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Wednesday 6 May 2009

DPRK:Kumusan Memorial Palace


Until now I had been finding the DPRK a little unnerving but not tremendously so. In any war, especially a war that ends indecisively, the two sides are bound to have different versions of events to tell. True, I didn't trust much of what I'd been told in the DPRK, but I have a deep distrust of my own Government's ability to tell me the truth. The war in Iraq when we were given several different sets of reasons for the invasion, all of which turned out to be false, proves that our leaders are perfectly willing to lie to us. So I accepted that the United Nations/United States version of events in Korea while probably more accurate than the DPRK version was likely to contain its fair share of misleading information and half truths. That's that "first casualty of war" stuff again.
So what, I wondered, would the situation at the Kumusan Memorial Palace, add to my understanding of the DPRK?
We all assembled in the hotel reception in our smartest clothes. The rules for the visit were clear. Smart clothes, empty pockets, no cameras, no outer jackets, no inappropriate remarks or humour, lots of respect.
At the memorial palace, which is certainly more of a palace than a memorial, there was a long queue of Koreans. It was clear to see that this was a place that everybody comes. There were groups of soldiers, groups of businessmen, groups of ladies in traditional dress. The queue was at least several hundred yards long. After a few minutes of waiting around, we were marched straight to the front of it and into the buildings. It felt a little uncomfortable but the people waiting seemed to accept it as part of the way things are. Inside we were led through what felt like miles of marble-lined corridors. Automatic devices cleaned our shoes, we were searched and X-rayed, more automatic devices blew the dust from our clothes. Periodically we were asked, for no apparent reason, to line up in three columns, or four columns, or two columns, or single file. As these groupings were inevitably shuffled into some new arrangement the only reason I could come up with was that it was simply to show us who was boss. From this enormous room we were led, this time in fours, into another equally large room. At the far end of it was a statue of Kim Il Sung. The tuneless but vaguely uplifting martial music that had been playing throughout the experience was louder in here. The wall behind the statue was lit with pastel lighting. It reminded me of something and for a moment I couldn't place it. Then it came to me. It was very like the statue of Christ that I had seen in the Mormon Temple in Salt Lake City. The statue, the lighting, the music were all designed to produce the same effect. From that room we were led to another, with another statue and this time we were given audio sets to listen to. It was very hard to listen with a straight face. If the rhetoric on the Pueblo had been overblown this made it sound restrained. Imagine someone with a deep voice, loaded with gravitas, perhaps Orson Wells or James Earl Jones, solemnly intoning "When the Great Leader was taken from us the hearts and souls of the people were filled with a great grief and sorrow and with one voice they rose up and demanded a memorial be built to honour his name."
Now imagine about ten minutes of it.
After another trip through a wind-tunnel to clean us up we were led into another hall, this time with a glass coffin at the centre in which the body of the Great Leader lay. We lined up in fours again and walked to the coffin, circling it and bowing three times to show our respect. After that there was a museum showing all of the honours and awards bestowed upon Kim Il Sung from leaders and universities of the world. Most of them seemed to be from dodgy Central African republics or other Communist countries. The dodgier the source the more elaborate the award. In another room we saw a bullet proof car and a train.


Afterwards we were led back through the corridors and out into the fresh air where we were allowed to retrieve our cameras and take a couple of shots of the outside of the building.
I had found the whole two hour experience deeply disturbing. They may say this is respect for a man, that this is politics, but I know religion when I see it. This isn't hero worship; this is plain and simple worship. It has the trappings and rituals of religion. It has a God figure. It has blind faith. It's a religion.

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