Day 5 - 16 April 2014 (Juche 103)

6h in the bus for 100,000 presents

We left the hotel to take the bus for about 2.5 hours to the northern mountains of the country, to visit a museum about Kim Il Sung and Kim Jung Il (How Surprising!). As usual, the road was more interesting than the destination, and it allowed us to time-travel again. We saw again the poverty of the countryside: gold diggers in the rivers, many walkers in the surrounding fields, or peasants scratching the earth manually, with ox-operated ploughs or sometimes with tiny tractors; we saw people walking along the roads or the railways (even along a railway on a bridge so narrow that it might get difficult to get out of the rails should a train arrive…), we also saw the construction of a PowerStation by soldiers and volunteers from several production units of the country. The most shocking I saw was a couple of children carrying heavy backpacks full of stones, probably enjoying this holiday to work since they did not have to go to school…

We finally arrived to a large building in the middle of the mountains. After wearing gloves to push the monumental bronze door, put protection over our shoes to avoid bringing dust inside and having been searched to be sure that we wouldn’t take any picture, we entered the first of the 140 rooms of the building, where 113,030 gifts, from 184 countries, that have been given to the Kim were displayed… The collection is surreal: we saw gifts from Heads of States, from communist parties, from small friendship associations, or even simple anonymous individuals. The diversity of gifts is also stunning : beautiful vases, antiques, sumptuous ivory pieces, small and basic transparent cups, miniature Eiffel tower you can bargain for 10 euros in Paris, weapons, wild animals (we were only shown their pictures), a Swiss army knives, tables, cars, bier mugs, an elementary school globe, gigantic polar bear skin, cars, etc. After having shown our respect to Madame Tussauds’ statues of Kim Il Sung, Kim Jon Il and Kim Jung Suk (the wife of President KIS and mother of general KJI), we decided whether to go or not to a second building, who was almost the same, but with gifts to General Kim Jong Il instead of President Kim Il Sung. Since we had already spent a lot of time here and had already felt the main grandiose atmosphere of the exhibition, I argued that it was a better idea to head to the next visit, and maybe spend more time there. But since we were on a group tour, we had two vote (among 2 choices, which was quite bizarre in this country…) and the group decided, for 2 votes, to continue the visit… I joined the coach with some other victims of the Democracy in order to write postcards.

An interesting moment of the visit was when the museum guide noticed my curiosity and asked me, via the translation of Ri, what my friends told me when I said them that I was going to DPRK. I had thus to use diplomat language to tell the truth without insulting its country.

Last visit of Pyongyang

After a lunch and and the visit of a Buddhist temple without much interest, we headed back to the Capital and climbed to the top of the Juche Idea Tower, almost 150 meters high, showing the flame of the Juche Idea to the entire city reminding everybody that everyone is the master of its own destiny. The view of Pyongyang from above was impressive. It looked like a city made of Lego, with squared buildings of every color.

We then went to the last visit of the day: a flower exhibition. In the 70s, Indonesia offered a special orchid to the President Kim Il Sung, the Kimilsungia, which has since be the focus of a big annual exhibition to celebrate the birthday of the President. We saw many Pyongyang people, including military officers, taking family pictures and selfies in front of superb flower arrangements surrounding portraits of the PKIS or buildings of the City.