Another world. North Korea (33 photos + story)

There is a known case described in an English guidebook. Once, one foreigner, apparently foolishly, asked the North Koreans: “Why are all Koreans thin, but comrades Kir Il Sung and Kim Jong Il are plump?” ...And only two months later, with the help of diplomatic levers, he was released from prison, where he ended up instantly after his stupid question uttered out loud.

The food problem here is worse than the energy problem. According to Western sources, 30-40 thousand people now die of hunger in the country every year. Now that's not much. In the mid-90s, after several years of drought, a pestilence began: three million people died in four years. Even the party call did not help: “Switch to two meals a day!” People still died.

The DPRK has been almost completely dependent on foreign food aid for ten years now and, according to tradition, it blames not its own inefficient economy for all its troubles, but American imperialism. By the way, over the past ten years, the United States has allocated more than a billion dollars in humanitarian aid to the DPRK. And by the way: in 1998, a loud global scandal broke out when, using money received through UN humanitarian aid, Kim Jong Il ordered 200 executive Mercedes from Germany.

Rice, and if everything goes well, beans or corn, still remains the main dish of North Koreans. After all, an average monthly salary of three to four thousand won is enough to buy just one kilogram of pork.

North Korea is a completely militarized country, in a state of war or something similar with the whole world, friendly relations only with Russia and China). The army of this small state is only slightly smaller in size than the US army and larger than the Russian army. The service life of a common soldier is six years. During this time, he turns into a well-trained fighter, comparable in skills to an American special forces soldier. The only difference is that the North Korean warrior is also armed with the Juche ideas, and this increases his strength tenfold.

Provinces:

The main fuel is firewood. Electricity is tight.

The entire coastline is fenced. So that happy collective farmers do not run away. There is still enough electricity for this.

Photos taken without the help of a guide:

And yet, once, while Olga was talking to the guides, Igor managed to break away from them and go into an ordinary street store. True, only for a few minutes. “The guides discovered my absence literally in a couple of minutes, but I managed to look at the store’s assortment. You know, in our Union, even in the worst years, there was at least some cabbage, bread, soup sets on the shelves. Here - only cigarettes and bottled water. That's it! There are no products at all."

“The driver just took the wrong turn; of course, there are no such houses in the DPRK.”

An exhibition about the genocide carried out by the communist regime of Kim Jong Il. The exhibition is organized by the public organization “Stop the deportation of refugees back to North Korea.”

In recent years, Russian authorities have extradited to the DPRK several dozen refugees who sought salvation in Russia or foreign diplomatic missions. The transfer of people takes place on the railway bridge at Khasan station. In 1995, there was a transfer of a North Korean family trying to find refuge in Russia. During the transfer, all four Koreans jumped from the bridge and died. Many Koreans flee the country with a hidden dose of poison - it must be taken if you are caught by your border guards. This death is better than what awaits you as a traitor.

A month ago, Igor returned from the “happiest and most economically prosperous” country in the world, fenced off from this very world not even by an iron, but by a reinforced concrete curtain. North Korea. The circular from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the DPRK states: “Journalists and writers do not have the right to enter the country on a tourist visa.” But in the role of a simple tourist and in the round-the-clock company of two guides (are they guides?) a journey of one and a half thousand kilometers has been covered - through the “socialist paradise”, where the Kim dynasty has reigned supreme for six decades.

There are no other countries in the world like the DPRK. According to the local calendar, this is the 95th year of Juche (chronology until the birthday of the great leader Kim Il Sung). People have a very vague idea of what a mobile phone, the Internet and a bank card are. The cars are driven by steam, and almost the entire country plunges into darkness at dusk.

- Igor, a trip to North Korea is probably somewhere akin to extreme tourism? Is the range of sensations just as wide?

- You know, sometimes it got to the point where it was actually scary.

Getting into North Korea is not easy. It is connected to the rest of the world by only three flights from Beijing and one from Vladivostok. There is also a train from Beijing and a trailer car from Russia, but for obvious reasons foreigners do not travel on them. We chose the route by plane via Beijing.

The airport in Beijing is one of the most advanced in the world. But already there we felt the spirit of the country we were heading to: North Koreans appeared near us. They are clearly visible - on each chest there is a badge with Kim Il Sung. Moreover, it is very noticeable that these people are clearly divided into two categories. Some are hard workers, standing in a group, looking around in fear, like hunted hares. Others are the elite, party workers: in expensive suits, they behave with cold arrogance. In general, masters of life.

Tourism in our usual understanding and North Korea are incompatible concepts. What kind of tourism can we talk about if some kind of guidebooks to this country, published in the West, are compiled from the words of defectors who barely dodged the punishing sword of their homeland, and are considered enemy literature?

How Verkhozin got to North Korea is also a whole spy novel. Suffice it to say that entry documents and visas were issued through a company located in one of the Scandinavian countries. Naturally, Igor had to hide his profession - journalists are prohibited from entering the country. After all the checks, an intermediary met him at the appointed place in Beijing and, in exchange for money (a thousand euros per person for a week of travel), handed over visas and tickets.

