Inside North Korea, and feeling

To fly into North Korea on an old Russian aircraft is to step into an alternate universe, one in which “the Supreme Leader” defeats craven American imperialists, in which triplets are taken from parents to be raised by the state, in which nuclear war is imminent but survivable — and in which there is zero sympathy for American detainees like Otto Warmbier.

Warmbier was the University of Virginia student who was arrested for stealing a poster, then sentenced to 15 years of hard labor and eventually returned to the U.S. in a vegetative state.

“He broke the law in our country,” said Ri Yong-pil, a senior Foreign Ministry official, adding that Warmbier was returned (a week before his death) as a “humanitarian” act. Another senior ministry official, Choe Kang-il, insisted that North Korea had provided excellent care and spent “all the money for nursing” him.

Something in me snapped. I asked how North Koreans could possibly boast about their spending on a young man when he was in a coma only because of them. Choe replied just as hotly that Warmbier had not been mistreated and was in fine condition when he was sent back home.

“The U.S. administration, or some people with a certain intention, let him die,” Choe said. “This must be intended to foster and spread anti-Communist hatred within America.”

Officials offered no apology and gave no ground, reflecting a hard line toward the United States that I found everywhere on this visit; Choe derided President Trump as “a crazy man,” “a thug” and “a pathetic man with a big mouth.” I’ve been covering North Korea on and off since the 1980s, and this five-day trip has left me more alarmed than ever about the risks of a catastrophic confrontation.

I was given a visa to North Korea, as were three other New York Times journalists. The U.S. State Department promptly gave us an exemption from the travel ban to North Korea and issued special passports good for a single trip here.

Far more than when I previously visited, North Korea is galvanizing its people to expect a nuclear war with the United States. High school students march in the streets in military uniform every day to denounce America. Posters and billboards along the public roads show missiles destroying the U.S. Capitol and shredding the American flag. In fact, images of missiles are everywhere — in a kindergarten playground, at a dolphin show, on state television. This military mobilization is accompanied by the ubiquitous assumption that North Korea could not only survive a nuclear conflict, but also win it. “If we have to go to war, we won’t hesitate to totally destroy the United States,” explained Mun Hyok-myong, a 38-year-old teacher visiting an amusement park.

Ryang Song-chol, a 41-year-old factory worker, looked surprised when I asked if his country could survive a war with America. “We would certainly win,” he said.

These interviews were conducted in the presence of two Foreign Ministry officials, but even if they weren’t, there is no chance that ordinary people would speak freely to a foreign reporter. This is perhaps the most tightly controlled country in the world, so such quotes should be seen as reflecting a government script — in this case, a disturbingly jingoistic one.

On past trips (my last was in 2005), we journalists stayed at hotels in the capital and were free to walk around on our own, but this time the Foreign Ministry housed us at its own guarded Kobangsan Guest House east of the capital. At first I thought this was simply to restrict us, but increasingly I saw signs of something more interesting and menacing: The Foreign Ministry was also protecting us from hard-liners in the military or in the security services.

“Someone might hear you are from America,” and there could be trouble, one official explained.

Hard-liners seem to have gained greater power this year, especially after Trump’s threat to “totally destroy” North Korea, and we were told that military officers sometimes mock their own country’s diplomats for being wimpish “American cronies.”

Foreign Ministry officials escorted us every time we left the compound, probably both to keep us out of mischief and to protect us from the security agencies.

Yes, all this has been a little discomfiting.

The upshot is that I have felt more constraint than on past visits to North Korea, and considerably more tension. Before, I had been able to see senior generals, but this time the military flatly refused to consider my interview requests. The security forces also refused my request to meet the three Americans whom they still detain, one for two years now, without consular access. A basic problem is that hard-liners seem ascendant in both Washington and Pyongyang.

In Washington, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is advocating a diplomatic resolution to conflict with North Korea — but Trump undercut him on Twitter last Sunday and said Tillerson was “wasting his time.” Trump’s policy toward North Korea is founded on false assumptions that the Supreme Leader, Kim Jong-un, will give up his nuclear weapons, that China can save the day and that military options are real.

