BUSINESSWEEK ONLINE : DECEMBER 18, 2000 ISSUE
INTERNATIONAL -- LETTER FROM PYONGYANG A Nation of Famine--and Adulation (int'l edition) Do they believe? As his country totters on the wrong edge of economic disaster, North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il's propaganda spouts increasingly fanciful tributes to the country's ruler. His first clothes were ''a battle-smoke-scented guerrilla uniform.He experienced two revolutionary wars before his teens.He enjoys a nap in a running car or a firing range rather than in a quiet office room.'' Or so says an article in the Dec. 2 Rodong Shinmun (Workers' News). Yet just two weeks earlier, a U.N. report warned of a seventh straight year of hunger in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. That says a lot more about what Kim's rule has wrought since he took over after his father's death in 1994. Poor weather coupled with an imploding economy means that the country will be able to grow just 61% of its food this year, depending on foreign aid for more than one-third of the total. It is a shocking state of affairs for a country that was once an industrialized power with substantially more economic muscle than its bitter rival, South Korea. During a late-October trip to Pyongyang, officials talked openly to me of the food and power shortages the country was undergoing. Publicly, they blamed the weather. But what do they, and the ordinary people in the street, really think? The contrast between the street and the official picture can be staggering. Take the Mass Games spectacle put on during Madeleine Albright's visit on Oct. 23-25. When General Kim Jong Il walks into Mayday Stadium, less than 30 meters from where I sit, an army general frantically motions to the crowd to rise--and it does, in perfect unison. A cheer of frenzied adulation roars up from more than 100,000 spectators. Firecrackers shoot into the air, kicking off a dazzling performance that extols 55 years of the ''victorious struggle of the Workers' Party of Korea.'' People around me stretch their arms toward the Supreme Commander, as if hoping that his divinity, if that's the word, will rub off on them. Is this worship for real, or have I entered some Confucian version of George Orwell's 1984, in which those who harbor the gravest doubts shout the loudest? It's important to make allowances. There is ''face,'' the desire to hide from outsiders any shame Koreans may harbor. And there is the brutal and apparently ubiquitous secret police to punish frank talk. Even so, foreigners living in Pyongyang say that they have never, under any circumstances, heard anyone make the slightest criticism of the government or Kim Jong Il. Despite an economy that's collapsing on a scale that industrialized countries have almost never seen outside of wartime, one hears none of the dissident voices that surface in China today and which were easy to find in the Soviet Union and its satellite states. DWINDLING RESOURCES. Despite the famine, I encounter a cohesive nation. This may reflect a Korean character forged in the flame of repeated invasions over 5,000 years, and one that rallies around the leadership far past the point at which most other people would have been driven to revolt. Decisions are made at the top, as they have been in previous Korean dynasties, and a powerful bureaucracy carries them out, much as it has done since the founding of the Shilla dynasty in the 7th century. The North Korean brand of communism has drawn on the reverence for duty and authority that pervades Korea's Confucian legacy, and has channeled the country's dwindling resources into a celebration of the Kim dynasty. One wonders, nonetheless. Is it the state's fearful power, pride in a job well done, or simply an ingrained sense of duty that leads women to use brooms made of sticks to sweep autumn leaves off an isolated mountain road I drive on outside Pyongyang? These are women working singly, far from an overseer and out of sight of one another, and this kind of care means that North Korea has a tidiness to it that is rare anywhere, let alone in an impoverished and tottering socialist state. An unused Buddhist temple near the top of the mountain is also spotless, thanks to other assiduous caretakers. Their country is falling apart, and these people are cleaning up a place almost no one visits. If I didn't think that the whole country was, at least on its surface, engaged in a pact of collective insanity, this kind of devotion might be admirable. Whatever else one can say about the Kim regime, it knows how to mobilize and motivate its people. Yet the economy has obviously fallen apart. A morning trip to the countryside gives me a glimpse of just how bad things are. On the edge of the city runs a grand, eight-lane expressway leading to the port city of Nampo, 44 kilometers away. It was finished just in time for the October celebrations commemorating the founding, in 1945, of the Workers' Party. A foreign doctor who lives in Pyongyang says he saw thousands of schoolchildren working around the clock to finish the road on schedule. Yet, two weeks after it opened, I find the road closed for repairs less than two kilometers from its start, apparently because of poor bridge construction. A few hundred meters away, a children's amusement park lies idle. Like so much else in Pyongyang, it is starved of electricity. On the narrow, poorly paved road that takes us out of the city, we pass a small military camp, one of several we see on the outskirts of the capital. It's more like a collection of hovels than a base--and a sobering reminder of how paltry much of the mighty North Korean army actually seems on the ground. The crude cement buildings are barely high enough to stand up in. A pile of powdered coal lies on the ground outside the hut closest to the road. But at least these soldiers have heat. Up in the mountains, we come across a score of soldiers foraging for firewood, a daunting endeavor in a largely denuded country. Three soldiers cluster around a small fire that they have built to ward off the morning chill. Do they, too, believe? Or