My trip to North Korea

With relations between North and South Korea at an all time low following the torpedoing of a South Korean warship by a North Korean submarine, my visit to the world’s most reclusive state in 2008 seems all the more distant.
Back then cooperation between the two countries, which are technically still at war, was at an unprecedentedly high level. 2007 saw President Roo Moo-Hyun being greeted by the Dear Leader Kim Jong-Il himself in Pyongyang, the two men walking alongside each other down a red carpet, smiling.
Moo-Hyun’s predecessor Kim Dae-Jung’s Sunshine Policy had sought a more peaceful relationship with North Korea by providing aid to the impoverished country.
In return the North eventually allowed South Korean companies to ply the cheap labour north of the DMZ.
“Special economic zones” were set up and for the first time in history South Koreans were allowed to visit the North, albeit only to a couple of destinations and with soldiers watching their every move.
But then it all changed. Lee Myoung Bak was elected as President in December 2007, finally winning power for his conservative Grand National Party after its shock defeat to Roh Moo Hyeon’s left-wing Millenium Democractic Party in 2002.
The new government took a tougher stance on its communist neighbour, criticising former president Kim Dae-Jung’s (1997-2002) Sunshine Policy for merely appeasing and propping up the repressive North Korean state and jeopardising relations with its key ally the US.
Ironically the South’s decision to challenge the North more directly came at a sensitive moment. The US was trying desperately to secure a deal whereby North Korea would decommission its nuclear weapons and facilities in exchange for aid.
Despite the symbolic destruction of a cooling tower the six-party talks collapsed without any real progress being made. North Korea remains a nuclear threat following its first successful testing of a nuclear device in 2006.
Relations nosedived when the South Korean defence minister said in a meeting to discuss military strategy that his country could launch a pre-emptive strike on North Korea’s nuclear sites.
This prompted the North to retort in its usual hyperbolic character when it threatened to “reduce the South to ashes”.
The sinking of the Cheonan has severed the few diplomatic channels that the South had carefully built up over the years with the North.
Yet despite this flagrant act of aggression the peninsula is not likely to go to war. Incidents like this have been a hallmark its divided history over the past sixty years.
For instance North Korea once sent in a team of assassins in an attempt to kill the South Korean president, but the attempt failed.
At the end of 2007 it was clear the North Korean regime was willing to tolerate an element of capitalism within its borders. The special economic zones along the Chinese and South Korean borders were evidence of that.
But now the regime has shown its willingness to crack down on the black markets that have popped up throughout the country. At the end of 2009 the government revalued its currency, wiping out people’s savings.
Insiders warn that without the black markets thousands of people will starve, unable to afford food.
The Dear Leader’s pride is evidently trumps his desperate need for money. Before relations soured in 2008 North Korea had opened up two areas to South Korean tourists to visit on short trips.
In April 2008, I went on one of those trips.
I was one of six non-Koreans on the trip. We boarded a bus from Seoul in the early hours of a Saturday morning and began the disconcertingly short journey to the DMZ, or de-militarised zone, the biggest misnomer in the world.
Leaving the glitzy, vibrant metropolis of Seoul and its surroundings and in less than two hours having my mobile phone confiscated and dropped in a polythene bag was the closest I will ever come to being in a time machine.
After being surrendered to the hospitality of the North Korean army our convoy of no less than six buses continued into the world’s largest open prison.
There was no other traffic on the roads, save a Volkswagen camper van lookalike complete with four roof-mounted speakers to blare out the daily propaganda.
The town we passed through was crumbling. Where there was still paint it was flaking off. Few of the buildings looked like they had been built since the 60s
This town, Kaesong, was for show. It was the best North Korea had to offer, and the poverty was rife. The people who were allowed on the streets rode identical bicycles and bland clothing. Occasionally you spotted children too curious to stay hidden. They were dressed in rags.
What made it all the more sinister and surreal was the presence of the army. A fifth of the population is in military service, and in Kaesong there was a soldier standing on every corner, standing as tall as their malnourished frames would allow and completely still.
They made it like some bizarre toy town or model village. I pondered the possibility that the windows were in fact TV screens and were on some elaborate and theme park ride.
Nowhere else had I felt my presence so heavy. We had put an entire country on hold. As we left the town and drove up into the mountains, soldiers dotted the landscape. They stood in front of remote hamlets, making sure no one dared creep outside as we passed.
We were allowed out only in a couple of secluded and heavily guarded areas. The first was up in the mountains by a scenic waterfall. The second was in Kaesong where the walls were just high enough to stop us seeing the local people on the other side. I stood on a stone to peek over, but was soon encouraged to get down by a guard.
My proudest moment helped make our bus the last to leave the compound where we had had lunch. As we were late we drove straight past the gigantic bronze statue of Kim Il Sung which sits atop a hill allowing him an unrivalled view of the town. The other bus passengers had to get out and bow before the Great Leader.
By the end of the day I was back in the South Korean capital, Seoul. It was hard to absorb what I had seen that day. It was even harder to believe that just one hour away lay a world so completely cut off from our own.
Were it not the most secretive, reclusive and repressive state on earth, I might have described it as a refreshing respite from our increasingly globalised world. But instead the only positive thing I have to say is that I enjoyed the fresh air. The lives of those who breathe it every day is too ghastly to bear.