North Korea (48 photos + text)

Another nuclear weapons test conducted recently by North Korea has once again drawn the world's attention to this small state. Ukrainian expert Vitaly Kulik visited North Korea a few weeks ago and presented to Political Club a detailed report on what North Korea is like today. In our opinion, the story turned out to be very interesting and exciting.

Vitaly Kulik. Good afternoon, we are starting our expert meeting. The fact is that recently I was lucky, I was in North Korea and the Far East of the Russian Federation. Hence the name of the meeting - “Will Russia Hold the Far East?” What we saw indicates important new trends in the development of Russian regions, which will affect the balance of global security, as well as regional security. We will start with North Korea, I will give you a short presentation of our vision of what is happening in North Korea and the prospects for resolving the conflict, as well as the development of the situation in the future.

There is a certain set of myths about North Korea, which are produced by the international media, that it is a closed country, that Stalinism exists there, that the authorities have complete control over the life of society, that there are no forms of self-expression and self-realization there.

Let's start with the photos first, and I'll explain what and how along the way.

The image above is an interesting moment because it symbolizes the unity of the three classes of Korea: the worker, the peasant, and in the middle there is a tassel - a symbol of the intelligentsia.

About North Korea in general. The fact is that what North Korea is now is a bit reminiscent of the spirit and style of the times of the Soviet Union. Even, rather, the time of the forties and fifties with a certain modification.

This is the thirty-eighth parallel - this is the very building that separates North and South Korea. These barracks are the venues for conferences and meetings of representatives of South and North Korea, the thirty-eighth parallel.

Well, let’s probably look at the pictures first, and then I’ll tell you along the way.

This is a pioneer detachment, that is, there are pioneers, Komsomol members, and now there is the Kim Il Sung Youth Union, and a pioneer organization. Everything is the same as in our old times, the only difference is that people who have gone through the school of the pioneer and Komsomol organizations move up the career ladder faster, they are appointed to positions faster, and functionaries are one of the driving elements of North Korean society.

This is an arc dedicated to the revolutionary struggle that began in 1925, first with the revolutionary activities of Comrade Kim Il Sung, and until 1945, the year of the liberation of Korea.

This is the entrance to the metro. The metro is developed, it is, of course, not on the Kiev scale, but it is the cheapest in the world - five won. If we take into account the market rate of the won and 2,600 won per dollar, then I can’t even begin to say what the hundredth or thousandth of a cent is. Free actually.

These are queues for transport. There are no minibuses there, trolleybuses are made by hand, since there is no press, so they are a little dented. When I asked why the trolleybuses had such roofs, they explained to me that, you understand, in Korea there is no press, so everything is done by hand, since the basis of the Juche ideology is self-reliance.

This is a flower exhibition, there are two types of flowers. These are the Kimirsaenghwa and Kimjeongirhwa flowers, the small flowers are Kimirsaenghwa and the large flowers are Kimjeongirhwa. The history of flowers is very interesting because flowers were developed by two Juche supporters in Indonesia and Japan. Kimirsenhwa was bred by a revolutionary who lived in Indonesia during the time of Suharto, he bred this flower and gave it to comrade Kim Il Sung. But after Suharto came to power, the flower disappeared and only recently was found again and returned, as it were, to North Korea. And now he is a symbol of Juche and a symbol of Comrade Kim Il Sung. Kimjongirhwa was brought out by a Jucheist from Japan, a Japanese who gave this flower to comrade Kim Jong Il.

This is a young Korean boy in national clothes, there is a date there - 2012. 2012 is the date when North Korea should turn into a powerful socialist state with nuclear weapons and a space fleet. We are holding Euro 2012, and there they are building a powerful Korean state.

In general, I did not see any hunger or any problems with textbooks or equipment. Every school has a computer class, in principle, it doesn’t matter, last year I was in rural schools, in city schools, we could choose any school from the list, we could point our finger at the school number, and they could take us there. In fact, all schools have been computerized.

This is a spring holiday, the birthday of Comrade Kim Il Sung, and dancing. Imagine that the whole city comes out to the square and dances. Then a signal comes, everyone lines up and leaves in an unknown direction. Everything is very clear, everything is very well worked out. Here in the photo even I take part in these dances.

