybe a below average example.
In the end, although this may have been the worst one that I saw, or maybe I just thought that because it was the first one I saw and left a stronger impression on me, the other bathrooms we came across were rarely much better, although there were exceptions. Sometimes there would be urinals where when you flushed them the pipe out of the bottom just leaked half of the dirty water out onto the floor. Also, a lot of bathrooms would have a big barrel of water in one of the corners, I guess for if the water wasn't working or something, which was also sometimes the case (for the sinks at least, I think I only came across one urinal that didn't flush, and the others in the same bathroom were fine). In Japan the wet towels they give you to wipe your hands with before eating always seemed superfluous and unnecessary, just a polite gesture, but here they were an absolute necessity, so I was always glad to find them on the table at every meal.
I realized I never posted a good picture of our bus.
So speaking of which, after the supermarket we headed off to dinner. In the bus Miss Kim explained that Korea's famous cold noodles are served at weddings because the long noodles represent long life and/or a long marriage, so that the question "When can we eat your cold noodles?" implies "When are you getting married?" From there she continued with an explanation that "Have you found your trousers?" or "Have you found your skirt?" refers to having a boyfriend or girlfriend. There was much mirth when someone answered the question with "I haven't found the right size."
So dinner was cold noodles which were actually really good, one of the better meals we had. Like with the hot pot we had for lunch there was a seasoning caddy on the table, and Miss Kim went around putting the right amounts of the right seasonings into everyone's noodles to make sure we got the best-tasting bowl of noodles Korea had to offer. But before the noodles even came out, like with the hot pot at lunch, there was enough side dishes to make a full meal by themselves. And then just after the noodles came out--
we got some live music again, just like at lunch. By the way, at most of these restaurants we went to it wasn't just our group, but many of the different tourist groups that happened to be in the area at the same time. So in one of the groups at the table next to us it was someone's birthday, and the table had sung them happy birthday earlier. Well, now during the singing they actually brought out a cake for him! I don't think anyone expected anything like that in a North Korean restaurant, so it was a nice surprise. The singers also tried to get him to go up to the front and dance with them, but he refused, although they managed to get a couple other tourists to join them instead.
The array of side dishes. The french fries were really good! They're battered, and then fried.
The cold noodles. Also really good!
Back at the hotel a bunch of the others went down to the karaoke room in the basement and spent the night down there (I heard them all in the hallway at 1am when they were coming back up after it closed for the night), but that's not my thing, so I just went back to my room and took a shower. At one point in the middle of it, looking down on the floor of the tub, I could see that the water was running out brown, but that only lasted a minute, so I made sure to rinse extra well after that before getting out. There was never any lack of hot water at this hotel, so it had that going for it at least. They also had a laundry service here, although I never availed myself of it.
Afterwards I decided to turn on the TV and see what channels we got. There were the two state-run channels, which happened to be playing the same thing at the moment (I think it was just some patriotic music) and a bunch of news channels in different languages. There were a couple Chinese ones, a Russian one, and Al Jazeera English, which I watched for a couple minutes, although it wasn't anything interesting, but it was nice to read the ticker at the bottom of the screen to see if maybe Korea had done any more missile launches or nuclear tests since we got here, because if they did, how would we know? (Actually, I had heard from a couple of the others that they had done another missile test on Friday, the day before we left, but I was in China so I hadn't heard.) I found out later that some of the others got different channels, like BBC and CNN, and I had read someone else's blog before coming that they got NHK (Japan).
I took this time to look through the folder in the room.
I sat in bed and read for a little while, and after 11pm there were a few brief power outages every few minutes lasting ten or so seconds each time, but those were the only power outages we ever had. I could stay up a little later tonight because we were leaving a little later in the morning, about 8:45. Tomorrow we would be participating in the May Day celebrations.