And yet tourists travel to North Korea. But their number... According to the guides themselves, no more than fifty Russians come to the country per year. And the total number of tourists, at best, amounts to several hundred per year. In the Tu-134, on which Igor and his companion Olga flew from Beijing to Pyongyang, there was only one other foreigner - a Swiss with some kind of humanitarian mission. The rest are people in similar clothes, with the face of the leader on the left side of the chest.

“When we landed,” continues Igor, “we experienced a real shock. A dimly lit airport building, a huge concrete airfield field, and our plane is the only one on it. Two flashlights in our faces, blinding us as we exited the ramp. And an incredible number of military personnel who met the flight. Before we could blink an eye, we were left without mobile phones, passports and return tickets. “So that you don’t lose them,” they told us in all seriousness.

Comrade Ho and Comrade Park

But the painful state did not last long. Soon the guides appeared - Comrade Pak and Comrade Ho, who spoke good Russian. Since the word “comrade” has no other gender, it is worth clarifying: Ho is a female person. Both Koreans assigned to the Irkutsk team really liked it when they were called “comrade”. They smiled and joked friendly. But first of all they warned: “We respect our leader very much, so no incorrect statements about him are possible.”

There is a known case described in an English guidebook. Once a foreigner (apparently foolishly) asked the North Koreans: “Why are all Koreans thin, but comrades Kir Il Sung and Kim Jong Il are plump?” ...And only two months later, with the help of diplomatic levers, he was released from prison, where he ended up instantly after his stupid question uttered out loud.

North Korea is a completely militarized country, at war or something similar with the whole world (friendly relations only with Russia and China). The army of this small state is only slightly smaller in size than the US army and larger than the Russian army. The service life of a common soldier is six years. During this time, he turns into a well-trained fighter, comparable in skills to an American special forces soldier. The only difference is that the North Korean warrior is also armed with the Juche ideas, and this increases his strength tenfold.

The intelligence services of this country are also considered one of the most powerful in the world. It is their employees, and only they, who have the right to communicate with foreigners. Comrades Park and Ho, apparently, were from there. Ordinary people... According to Igor, wherever they went, adult Koreans simply ran away when foreigners appeared, and children looked at Irkutsk residents as if they were Bigfoot.

“Comrades Pak and Ho accompanied us everywhere, they lived in neighboring rooms,” continues Igor. - Every evening they organized “friendship evenings” for us, where we were fed and watered, by North Korean standards, to the fullest extent, with alcoholic drinks. And then Pak began asking me various questions regarding the international situation. When one day I answered his next tricky question: “Let the Americans at least build their own military base in the center of Moscow, as long as there is no war!”, he did not understand this zigzag, but fell behind. But Puck did not react at all to my “wrong” questions about their life, getting off with monosyllabic memorized phrases. But still, we even became friends with them. Especially after I bought the works of the Kim father and son for almost a hundred euros. The guides even respected me.

Walls with ears and magical water

Western sources claim that all places where foreign tourists stay in the DPRK - cars, hotel rooms, restaurants - are equipped with listening devices. Therefore, Igor and Olga, in order not to declassify their affiliation with the journalistic fraternity, agreed in advance not to discuss professional topics. However, can you resist? Sometimes, in personal conversations, ideologically inconsistent assessments of what they saw would slip through. Whether they were wiretapped - colleagues do not undertake to say this one hundred percent. But no sanctions followed the seditious exchanges of views. Although some facts still made me think that wiretapping was being carried out.

A severe shortage has affected everything in North Korea, including water supply. It even gets to the point that as soon as foreign tourists leave their hotel rooms, the water is immediately turned off. They save. One day Igor called Olga for breakfast, but he hesitated. I turned on the tap and there was no more water. Another time it was the other way around: we entered the room and there was no water yet. Igor impulsively expressed loud displeasure at this fact, and a minute later the sink magically began to gurgle. It looks like the walls there actually have ears.

Who might be tempted by such a supervised journey, ask. In the capital of North Korea, Igor and Olga lived in a modern 47-story hotel with more than a thousand rooms, nine restaurants, and a casino. But the hotel was empty - empty parking lots, corridors, restaurants. No one. Almost. We met an Englishman who had come to play golf, and a group of rich Chinese manically spending wads of dollars in the casino.

The capital during the day also resembled an extinct city - deserted streets, no people, no cars. "Where is everyone?" - Irkutsk residents asked the guides. - “They are working.”

“But in the evening, when we were driving along the dark streets of Pyongyang, we were amazed at the huge crowds of people wandering along the roadsides in complete darkness, like ghosts. They were leaving work.