Yuri Romanenko. And the same clearly practiced dance movements. (laughter in the audience)

Vitaly Kulik. By the way, the dancing is very beautiful and the music is beautiful. Schools do not have the Internet, but an Intranet, this is an internal network that unites different universities and computer institutions, but this internal network is mainly designed for universities.

There are exchanges of dissertations, abstracts, and coursework between students of different universities. There are even ICQ within this Intranet, but there is no access to the Internet. Only the party leadership has it, as well as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and you can send an e-mail from the hotel, but you don’t go to your free mailbox, you send from the hotel mailbox. It costs two euros, you can send and receive, but to the same address from which you send.

Yuri Romanenko. Two euros for one letter?

Vitaly Kulik. Yes, two euros per letter. There is no internet connection in the hotel either.

This is one of the computer classes where Internet conferences take place between universities, and this is the Kim Chak Polytechnic Institute - the right hand of Kim Il Sung, the scanner on which you put the slide, it shows it on the screen, then the university receives the same image, say, in Nampo, there is an exchange of discussion and so on.

We got to one such meeting by accident and were quickly sent away. This is Arian's rehearsal. There are acrobatic events that are held for anniversaries, for round dates in the history of Korea, in the history of the creation of the party, the birthday of Kim Il Sung and other holidays, when people use their bodies to lay out letters, entire sentences, pictures, etc. Everything looks very beautiful.

This is what ordinary Pyongyang schoolgirls look like.

There is a difference in clothing, and there is a visible difference in income level between the rural and urban population in other cities in Korea and in Pyongyang. It can be seen that the level of prosperity in Pyongyang is higher. But in principle, we can say that there is a certain average level that determines the general level of wealth of Koreans.

Vladimir Lupatsy. Are there any shops?

Vitaly Kulik. There are shops, they are functioning, there are markets. You can buy food in the markets.

This is one of the specifics of city development - the facades are built up with large multi-storey buildings, and behind them on the mountains there are huts hidden. It’s very clean, it’s good, everything is laid out and so on, but there’s only one façade, and behind the façade there are still these kind of shacks.

This is a view of Pyongyang from above from the Koryo Hotel, you can see that most of the buildings are high-rise buildings. Koreans are not used to living in multi-story buildings, so, as they explained to us, they still live in shacks. Although in reality it is simply impossible to develop Pyongyang, it is so mountainous.

There are no traffic lights in Pyongyang; there are these young ladies who show you how to drive correctly. Moreover, they are very beautiful, this is a special selection in politics.

Vladimir Stus. Don't they have private cars?

Vitaly Kulik. There are even private cars. Private cars are especially common among chyonryong (Koreans, citizens of the DPRK living in Japan), for example, the car in which we were driven.

This is such an old Mercedes for foreign guests. There are privately owned cars, mostly state-owned cars, but there are also private ones. Private cars are owned by chyonryong, these are Koreans who live permanently in Japan. Two hundred thousand Koreans live in Japan and have residence permits. The Japanese call them an organized ethnic crime group because they engage in "smuggling and illegal business." Basically, the Chyonryong community is pro-Pyongyang, so they have problematic relations with official Tokyo.

But the fact is that chyonryong is one of the types of profit for North Korea itself, since significant funds sometimes feed Korea. These are very rich people; one of the Chyonryong members, for example, built an entire street in Pyongyang. The average income of a Chongryong member in Japan is approximately ten thousand euros per month. Business is very developed, and a significant part of these funds later ends up in North Korea, which is why it is a source of budget replenishment. That’s why they are allowed to have private cars, there is even a whole neighborhood called “Hitachi” where the chyonryong live. It was a discovery for me, unfortunately, there is no such photograph here, when you walk through Pyongyang, you find yourself on a sports ground where they play baseball, in full equipment, with bats, respectively, real baseball in Pyongyang. It's like a very common game there.

This is a Korean wedding.

This is a small Buddhist monastery, stupas, several stupas on Mount Arengak.

