26th August
The hotel is comfortable with cable TV – CNN but no BBC. Downstairs was a large marble lobby, which showed remarkably little wear and tear in the 30 odd years since it was built – there was a photo of Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-Il paying a visit many years ago.
As well as arts and crafts aimed at tourists, the lobby shops sell imported essentials such as wine, beer, biscuits, milk powder, soap, batteries and nappies, plus household items like shoes, clocks, vases and so on which appear to be gifts for guides and local friends. These are available for dollars or euros for locals who have the currency.
Today we made an excursion out of Pyongyang to South Hwang Hae Province (Yellow Sea Province) South of Pyongyang. Our party set off down the main highway to Kaesong, which is 160 km away. The road is almost completely straight and almost completely empty. Apart from us, there was the odd speeding limousine and the occasional broken down lorry. The ratio of broken down trucks to functioning ones was remarkably high!
Something you would be hard-pressed to find anywhere else in the world was the occasional cyclist happily bicycling on the inside lane of the opposite carriageway… We ourselves drove up the wrong side of the highway through the Tae Song tunnel after our visit to one TB rest home.
Our comfortable ride came to an abrupt halt outside Sariwon where the road was closed for repairs to a huge bridge. We bumped off up a dirt road, suddenly seeing lots of local people on bicycles smiling at us and large teams repairing the side of the road.
Each province in North Korea has a hospital dedicated exclusively to treating TB patients. Associated with each hospital are a network of rest homes where patients can stay separate from the general population while they complete their lengthy course of treatment. Today we visited Shinwon Rest Home, Haeju TB hospital, which has new buildings since my last visit; Haeju and Unryul TB rest homes.
Each time, we begin with a meeting at the director’s office, followed by a walk around, a visit to the laboratory and inspection of the store.
Then we visit some of the patients. They are all sitting on their beds or on the floor and are generally quite friendly, not appearing to be frightened of us unlike the last time I was here. Then I felt they avoided all eye contact as if they might get into trouble for looking at us.
I find the rest homes clean and pleasant places– in order to completely cure the disease, patients need to take a potent cocktail of drugs over a 6 month period, so families visit, meals are cooked, vegetables grown, all generating a real family atmosphere.
CFK is supplying general medicine, food and other practical support to about 20 such hospitals and rural rest homes, a paediatric TB care facility in Pyongyang and a general paediatric hospital. In addition, the charity supplies general medicines, blankets, food supplements and canned chicken. The chicken is especially popular we are told, and we certainly see cans and cans of it, which I pass up on tasting.
The charity also supplies plastic greenhouses which are used to grow food year round, small tractors, generators, medical and laboratory equipment. They have also arranged for boreholes to be dug to upgrade the water supply.
In the evening we went to see the Arirang Show, mass gymnastics, where tens of thousands of performers, mostly students, hold up placards in different colours to make a mosaic of pixels behind the arena, where thousands more performers stream around wearing traditional dress (the women) or military uniform (men).
The performance is mainly artistic with little political overlay. Apparently even as recently as 6 months ago there would have been more anti-American and anti-Japanese imagery; This is the same at a number of public buildings we visited, where anti-Japanese, anti-US and anti-Christian propaganda posters had now been removed, having been there for a long time. At tonight’s spectacle, the main focus is reunification, which is presented as a high priority to the people. It is an awesome experience which can only happen in a society where people have a lot of time on their hands which the state can make use of.