Discovering ‘another world’
North Korea proved a strange place where it was difficult not to feel paranoid, interpid traveller Jill Worrall tells Rachael Comer.
Before Jill Worrall travelled to North Korea she planned a rescue call system with her husband. She worked out a series of phone conversations she could have, if the situation got dire in the East Asian country, as she was nervous about travelling there.
‘‘We decided I would ring my husband [ Timaru Herald columnist Derek Burrows] and he would ask ‘how’s your hip?’.
‘‘If I said ‘it’s great’ it meant everything was okay. If I said ‘oh, it’s giving me a few niggles’ it meant things weren’t that great. The help, help call was ‘I need to ring the surgeon soon’,’’ Worrall said.
She says she will never return to North Korea, after taking a group of nine New Zealanders to the country in July for 10 days as part of her travel operation.
She had always wanted to travel there as it would mean she had travelled to every place included so-called ‘‘axis of evil’’, described by United States president George WBush in his State Of The Union address in 2002.
‘‘He described ... Syria, Iran, Libya and North Korea as being these,’’ Worrall said.
‘‘I’d been to the others but never to North Korea.
‘‘They were nothing like North Korea.’’
She found the country to be a ‘‘very strange place’’.
By the end, it was difficult not to be paranoid.
‘‘It was really weird but by the end you’d start doing weird things – checking for bugs under tables, and it was stressful as I was looking after other people.’’
Tourism in North Korea is highly controlled by the Government, and only about 6000 Western tourists visit the country each year.
‘‘We were only allowed to be there for 10 days maximum.
‘‘Americans are now banned from travelling there.’’
She said she had had several requests to travel to North Korea, so decided to see if it was a possibility.
‘‘I had to go through a visa process and because I have a background in journalism that had to be checked out too.’’
She said tour group members had been required to sign consents to say they would obey all instructions on their stay in the foreign country.
‘‘I was nervous when we first landed in North Korea as two weeks before we left it was put on high alert to travel there. No-one pulled out of the tour though.’’
Arriving at the country’s capital, Pyongyang, the tour group was asked to hand their phones over to be checked for ‘‘questionable photos’’.
‘‘They are also very sensitive there about photos of the three Kims [former leaders Kim II-sung, Kim Jong-il and now leader Kim Jong-un].’’
The loyalty to the country’s leaders is also obvious on the officials’ uniforms, Worrall said.
‘‘I noticed all the officials wore a badge with one of the leaders’ faces on it.
‘‘Someone from the tour who had been to China and Russia before said it was like being back in the USSR.’’
She said travelling around the capital came with a ‘‘strange feeling’’.
‘‘It was a feeling of emptiness. There were no billboards, no advertising, nothing.’’
She described the experience as like stepping into another world.
‘‘We were warned beforehand that our rooms would be bugged and that we would always have minders with us. You can’t go out for a walk on your own without a guard.
‘‘It’s very restricted and there’s a lot they don’t want you to see. They try to give the impression that North Korea is doing fine.’’
She said examples of this were being taken to certain buildings or areas which the North Koreans were ‘‘proud of’’.
‘‘We went to a massive science and technology centre and it had thousands of computers in it but when we went there, there appeared to be no-one there I looked at some of the keyboards and I swear no-one had ever used them.
‘‘We also went to a children’s camp which had an aquarium, an aviary, a restaurant, but there were no kids there. You just never knew what was real.’’
The country suffered famine from 1994 to 1998 but Jill said she noticed how much food was growing there now.
‘‘Everywhere we went there was stuff growing and there was intensive farming. Everything was manual too.’’
Another shocking observation, she said, was the roads which looked to be constructed in some parts with concrete slabs, having an obvious military purpose.
‘‘You could only go at about 35kmh on them.
‘‘One day we were travelling along and in the distance I could see a lady in the middle of the road. She appeared to be squatting in the middle of the highway.’’
As the group got closer, it became obvious that wasn’t the case at all.
‘‘She was weeding the road with a piece of bent wire.’’
A similar site could be seen outside apartment blocks, where people would trim their grass with scissors, Jill said.
She said many sites on the trip would have made great photographs but, like so many other things in North Korea, subjects were controlled by the group’s minders.
‘‘You can only take photos of certain things.
‘‘With photos of statues of the glorious leaders you can’t cut any part of them off in the photo and you’re not allowed to take photos of North Koreans, as a rule.’’
She said they were told this was because North Koreans only liked to look their best, but she had her doubts as to this excuse.
The group also took two trips into the Korean Demilitarised Zone – a strip of land running across the Korean Peninsula.
It was established to serve as a buffer zone between the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) and the Republic of Korea (South Korea).
‘‘It’s considered as the most dangerous border area in the world.’’
The area included a hut where Worrall discovered her cellphone worked.
‘‘Your phones don’t work in North Korea but my phone came on in the hut and I love tennis and Wimbledon was on, so I text my husband and asked who had won.’’
Another place her phone worked was on Mt Paektu, an active volcano on the border between North Korea and China.
The mountain stands at 2744m and is considered the ‘‘spiritual home’’ of North Koreans, Worrall said.
‘‘Very few, if any New Zealanders, have been up there.’’
It appears very few New Zealanders have travelled to North Korea as well, she said.
‘‘Only about 70 people have registered as having visited, and we were nine of them.’’
She said amid the weird was also the wonderful with ‘‘amazing wildfire meadows’’.
‘‘There were also fantastic temples which are kept as museums. They are basically a series of rooms which have been excavated inside the mountain and contain all the gifts given to the leaders.
‘‘There’s armoured Soviet-era cars by Stalin, ghastly elephant tusks and gifts from Dennis Rodman [American retired professional basketball player] which is a whole section of basketballs and shirts.’’
The more bizarre parts of the country included a coffee shop the group’s minders kept taking the group back to, which Worrall was convinced was not as it appeared.
‘‘I swear it was only opened up for us – it was really expensive and there were no signs and never anyone else there.’’
She purchased several newspapers to bring back home and said they were only allowed to be rolled, not folded.
She said it was sad that most of the country’s residents had no idea that they were living in ‘‘a different world’’.
‘‘It’s like three generations have been basically brainwashed – it’s a very strange place.’’
‘‘They’re not allowed to have TV so you can tell for most of them they don’t know any different.’’
She said every now and then, despite being discouraged to do so, she would make eye contact with residents and smile say ‘hello’.
Coming home was a relief for Jill but she was still thinking about the people she had left behind in North Korea.
‘‘A lot of people in my group thought they would like to help North Koreans to get out.
‘‘They are real people that live there and are just stuck in that system.’’