Now about the attitude towards religion in general. Religion is nationalized, there is an Orthodox Committee of Korea, there are Buddhist Committees, and there is Cheonggodae. Cheonggodae is a synthetic religion of Koreans, invented in the nineteenth century as a protest against the dominance of Lutherans and Protestants. Buddhists, here we are communicating with one of the monks, there are about twenty-two thousand of them, that is, parishioners and about two thousand monks throughout North Korea.

There is also the only Orthodox Church ruled by two Korean priests, that is, ethnic Koreans. They were sent according to party orders. There’s a representative standing next to the priest; he’s a parishioner of the Orthodox Church, mostly Russians living in North Korea.

Here we see in the photograph these two Korean priests. Sometimes you can see a priest in a cassock with a badge with the image of Kim Il Sung. By order of the party, they were sent to study at one of the seminaries near Moscow, and accordingly they conduct a religious cult in North Korea for the needs of the Russians and a small group of North Koreans who converted to Orthodoxy. As the local priest told me, there are only twelve of them, these Koreans. Basically all Orthodox Christians are Russians.

This is a monument to the Juche idea, one of the largest monuments in Asia.

This is the square where all military parades take place.

This is the view from the Palace of Education. On one of the buildings there are two portraits, Marx and Lenin.

But if we look closely at the portrait of Marx, we will see that he has slanted eyes. Thus, the party leadership had to be introduced to the ideas of Marx.

These are famous paintings depicting how wife Kim Bong Suk protects comrade Kim Il Sung from Japanese invaders. There really was such an episode when she protected Kim Il Sung from some sniper.

This is a poster from the war of liberation against the American invaders. If you look closely at these posters, they are very reminiscent of our war posters of the forties. And there, even the motherland is calling, unfortunately, not for such a photograph, where a Korean woman is in the pose of the poster we know.

Many posters were borrowed because propagandists and the training of Koreans took place in Soviet military schools, and military instructors were one of the main people who represented foreigners on Korean territory until the 1950s. Soviet and Chinese. But in 1956-1959, a turning point occurred when the faction of sycophants, which was oriented towards the Soviet Union, was eliminated, and the majority of officers and part of the party elite, oriented towards the Soviet Union, were either destroyed or left, because the party nomenklatura of the early fifties consisted of three groups. One group were Soviet Koreans who returned to Korea to prepare the Koreans for independence. The second group were pro-Chinese people living in China. The third group represented the South Korean Communist Party, the most powerful Communist Party at that time in Korea. And Kim Il Sung himself brought with him the partisans, that is, the backbone of his elite, which later came to power; these were the partisans who fought with him in Manchuria.

This is a rural area, these are the houses that are mixed with shacks. The classic villages that existed in Korea in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries no longer exist, there are such houses, such villages.

These are rice fields, cultivated mainly with the help of cows and horses. There was very little equipment, we hardly saw any tractors. But North Korea, unlike South Korea, is mountainous, and you have to work manually.

The entire territory of Korea, even small areas of land near the roads, they are all cultivated, and there is not a single area on which something does not grow.

This is a recreation park on Ryongak, a very convenient place, very popular for picnics and barbecues.

Vladimir Lupatsy. What kind of alcohol is there?

Vitaly Kulik. Alcohol - beer, which is made on the basis of Baltika technology, a Russian plant, very tasty beer. Three types of vodka. Cane or bamboo vodka, ginseng-based vodka, and vodka with snake. Koreans themselves do not drink vodka with snake, but they sell it to tourists. Mainly popular from ginseng and bamboo vodka.

This is a cemetery for revolutionaries. It is I who lay flowers at the grave of the mother of Comrade Kim Jong Il - this is a mandatory ritual for all guests, for all tourists who come to Korea.

There is also a museum of the revolution, a pedestal for Comrade Kim Il Sung. The Museum of the Revolution contains all the elements, all the things that Comrade Kim Il Sung and Comrade Kim Jong Il have ever held in their hands, from the pistols given by his father to Comrade Kim Il Sung, to the pen and pencil with which Comrade Kim Jong Il wrote in school. .

This is the square and monument to Comrade Kim Il Sung, a very beautiful place, very beautifully made and monumental.

This is a museum of gifts to Comrade Kim Il Sung; it contains about fifty thousand gifts given to Comrade Kim Il Sung during his life and after his life. They still present gifts to Comrade Kim Il Sung.