In Pyongyang, North Korea’s capital, which is full of wide streets and monumental buildings, officials also express little interest in the kind of tough compromises that would be necessary to resolve the crisis.

“The situation on the Korean Peninsula is on the eve of the breakout of nuclear war,” Choe, the Foreign Ministry official, told me. “We can survive” such a war, he added, and he and other officials said that it was not the right time for talks with the U.S. The North Koreans insist that the U.S. make the first move and drop its sanctions and “hostile attitude” — which won’t happen. And the U.S. is equally unrealistic in insisting that North Korea give up its entire nuclear program.

I told Choe that my visit gave me a sense of déjà vu, reminding me of a trip to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq on the eve of the American invasion. The difference is that a war here would be not just a regional disaster but a nuclear cataclysm.

Choe was unimpressed by my warning. He said that Iraq and Libya had made the mistake of giving up their nuclear programs; in each case, America then ousted the regime. He added that the lesson was obvious, so North Korea will never negotiate away its nuclear warheads.

Still, for all the shadow of possible war, North Korea has had some positive changes. The famine is over (although malnutrition still leaves one in four children stunted), the economy has developed and government officials are far more open and savvy than a generation ago.

Officials used to deny that there was ever any crime in North Korea — but now they freely concede that this country has thieves, that young women sometimes become pregnant before marriage, that inevitably there’s a measure of corruption. (They do deny that North Korea has any gay people.)

North Korea is no longer hermetically sealed, and South Korean pop music and soap operas are smuggled in on flash drives and DVDs from China (watching them is a serious criminal offense). There is also an intranet — a rigidly controlled domestic version of the internet — and students learn English from about the third grade. At the best schools, like Pyongyang No. 1 Secondary School, the students are extraordinarily bright and they conversed with us in fluent English, with far more sophistication than on my first visit to the same school in 1989.

Yet this is still North Korea. I asked these kids if they had ever heard of Beyoncé or the Beatles; none had. I asked if they had heard of Facebook. One had, because computer software sometimes referred to it, but he didn’t know what it was.

Radios or televisions that might get foreign broadcasts are illegal, and there is no access to the internet except for foreigners and senior officials. When I arrived at the airport, my luggage was closely searched for pernicious publications, and even my phone was examined.

“Who’s this person,” the customs official asked suspiciously when she saw an Asian woman appear frequently in my photos.

“My wife,” I explained.

“Oh,” she said, deflated. “She’s pretty.”

Each home or village has a speaker, a link from Big Brother, that drums in propaganda each morning. Religion and civil society are not allowed. Government controls frayed during the terrible famine of the 1990s, when perhaps 10 percent of the population died, but the controls have returned with the economic recovery. This is the most totalitarian state in the history of the world, because it has computers, closed-circuit cameras, mobile phones and other monitoring technologies that Stalin or Mao could only have dreamed of.

North Korea is also sometimes simply weird. Triplets are taken from their parents and raised by the state because they are considered auspicious. The personality cult is unyielding, with every adult wearing pins of “the Great Leader,” Kim Il-sung, who died in 1994, or his son, “the Dear Leader,” Kim Jong-il, who died in 2011, and their portraits are in every home, every factory, every classroom.

Every year, people die trying to rescue the Kim portraits from house fires (whether because of genuine loyalty or to win credit with the authorities), and now this Confucian-style reverence is directed to Kim Jong-un, 33, the scion of the dynasty. His name means “just and merciful,” and the state media are worshipful about his “brilliant intelligence, military acumen, matchless courage and outstanding art of command,” as one publication put it.

Do people really believe this stuff?

I’ve interviewed countless defectors over the years, and they say that there’s more disenchantment among the youth and in the China border area, where Koreans realize that their country has been left behind. But the defectors add that many North Koreans, especially older ones and those distant from the China border, genuinely believe in the system and worship the Kim family — because they know nothing else.

