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In North Korea, you are always being watched.
was no writing on the board, no instruction from the teacher—it was painfully, obviously staged. Odd social scenes are often fabricated for tourists’ benefit, but more than that, the paranoia is most obvious in the militaristic nature of the country. For example, the optimistically-named Reunification Highway is lined with enormous, dynamite-filled monuments which, in the event of an invasion from the south, are rigged to explode, thereby blocking the road and acting as makeshift tank barriers. The Pyongyang Metro, too, was built with militaristic paranoia in mind; it’s the deepest subway system on the planet, constructed at a depth of over 100 metres so that its stations and tunnels can easily be utilized as public fallout shelters if an atomic bomb is ever dropped on the city. In fact, Pyongyang has an entire network of “satellite cities” surrounding it that are populated by over one million combined loyal citizens, all of whom are legally obligated to defend the capital with their lives. With one of the largest standing armies in the world and an active hatred for the US, it’s as if the DPRK is still entrenched in the Korean War, which ended over 50 years ago. However, technically, the United States and North Korea are still at war. The conflict that ravaged the Korean Peninsula in the 1950s only came to an end with an armistice, and due to the growing feud between communism and capitalism during the Cold War era, the two belligerent nations never bothered to draft a proper peace treaty. While the three-year fight is nicknamed “the Forgotten War” in America, in North Korea, it’s a different story. The Korean War is a point of pride in the DPRK, and they want you to know it; North Koreans genuinely refer to the conflict as the Victorious Fatherland Liberation War, and its timeline is one of the biggest lies perpetrated by the government. In the DPRK, citizens are told the war was instigated by “American imperialist aggressors” who, after a bloody fight, were single-handedly defeated by “every-victorious, ironwilled brilliant commander Kim Il-sung.” Yes, I’m serious.
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Bold, easily disprovable lies are commonplace in North Korea. Other than hearing a falsified version of the Korean War, tourists are also told that North Koreans invented, among other things, the printing press, the spoon and the hamburger, the last of which was invented by Kim Il-sung himself. His son, naturally, was a sportsman, achieving a perfect 300 game the first time he ever tried bowling and a world-record-setting 38-under par the first time he ever played golf. He invented “the perfect writing desk,” too, but that’s not all. In 2015, the DPRK claimed its scientists had found a cure for both cancer and ebola; a few years before that, official government news sources announced the discovery of an ancient unicorn lair. Again, I’m completely serious. And not surprisingly, when your country bans the Internet, it’s pretty easy to get away with such ludicrous lies. Facts are rewritten at the government’s whim to become “alternative facts,” as if the truth is impermanent and open to interpretation. The ruling Worker’s Party of Korea has a narrative, and any ideas that don’t conform must be squashed. The fact that the Dear Leader took a train everywhere because he was afraid of flying? Erased. Kim Jong-un’s brothers who both fell out of favour with the ruling family? Scrubbed from history. However, as much as tourists might want to, challenging these notions is suicide in North Korea, because suggesting any of the Leaders are frauds is on par with treason (see: the rules). The Leaders’ cult of personality has been carefully crafted over the decades through fictionalizing life events, creating the quasi-religious philosophy of Juche, and arbitrarily renaming random stuff in their honour (in the DPRK, orchids are called Kimilsungias). Lies are accepted and, for ordinary North Koreans, just become the new truth. In fact, there have been instances of entire life histories being fabricated. For example, according to his official biography, Dear Leader Kim Jong-il was born beneath a double rainbow before earning the title "Our Dear Leader, who is a perfect incarnation of
RYERSON FOLIO / 28