This is a view from above in the Mejjan mountains, a very beautiful fairy-tale area, so fantasy-like, I would say.

Mejian is home mainly to UN representatives involved in the UN food supply program for North Korea and foreign tourists. There are a lot of foreign tourists there, by the way. These are mainly Europeans and Chinese. The Chinese come there to see what they could have been if the Red Guards had won.

By the way, I forgot to tell you about the museum of gifts to Kim Jong Il already, two museums: to Comrade Kim Il Sung and to Comrade Kim Jong Il. It also contains about a hundred thousand gifts, because they still give. We, too, for example, gave very good things to Comrade Kim Jong Il, they are all posted there, you can see there from the first Panasonics and Hitachi equipment, to modern technology, mobile phones and so on. By the way, mobile phones are prohibited in North Korea for foreigners, but are allowed for the leadership of the Workers' Party of Korea and the military.

This monumental structure is the gateway that divides the South Korean Sea, also called the South China Sea, the gateway separates the Tedongan River, the main river of North Korea, and the sea, which allows ships to pass through.

The gateway was built in the eighties at a cost of eighty billion dollars. But now floods have become rare in North Korea, mainly due to the rainfall that often occurs in this territory.

Here are the clothes of a young Korean man. The history of this clothing is very interesting. At one time, Comrade Kim Il Sung sewed a general's uniform for little comrade Kim Jong Il. After this, many Koreans sew general's uniforms with generalissimo shoulder straps and insignia for their children. This is such a tradition.

In general, Koreans are very sensitive to history, but basically all their historical objects are remakes, because in the fifties the Americans destroyed everything that was on the territory of North Korea. Only small buildings remain. In Pyongyang itself, only two buildings remained intact; all other buildings were destroyed. Of the forty thousand Koreans living in Pyongyang, forty-three thousand bombs were dropped on them in 1952, that is, a little more than one bomb for every Korean living in Pyongyang. The city did not exist.

This is a monkey that, influenced by the Juche idea, performs various tricks at the Pyongyang Zoo.

Yuri Gavrilechko. How are her ideas translated?

Vitaly Kulik. There are only slogans, and she shows different tricks. All this against the backdrop of music and slogans or quotes from great leaders. No training, as a zoo employee explained to us, only under the influence of an idea.

One of the ideological trends in North Korea is the idea of unifying the motherland; there is a twelve-point program written by Comrade Kim Il Sung for unifying the motherland. He proposed creating a confederal state that would include North Korea and South Korea as one country, two systems. That is, according to the principle proposed to Taiwan by the Communist Party of China. However, this idea was discarded, and now the Koreans are insisting that it be implemented, namely the North Koreans. But in South Korea there is a powerful Juche movement, especially among student youth, most of the farmer and labor unions are influenced by Pyongyang, and, I would even say, so much so that the number of defectors in the eighties was four thousand who went to South Korea, and four thousand defected from South to North.

Now the situation has changed, now there is labor migration from North Korea to China, but very few people go from North Korea to South Korea, because the socialization of South Korea is almost impossible. There are two countries.

This is the table at which the armistice agreement was signed.

This is exactly where they stand, the path begins, this one is sprinkled with gravel, and there is already South Korea. Not a single South Korean soldier, not a single South Korean border guard. There are days of separation. We were brought in one day for viewing, the next day there were no North Korean tourists, there were South Korean tourists, and there was not a single North Korean border guard.

This is the grave of Tangun, the founder of the Korean nation, a saint who is revered in both South and North Korea. But the history of this burial is very interesting, because Comrade Kim Il Sung walked through the area and said that there should be Tangun’s grave here, archaeologists began to dig, and they actually found Tangun’s grave, with a coffin, a sarcophagus and everything else.

Vladimir Lupatsy. Does South Korea have its own Tangun?

Vitaly Kulik. No, the grave is indeed located, according to historical chronicles, it is located on the territory of North Korea, but it is supported in the Pyongyang area. But until recently, this was one of the villages of North Korea, they are all typical, they differ only in settlement, because of the slopes. The fact is that land is very expensive in terms of development, so they use the most narrowed settlements. And they are finely scattered and try to build high-rise buildings rather than single-story houses.