“Much of the older generation still remains loyal to the regime,” agreed Jieun Baek, author of a recent book on how information reaches North Koreans. Attitudes are changing among younger people and those involved in the market economy, she said, but she doesn’t foresee a grass-roots uprising any time soon.    -  The New York Times

Inside North Korea, and feeling

To fly into North Korea on an old Russian aircraft is to step into an alternate universe, one in which the Supreme Leader defeats craven American imperialists, in which triplets are taken from parents to be raised by the state, in which nuclear war is imminent but survivable and in which there is zero sympathy for American detainees like Otto Warmbier. Warmbier was the University of Virginia student who was arrested for stealing a poster, then sentenced to 15 years of hard labor and eventually returned to the U.S. in a vegetative state. He broke the law in our country, said Ri Yong-pil, a senior Foreign Ministry official, adding that Warmbier was returned (a week before his death) as a humanitarian act. Another senior ministry official, Choe Kang-il, insisted that North Korea had provided excellent care and spent all the money for nursing him. Something in me snapped. I asked how North Koreans could possibly boast about their spending on a young man when he was in a coma only because of them. Choe replied just as hotly that Warmbier had not been mistreated and was in fine condition when he was sent back home. The U.S. administration, or some people with a certain intention, let him die, Choe said. This must be intended to foster and spread anti-Communist hatred within America. Officials offered no apology and gave no ground, reflecting a hard line toward the United States that I found everywhere on this visit; Choe derided President Trump as a crazy man, a thug and a pathetic man with a big mouth. Ive been covering North Korea on and off since the 1980s, and this five-day trip has left me more alarmed than ever about the risks of a catastrophic confrontation. I was given a visa to North Korea, as were three other New York Times journalists. The U.S. State Department promptly gave us an exemption from the travel ban to North Korea and issued special passports good for a single trip here. Far more than when I previously visited, North Korea is galvanizing its people to expect a nuclear war with the United States. High school students march in the streets in military uniform every day to denounce America. Posters and billboards along the public roads show missiles destroying the U.S. Capitol and shredding the American flag. In fact, images of missiles are everywhere in a kindergarten playground, at a dolphin show, on state television. This military mobilization is accompanied by the ubiquitous assumption that North Korea could not only survive a nuclear conflict, but also win it. If we have to go to war, we wont hesitate to totally destroy the United States, explained Mun Hyok-myong, a 38-year-old teacher visiting an amusement park. Ryang Song-chol, a 41-year-old factory worker, looked surprised when I asked if his country could survive a war with America. We would certainly win, he said. These interviews were conducted in the presence of two Foreign Ministry officials, but even if they werent, there is no chance that ordinary people would speak freely to a foreign reporter. This is perhaps the most tightly controlled country in the world, so such quotes should be seen as reflecting a government script in this case, a disturbingly jingoistic one. On past trips (my last was in 2005), we journalists stayed at hotels in the capital and were free to walk around on our own, but this time the Foreign Ministry housed us at its own guarded Kobangsan Guest House east of the capital. At first I thought this was simply to restrict us, but increasingly I saw signs of something more interesting and menacing: The Foreign Ministry was also protecting us from hard-liners in the military or in the security services. Someone might hear you are from America, and there could be trouble, one official explained. Hard-liners seem to have gained greater power this year, especially after Trumps threat to totally destroy North Korea, and we were told that military officers sometimes mock their own countrys diplomats for being wimpish American cronies. Foreign Ministry officials escorted us every time we left the compound, probably both to keep us out of mischief and to protect us from the security agencies. Yes, all this has been a little discomfiting. The upshot is that I have felt more constraint than on past visits to North Korea, and considerably more tension. Before, I had been able to see senior generals, but this time the military flatly refused to consider my interview requests. The security forces also refused my request to meet the three Americans whom they still detain, one for two years now, without consular access. A basic problem is that hard-liners seem ascendant in both Washington and Pyongyang. In Washington, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is advocating a diplomatic resolution to conflict with North Korea but Trump undercut him on Twitter last Sunday and said Tillerson was wasting his time. Trumps policy toward North Korea is