In general, such pictures were not part of the busy program of our tourists’ stay on North Korean soil, which the guides meticulously followed. Travel - only by minibus, stops - only in planned places. Monuments to leaders, museums of leaders and a whole list of specially prepared “front facades” of the socialist paradise.

“But the most interesting thing for a journalist, hidden from prying eyes, can only be found behind these “facades,” Igor is sure. “But they didn’t let us walk.” We traveled a lot, constantly: despite the severe fuel crisis, in order to present the country in a favorable light, the tour organizers did not take into account expenses. Back in the hotel in Pyongyang, I had the idea to see the real life of Koreans, to make an illegal foray. Theoretically, it was possible to leave. But, considering that the hotel itself was built on an island, which is connected to the shore by a perfectly lit (and in conditions of power shortage) only road, it is doubtful that I would have gone far. In seaside Wonsai, the exit from the hotel to the city was covered by a checkpoint and a high fence. And in Mekhyan there was nowhere to go, since the hotel stood in a deserted mountain gorge.

There are no products in regular stores

And yet, once, while Olga was talking to the guides, Igor managed to break away from them and go into an ordinary street store. True, only for a few minutes.

- The guides discovered my absence literally a couple of minutes later, but I managed to look at the store’s assortment. You know, in our Union, even in the worst years, there was at least some cabbage, bread, and soup sets on the shelves. Here - only cigarettes and bottled water. All! There are no products at all.

North Korea has a card system for food distribution. What products? Rice. For an adult, 700 grams per day, for a child - 300.

The food problem here is worse than the energy problem. According to Western sources, 30-40 thousand people now die of hunger in the country every year. Now that's not much. In the mid-90s, after several years of drought, a pestilence began: three million people died in four years. Even the party call did not help: “Switch to two meals a day!” People still died.

Now the country has been almost completely dependent on foreign food aid for ten years and, according to tradition, it blames not its own inefficient economy for all its troubles, but American imperialism.

By the way, over the past ten years, the United States has allocated more than a billion dollars in humanitarian aid to the DPRK. And by the way: in 1998, a loud global scandal broke out when, using money received through UN humanitarian aid, Kim Jong Il ordered 200 executive Mercedes from Germany.

Under the influence of the famine, timid economic reform began in the country in 2002. They stopped confiscating surplus food from rural residents. Markets have opened; there are more than a dozen of them in the capital. There is an exemplary one, where even foreigners are allowed - Thonil. There is everyone here, even underground currency traders - by the way, it is possible that they are members of the secret services. The exchange rate is 2500 won per euro.

But rice, and if everything goes well, beans or corn, still remains the main dish of North Koreans. After all, an average monthly salary of three to four thousand won is enough to buy just one(!) kilogram of pork.

But there are also real gourmets in the country. This was the Great Leader Kim Il Sung. This is now his son - the Great Leader Kim Jong Il.

In order for the Great Leader to remain healthy, there is an institute for longevity problems in Pyongyang, where about 200 scientists work. Based on the results of their research work, the leaders were prescribed blue shark liver and lion meat. And besides them, the leader needs seafood that comes from Japan, caviar from Azerbaijan and Iran, grapes from the north of China, beer from the Czech Republic and much more.

The famous psychiatrist Gerald Post, who once worked for the CIA, in an interview with the Los Angeles Times said: “The way they cook Kima, they cook only for the gods.”

Kim is cooler than Stalin

- Igor, don’t the North Koreans really understand how they live?

“They, of course, don’t understand that you can’t live like this,” says Igor. - They think that they live in the happiest country, which has the most brilliant leader. They just don't know how the rest of the world works. I think that Stalin’s cult of personality, compared to the cult of the Kims, is an example of party and human modesty. The entire ideology of North Korea is permeated with hypertrophied praise of the great merits of father and son, and the role of other individuals is reduced to a minimum - as if the two of them fought and built the country.

In 1945, after Soviet troops cleared northern Korea of Japanese militarists, Stalin personally appointed the 33-year-old captain of our army, Kim Il Sung, to rule this territory, primarily because of his youth. In the early 50s, the young leader dealt with his comrades so mercilessly that he even surprised Lavrentiy Beria. “Have they gone crazy?” - Lavrenty Pavlovich exclaimed completely sincerely.

Since then, there has not even been a shadow of political opposition in the country. And according to international human rights organizations, there are about 200 thousand political prisoners in the country. In Korea there are no courts, or even products of the Stalinist regime - the so-called troikas. He said a careless word - and, by decision of the head of the local administration, he and his family were sentenced to hard labor for life.

“If we even told jokes about Brezhnev during the Soviet Union, then it was simply unthinkable there,” says Igor.

- Do you think this country will ever open up?

- No. People there are zombies. I think they just can't think logically.

- Your report on your trip to North Korea was published as a separate illustrated special issue. Aren't you worried about the replication of such information? Some people will come with badges and ask you sternly...

- I think they won't come. The only thing is that I’m afraid that our guides may suffer for not seeing us as “spies.”

(c) radulova