This is the entrance to the metro and the symbol of the metro. None of the inscriptions are in a foreign language, everything is in Korean. All streets, names, subways - all inscriptions are in Korean. This is a subway car, and there are always two portraits of two leaders in each subway car.

By the way, the metro layout, the number of stations, two lines, basically metro stations, we were taken to only two stations, but I know people who were at other stations, and they are no different from these.

These are standard stations, monumental, similar to the Moscow or Kiev metro built in the sixties and seventies. Mosaic is a must.

It is everywhere, on all buildings, in all museums, mainly of ideological content. Unfortunately, unlike the early nineties, symbols, ideological posters and political souvenirs have now disappeared from sale.

This is one of the metro halls, very beautiful, monumental. Now the emphasis is on popularizing Korea in a non-ideologized way, in my opinion, the Koreans are only losing from this.

This is one of the obligatory school visits with a performance by the local school ensemble. Each group is taken to watch these performances; this is a mandatory event; schoolchildren are happy to perform in front of guests, show different numbers and performances. These are mainly political songs, a song about the commander Kim Il Sung, which is mandatory. It has also been translated into Russian and tourists are required to memorize it so that they can perform it with their Korean comrades during a picnic. All.

Now let's get back to the report itself. There are two definitions, two names for Korea, just names. Because Korea is a name for foreigners. The North Koreans themselves call themselves Joseon. This is the self-name of the first Korean state that arose in North Korea. South Koreans call themselves Hanguk. That's why the Republic of Hanguk is written in Korean. That is, by the name of the Koreans who lived in Korea on the territory of South Korea. And Koryo, or Korea, is the name of a state, not a people. Therefore, when you ask whether this product is made in Korea: is it Joseon? They tell you: yes, this is Joseon, or no, this is Han, and Hane are Chinese. By the way, when we talk about Joseon, it has an exact translation, translated as “the land of morning freshness.” Since the name of the first state of Joseon, when it developed like this, the Chinese gave the writing, although the Koreans claim that there has always been hieroglyphic writing in Korea, but many Chinese characters are used in the Korean hieroglyphic writing. Nowadays writing in Korea is alphabetic. That is, what you see in Korean inscriptions are letters, they are not hieroglyphs. They have forty-two letters. But hieroglyphic writing, which was popular in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, has also been preserved. Joseon means cho is morning and sleep is freshness, hence the origin of Joseon.

By the way, you can translate Moscow into Korean or Chinese using hieroglyphs. This stands for “calm cutting of cereals.” If you take the hieroglyph that means the word Moscow, it turns out to be a calm cutting of cereals. Therefore, Koreans use many names and the names themselves as puzzles. From here, Newspeak emerged and greatly developed in North Korea, which has nothing in common with traditional Korean literature or the Korean language. A lot of newspeak words.

In principle, the history of Korea is very symbolic and very interesting. There were two stages in the development of Korea, which seem to manifest themselves in the greatest development, the flourishing of Korea. This is the first state - Koryo and Goguryeo. Goguryeo arose after Joseon, when Wang Gon created this state as a ruler, as a unification of all Korean territories under his leadership. For the first time in the state of Koryo, he united all of Korea: South and North. This state did not last long, only five centuries. After this, feudal fragmentation occurred; a slave system existed in Korea under Koryu. After this, in the fifth to seventh centuries, the state of Goguryu arose, which also gathered all of Korea into a single state with the capital of Goguryu Pyongyang. Hence Pyongyang’s political ambitions that a united Korea should be united precisely under the leadership of Pyongyang, and the capital should be in Pyongyang.

If we specify the system that now exists in North Korea, then we need to talk about what North Korea was from the sixties to the nineties. Firstly, there was a card system. Secondly, there was clear ideological and political control over the population, complete information isolation, all factions that existed in the Workers' Party of Korea were eliminated or localized, but at the same time, a multi-party system was maintained in North Korea. There are three parties in Korea: the Workers' Party of Korea, the Cheongdogye Young Friends Party, which is a religious party, and the Social Democratic Party. Until the eighties, it was called the Democratic Party.