My son's history teacher was telling me about a visit last month to the demilitarised zone between the two Koreas. We had just ended 90 minutes of discussion about higher-secondary-school subject options and my mind was frazzled. He said that he had been driven to the border with a guide and had gone through a passport check and that was about all there was to it. Shortly after, he was watching soldiers from each side facing one another across a concrete strip 10 metres wide; the one on his side was standing as if waiting for a bus, while the other was helmeted and in a taekwondo-ready pose, arms bent, fists clenched and legs apart.
I stirred from my befuddled state. This was not as I had remembered my trip to the DMZ a decade ago. There had been a military bus and American soldiers going through a long list of don'ts and a scant number of dos: no jeans, shorts or sandals, shirts with collars only, no waving or talking to the soldiers on the other side, photos only when allowed, and on and on.
This was pointed out to the teacher. Perhaps he had been sampling too much soju the night before the trip? He patiently went through his preamble. He had flown in from Beijing. His week-long holiday had been to North, not South, Korea.
I was quickly back in the real world. Visiting the last cold war frontier from the side journalists are fond of calling Stalinist, hardline communist or just plain oppressive has long been on my 'to do' list. Alas, media types are distrusted by Dear Leader Kim Jong-il's regime and are rarely given visas. Even those who try to sneak in among tourists by putting their profession down on the application form as teachers or architects seem to get found out. I knew three people who could relate first-hand what life in the North was like; here was the fourth.
What I had just been told did not fit my image of North Korea. A stream of wide-eyed questions ensued. Is starvation in North Korea as bad as we're told? Are citizens really oppressed? Did you have access to outside news? And so on.
The answers were generally not what I expected. A bowl of dog soup had been eaten and the terms 'American imperialists' and 'Great Leader Comrade Kim Il-sung' (Kim Jong-il's father) tripped easily off tongues. There was no internet and mobile phones were not seen. Cars on the wide boulevards of Pyongyang were rare. Beyond this, there was nothing untoward. North Koreans were friendly, forthcoming and curious. Children joked and laughed as they left school, as in other countries. Poverty and starvation were not evident (which is not to say that they do not exist). The beer was highly drinkable. Security was not excessive. There was freedom to explore. People seemed happy as they went about their business. They spoke longingly of there one day again being a unified Korea. If a parallel was to be drawn, it was mainland China 30 years ago.