founded on false assumptions that the Supreme Leader, Kim Jong-un, will give up his nuclear weapons, that China can save the day and that military options are real. In Pyongyang, North Koreas capital, which is full of wide streets and monumental buildings, officials also express little interest in the kind of tough compromises that would be necessary to resolve the crisis. The situation on the Korean Peninsula is on the eve of the breakout of nuclear war, Choe, the Foreign Ministry official, told me. We can survive such a war, he added, and he and other officials said that it was not the right time for talks with the U.S. The North Koreans insist that the U.S. make the first move and drop its sanctions and hostile attitude which wont happen. And the U.S. is equally unrealistic in insisting that North Korea give up its entire nuclear program. I told Choe that my visit gave me a sense of dj vu, reminding me of a trip to Saddam Husseins Iraq on the eve of the American invasion. The difference is that a war here would be not just a regional disaster but a nuclear cataclysm. Choe was unimpressed by my warning. He said that Iraq and Libya had made the mistake of giving up their nuclear programs; in each case, America then ousted the regime. He added that the lesson was obvious, so North Korea will never negotiate away its nuclear warheads. Still, for all the shadow of possible war, North Korea has had some positive changes. The famine is over (although malnutrition still leaves one in four children stunted), the economy has developed and government officials are far more open and savvy than a generation ago. Officials used to deny that there was ever any crime in North Korea but now they freely concede that this country has thieves, that young women sometimes become pregnant before marriage, that inevitably theres a measure of corruption. (They do deny that North Korea has any gay people.) North Korea is no longer hermetically sealed, and South Korean pop music and soap operas are smuggled in on flash drives and DVDs from China (watching them is a serious criminal offense). There is also an intranet a rigidly controlled domestic version of the internet and students learn English from about the third grade. At the best schools, like Pyongyang No. 1 Secondary School, the students are extraordinarily bright and they conversed with us in fluent English, with far more sophistication than on my first visit to the same school in 1989. Yet this is still North Korea. I asked these kids if they had ever heard of Beyonc or the Beatles; none had. I asked if they had heard of Facebook. One had, because computer software sometimes referred to it, but he didnt know what it was. Radios or televisions that might get foreign broadcasts are illegal, and there is no access to the internet except for foreigners and senior officials. When I arrived at the airport, my luggage was closely searched for pernicious publications, and even my phone was examined. Whos this person, the customs official asked suspiciously when she saw an Asian woman appear frequently in my photos. My wife, I explained. Oh, she said, deflated. Shes pretty. Each home or village has a speaker, a link from Big Brother, that drums in propaganda each morning. Religion and civil society are not allowed. Government controls frayed during the terrible famine of the 1990s, when perhaps 10 percent of the population died, but the controls have returned with the economic recovery. This is the most totalitarian state in the history of the world, because it has computers, closed-circuit cameras, mobile phones and other monitoring technologies that Stalin or Mao could only have dreamed of. North Korea is also sometimes simply weird. Triplets are taken from their parents and raised by the state because they are considered auspicious. The personality cult is unyielding, with every adult wearing pins of the Great Leader, Kim Il-sung, who died in 1994, or his son, the Dear Leader, Kim Jong-il, who died in 2011, and their portraits are in every home, every factory, every classroom. Every year, people die trying to rescue the Kim portraits from house fires (whether because of genuine loyalty or to win credit with the authorities), and now this Confucian-style reverence is directed to Kim Jong-un, 33, the scion of the dynasty. His name means just and merciful, and the state media are worshipful about his brilliant intelligence, military acumen, matchless courage and outstanding art of command, as one publication put it. Do people really believe this stuff? Ive interviewed countless defectors over the years, and they say that theres more disenchantment among the youth and in the China border area, where Koreans realize that their country has been left behind. But the defectors add that many North Koreans, especially older ones and those distant from the China border, genuinely believe in the system and worship the Kim family because they know nothing else. Much of the older generation still remains loyal to the regime, agreed Jieun Baek, author of a recent book on how information reaches North Koreans. Attitudes are changing among younger people and those involved in the market economy, she said, but she doesnt foresee a grass-roots uprising any time soon. - The New York Times