Travels to North Korea - retrospect

Apart from the travelogue of the last three entries, what is really significant about such travel to Geumgangsan? Of course the scenery is spectacular. The hotel is comfortable (despite the absence of knives, see the previous entry) and really just like a South Korean tourist hotel. It's the bits in between which were most memorable for me. The bits we were not allowed to photograph. The drab, unpainted, open-window classrooms. The soldiers in their soviet-style hats in the guard posts at every junction. The farmers pretending not to see 10 bus-loads of waving South Koreans going down the road. The hotel compound, dropped in from the South, and as sealed off from the outside world as if a lunar base surrounded by vacuum.

Then the bizarre juxtapositions. Looking out the hotel window, where South Korean television is showing the news and South Korean beer is in the refrigerator, and seeing a squad of North Korean soldiers marching in formation.

The strange flashes of humour. This is communist water we are drinking. Those who fought the cold war would not approve of this. These people are communists. Recalling a time when that word alone was enough to send a shudder of fear down the spines of the "right" thinking.

Then to thinking, what do people here (i.e. the North) feel about opening up part of their fierce and proud independence to let us in with our American dollars? Is it a little like the "stately homes" of England, forced by financial circumstances to open up to the paying unwashed masses? If North Korea had a strong economy would they tolerate such tourism?

Of course we can say that all we are doing is seeing beautiful, and indeed the most renowned, scenery in all of Korea. But it's those parts in between the scenery and the hotel which are really the most fascinating. It feels strange, even voyeuristic, being this kind of tourist - pretending we are there only for the mountains, but with more than passing glances at the signs of a communist state in decline. As if visiting some ancient and decaying amusement park, where the interest is not so much in the rides but as in the crumbling edifice.