are they too worried about filling their stomachs and staying warm to think about anything else? It's an important question for anyone trying to divine the North Korean psyche, because there are so many men under arms here. Soldiers are visible everywhere. North Korea has one of the world's largest armies, with 1.1 million men. We pass about 40 trucks stuffed with two dozen soldiers each on the way back from the airport after Albright's arrival. Two days later, as we leave for the airport, we see thousands of soldiers marching eight-abreast in a column that stretches more than a kilometer. The troops are apparently on their way to ceremonies commemorating the 50th anniversary of China's entry into what Americans call the Korean War. Pyongyang calls it the Fatherland Liberation War, and the ceremonies are attended by Kim Jong Il and China's Defense Minister, Chi Haotian. If these soldiers harbor doubts about the regime--and there have been unconfirmed reports of dissension in the past--then Kim Jong Il's position would be far more precarious than it now appears. Despite the apparent might of these masses under arms, what I remember best are the many weary soldiers I see singly along the road. Some appear to be well into their 40s, an age where in most countries they would be officers, or back in civilian life. Yet here they are, walking alone, sometimes carrying a small bag of food, going to or from the city. Like so much of the populace, the men in uniform appear to be engaged in a simple struggle for survival. And it's probably better to be a soldier, with at least some preferential access to food and supplies. But make no mistake: Given the strong Korean sense of discipline, I don't doubt for an instant that they would engage in a suicidal attack on South Korea if the order came down. Everywhere, people are walking. Even out in the countryside, I see thousands of them hourly. While the luckiest drive in some of the few private cars in the city, and a few perch on the occasional cart pulled by a decrepit tractor, everyone else is reduced to getting around the way Korean peasants have traveled for millennia. They carry bags or pull small metal carts. Sometimes they carry food. Dozens of people walk along railway tracks, a faster alternative than waiting for trains that never come. One of the volunteer organizations providing food says it took six weeks--and many bottles of beer offered as bribes to stationmasters--to move a railcar filled with supplies a mere 50 kilometers. That works out to about a kilometer a day. MARCHING MUSIC. The silence here is deafening. Pyongyang is a city of some 2.2 million people, yet any sense of hustle and bustle is eerily absent. At times, the only sound is that of footsteps, as people walk the pavements without so much as a word of chitchat. Even in the elite area of the capital, where foreigners are billeted in a twin-towered hotel that is one of the city's landmarks, cars are rare. During our visit, the buses and trolleys are running, but foreign residents say that this is unusual: Electricity shortages usually keep public transportation idle. There is little action at the city's train station just down the street; a grand building next door is the Great Leader's private station. In the morning, though, a brass band outside the hotel plays marching music, supposedly to pep people up on their way to work. A visit to one of Pyongyang's best hospitals near our hotel provides a window into how badly public services have declined. There is, as far as I can tell, no electricity in the building. Wherever possible, visitors and patients use long corridors with natural light. Otherwise, they do as best they can in the dark. And this in the middle of a bright, crisp October day. A man rushes through the gloom with an ailing woman on his back, and several bystanders gather to help stabilize his load. I spy what may be a patient on a gurney six or eight meters away, but it's too dark to tell for sure. Hygiene is nonexistent. A cold-water sink, with pools of stagnant water on the floor, is a typical water source. Because the water supply is so unpredictable, the tub in another room is filled to the top. The only health facility I have seen that remotely compares to it was a World War I-era former British military hospital in Soweto, South Africa. This hospital makes the Soweto one look good. Having lived five years in South Korea, I spot surprising similarities. The diligence, the intensity--even the way some men smoke, holding a cigarette in their teeth and tipping it up at a jaunty angle--eerily reflect the South. Yet fear or hunger has deadened their faces, setting them apart from their energetic southern cousins. With or without our guide people are reluctant to talk and remain incurious about where we are from or what we are doing here. Do they believe? I think they did believe in Kim's father, Kim Il Sung. I think many North Koreans harbor secret doubts about his son, given the dramatic decline in living standards over the past decade. But for the most part, people are too hungry and too tired to act on those doubts, particularly when it would mean challenging one of the world's most violent and repressive police states. Change, when it comes, will come from the top. But when North Korea opens up to the rest of the world, the public's belief in the Kim dynasty will be tested as it hasn't been in 55 years of one-family rule. Kim Jong Il must decide whether he is to let his country starve--or risk finding out the hard way if his people really believe in the unique blend of Confucianism and communism that his family has imposed on this unfortunate country. By MARK L. CLIFFORD Asia Regional Manager Clifford lived in Seoul from 1987-92 and is the author of Troubled Tiger: Businessmen, Bureaucrats and Generals in South Korea. EDITED BY PATRICK SMITH _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ BACK TO TOP					RELATED ITEMS A Nation of Famine--and Adulation (int'l edition) MAP: North Korea INTERACT E-Mail to Business Week Online

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