Lately I’ve been fascinated by North Korea. I guess because everything I hear about it is just so… creepy that it attracts me for the same reason I slow down when I drive by a traffic accidents.
Kim Jong Il is right out of central casting – inscrutable, weird looking, surrounded by sycophants and treated to daily reminders of his own brilliance via the state media. And he’s got the whole Nicolae Ceausescu-esque, eat-sirloin-while-the-people-starve act down as well. Here’s the Team America version of Dear Leader:
I think first started paying attention to North Korea when I saw the famous satellite photo of North Korea at night. The difference between the North and the South is shocking. Even the difference with China to the north is pretty amazing when you consider that region of China is quite rural and much poorer than the coastal economic juggernauts. (I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that there are some doubts about the authenticity of this photo.)
A few weeks ago I came across this story about the the mega-huge, never-finished Ryugyong Hotel in Pyongyang. They spent something like $750 million on a giant, scary looking hotel even though it would never fill up because they’re so paranoid about tourists. But they never finished it, either because they ran out of money, structural problems or something else. No one knows, and apparently no one talks about it. Imagine living in a city where such a structure dominates the skyline, and yet no one ever breathes a word about it.
They also seem to have a severe case of monument-itis that was so common to 20th century worker paradises. Check out all the super-sized memorials on this site. Speaking of monuments, check out the header graphic on NKZone, one of my favorite blogs about North Korea.
Part of me really wants to visit North Korea as a tourist, but according to Lonely Planet, as an American I can pretty much forget it.
But there’s still hope. I was 21 when the Berlin Wall fell in ‘89. During the Christmas holiday, I saw one of my uncles who was in the military and served in Germany for a while back in the 50s. He said it was almost unimaginable for him to see the images of people standing on top of the Wall, celebrating freedom. He had always assumed the Wall (not to mention the Soviet Union) would outlive him. I’d like to think that one day I’ll see North Korea set free, perhaps even re-unification with the South.
Re-unification would of course be quickly followed by Starbucks a la Beijing’s Forbidden City.