Who hasn't unintentionally hurt, or been hurt by, someone they loved? Maybe you had selfish expectations, or made a bad assumption. Maybe you misjudged how your actions would be understood. Apologies are rarely sufficient or effective; only time smoothes over the rough spots. Circumstances change, and what was once important becomes inconsequential. You move on.
But what if you're Kim Jong Il, and the people you've hurt are the 20 million residents of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea? Moving on is no longer easy, and may not even be possible or desirable. It's not like you can just say "sorry" and step down after famine kills more than a million people under your rule. Being a totalitarian dictator has some advantages, but it doesn't make it any easier to mend a broken country.
I recently visited the home of Kim Jong Il, the Dear Leader, and his deceased father Kim Il Sung, the founder and Eternal President of the DPRK. The people love the Dear Leader and the Dear Leader loves his people, but this is one dysfunctional relationship.
I have a hard time putting my finger on exactly what makes North Korea so dreary. I spent only three days in the DPRK, with an extremely limited view of the poverty and deprivation, but it was still heartbreaking. It's not the poverty alone; I'm sure I have been in other Asian and African countries with lower economic standards of living, without feeling this depressed.
When you look at photos of the capital, Pyongyang, you wouldn't even think it was an underdeveloped country. There are plenty of skyscrapers and clean modern buildings - leaning towards the megalomaniacally monumental for sure, but nothing you wouldn't see in any overreaching emerging nation.
Being there, what strikes you immediately is the lifelessness of the place. Cities have always existed as the focal points for the energy of a nation. Before the last couple of centuries, before hygiene and health care improved, more people died in cities than were born there. Yet cities thrived because people were drawn in by the excitement and opportunity created when ideas and ambition come together.
When describing Pyongyang, excitement and opportunity are about the last words that come to mind.
The streets are wide and well paved, but devoid of traffic. Occasional busses and streetcars appear, packed solid with passengers as grim as you'd expect from being jammed motionless into a crumbling vehicle. Hundreds more wait in neat lines for the next vehicle to fill. Thousands more with no money or stomach for public transport walk ceaselessly along sidewalks, proceeding at an even pace, with no jostling or confusion.
Crowds of pedestrians can signal urban vitality; Hong Kong, or Paris, or even Harvard Square are brought to life by all those who come to join the social and economic dance. Crowds in Pyongyang trudge with the slow determination of evacuees, with no distractions, no street vendors, no kiosks or shops to relieve the burden of their passage. No one pauses in conversation, no one sits on a bench to watch the passing parade, no one acknowledges their neighbor, no one interacts with any kind of shared experience.
Pyongyang is a brokenhearted city. People live there in resignation, with no enthusiasm or cause for celebration. The countryside is worse, with poor housing and food shortages added to the mix. It is too hard to believe that Kim Jong Il, the Dear Leader, doesn't care; better to just hope that he is doing his best, even if he's in over his head. The language of politics here traffics in the language of romance; a purported love between the people and the leaders is the only acceptable model for explaining their tolerance of suffering.
The man who brought independence to North Korea, Kim Il Sung, is still revered, just as Mao is in China, Ho Chi Minh is in Vietnam, and George Washington is in the US. His face appears everywhere: on currency, in public buildings, on heroic monuments. Like all revolutionary leaders, he has a role worthy of veneration.
The signs are less clear for his son, Kim Jong Il. People seem to want to love him, but he's not making it easy. We saw farcical videos of Kim Jong Il making the rounds on his official duties; visiting a bristle factory for example. As the Dear Leader watched, long hanks of fiber hanging like synthetic horse tails were lovingly combed out by women in white lab coats, as tenderly as if they were caressing their daughter's shining tresses. Inspecting the final product - toothbrushes - Kim smiled in approval. The Dear Leader was pleased, the love returned, but there's still the small issue of mass starvation.
Like our current George W., Kim is in power because he's taken over the family business; he may have no other qualifications to recommend him for the role. His failures as a leader have produced nationwide suffering and threaten to upset an international military stalemate, as he plays "chicken" with nuclear weapons.
At a cynical minimum, a leader is expected to provide bread and circus to a nation. Kim Jong Il is failing on the bread front, but he's moving in the right direction for the circus. Pyongyang is gloomy to the point of tragedy, yet it is also the home of the Arirang, the most spectacular performance I have ever seen.
If you are familiar with the documentary "A State of Mind" (which I highly recommend) then you will know of the Arirang as the Mass Games. This is only a half-good description of the event which is not a game at all; it's more of a Las Vegas floor show expanded to fill a football stadium. On the other hand, "mass" is a legitimate term for something that involves 100,000 performers in a stadium holding 150,000 people.
The show has dozens of acts, telling the history of the Korean people. In each installment thousands of people flood the field, in dead-straight lines, with the synchronized precision of a marching army. In fact, in several episodes the entertainment was marching armies - complete with fixed bayonets - attacking the enemies of the DPRK. The awkward fact that 0.05% of the audience belonged to this category was politely ignored.
The majority of the performers, fortunately, were non-threatening woman in colorful traditional outfits dancing to love songs. We were also treated to acrobatic children, as young as 5 or 6, (with an aggregate age greater than the history of civilization) enacting a frolicsome day at the beach with uncanny coordination. Older acrobats assembled into five-level-high human pyramids, or dangled from a high-wire stretched across the rim of the stadium, or rode the high-wire on a motorcycle, hundreds of feet above the crowd. Others, dressed as bunnies, chickens, and eggs, danced out inspirational farming lessons.
The backdrop to all the performances was an array of 20,000 school children, sitting in bleachers and holding up colorful cards, creating stadium-long murals. The images shifted from socialist, heroic-realism portraits of The People, to dramatic vistas of natural beauty, to animated waves of hydroelectric power, all interspersed and overlaid with celebratory exhortations spelled out in two-story-high characters.
The contrast with daily life in the DPRK could not be greater. The colors, the music, the enthusiasm of Arirang exists nowhere else in North Korea. I don't know what local people pay to attend the event. It can't be much because the stadium, which seats about 5 percent of the city's population, is full every night for a show that runs from mid August through October. It's worth every penny.
A military man told me that the Arirang demonstrates the "single-hearted unity between our people and our leader, Kin Jong Il." Unity is a big theme of the Arirang, and North Korean life in general; the long-standing division of the Korean peninsula is especially galling for people who value unity so highly. A devotion to unity also eases the burden of totalitarianism for both the leader and the subjects. If faithfulness is prized above independence, obedience is sure to follow. Ask any battered spouse.
Some people argue that in a country so poor, the extravagence of the Arirang is a crime. The money, time, and energy of the event could be better spent on food, education, and infrastructure. Maybe. But I think the poverty of the country only increases the value of the spectacle. Without the glory of the Arirang, there would be no hope, no glimpse of relief from the dismal reality.
The catherdals of Medieval Europe were equally extravagant, built in denial of the material needs of the culture surrounding them. Art can be seen as stealing from the mouths of the poor, or as a nurturing balm for the spirit. Even the coldest love can be made tolerable with warm gifts. In North Korea, you have to take what you can get.
Back to the homepage