Nordkorea
Photo-Report:
The North Korea Neither Trump Nor Western Media Wants
The World To See
Photo © Eva Bartlett. A group of schoolgirls pause for a portrait
photo at Pyongyang’s zoo. Watch a clip from the zoo.
October 20th, 2017
By Eva Bartlett
*all photos/videos by Eva
Bartlett
PYONGYANG,
NORTH
Accounts of the nation’s
military prowess and threat generally ignore (as noted here) the presence of the 28,500 U.S. troops occupying
South Korea, their 38 military installations, and more recently their Terminal
High-Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) battery in South Korea — “a U.S. radar
system opposed by the Korean people, in the North and South, as well as China.”
On September 19, 2017, in the
forum of the United Nations General Assembly, U.S. President Donald Trump vowed to “totally destroy” North Korea.
This is not the first time
threats against the DPRK have been issued. Colin Powell in 1995 threatened to turn
Not broadcast in corporate
media is the fact that America had already annihilated North Korea, destroying
the capital city, Pyongyang, and cities around the country, with 635,000 tons
of bombs, including 32,557 tons of Napalm — indeed turning the North into a
‘charcoal briquette’.
Retired U.S. General Curtis E.
LeMay, who headed the Strategic Air Command during
that earlier war, said that they had “burned down every town in
Also omitted in news on
Further obfuscated in Western reporting are the simulated attacks (what
America euphemistically calls ‘war games’) on North Korea twice a year. Involving “hundreds of
thousands of troops.” As researcher and author Stephen Gowans noted, “It is never clear to the North Korean
military whether the U.S.–directed maneuvers are defensive exercises or
preparations for an invasion.”
A purposeful and familiar crime against reality
The absurdly cartoonish “news”
one hears in Western media about North Korea is meant to detract from America’s
past and current crimes against the Korean people, and to garner support for
yet another American-led slaughter of innocent people.
The stories are designed to
vilify the leadership and provide no context, while completely ignoring the
North Korean perspective. This is standard operating procedure with respect to
countries like Syria, Libya, Venezuela, Cuba, and wherever America and its
allies have set their sights on establishing control (and military bases). As
historian Bruce Cumings wrote:
The demonization of North
Korea transcends party lines, drawing on a host of subliminal racist and
Orientalist imagery; no one is willing to accept that North Koreans may have
valid reasons for not accepting the American definition of reality.”
We are meant to believe that
the North Korean leader is a maniac, inexplicably hell-bent on bombing America.
Utterly deleted from the story is the fact that North Koreans have a different
perspective: the right to a deterrent against yet another U.S. annihilation of
their country. The right to self-defense.
In response to Trump’s threats
of annihilation, DPRK Minister for Foreign Affairs, Ri Yong Ho, on September 23, stated:
The United States is the
country that first produced nuclear weapons and the only country that actually
used them, massacring hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians. It is the
U.S. that threatened to use nuclear weapons against the DPRK during the Korean war in the 1950s, and first introduced nuclear weapons into
the Korean peninsula after the war.
…The very reason the DPRK had
to possess nuclear weapons is because of the U.S. and it had to strengthen and
develop its nuclear force to the current level to cope with the U.S.”
North Koreans as seen through a visitor’s lens
Propaganda and history aside,
what we hardly ever see in articles on North Korea is the human side, some of
the faces among the 25 million people at risk of being murdered or maimed by an
American-led attack.
From August 24 to 31, 2017, I
was part of a three-person delegation that independently visited the DPRK, with
the intent of hearing from Koreans themselves about their country and history.
As it turned out, we heard
also about their wishes for reunification with the South, their past efforts
towards that goal, their desire for peace, but their refusal to be destroyed
again. Following are snapshots and videos from my week in the country, with an
effort to show the people and some of the impressive infrastructure and
developments that corporate media almost certainly will never show.
Impact of U.S. travel ban on unfiltered views of
North Korea
My visit coincided with the
impending U.S. travel ban to the DPRK, which came into effect one day after I
left the country.
As a dual citizen holding
Canadian and U.S. citizenship, I can still choose to return to the DPRK after
September 2017 on my Canadian passport. However, for Americans, the ban means
they will only in limited instances be permitted to travel to the DPRK. The
U.S. State Department advisory notes:
“Persons who wish to travel to
While the
Using a U.S. passport in
violation of these restrictions could result in criminal penalties. In
addition, the Department may revoke a passport used in violation of these
restrictions.”
This wording reveals that the
intent of the ban is far more likely to prevent the American public from seeing
the human face, and positive aspects, of the DPRK.
Indeed, in an August 2017 Forbes essay on
Pyongyang looks much more like
a normal city than 25 years ago. Then there were no private cars and few
government ones. I wondered why they bothered with traffic lights. Today there
is traffic. It’s not much by U.S. (or Chinese!) standards. But there’s no
longer the ghostly sense of empty boulevards. …Visitors on longer tours with
more guides often have more meaningful informal interaction with “real” North
Koreans. It’s one of the reasons I believe banning travel to the North is
foolish and counterproductive.”
For more photos and videos
from the DPRK, please see my Facebook album and my Youtube playlist, and watch my conversation with the creators of the satirical documentary, “The Haircut, a North Korean Adventure.”
The
Mangyongdae Children’s Palace in Pyongyang is a sprawling extra-curricular
facility offering children lessons in sports, dance and music (Korean and non), foreign languages, science, computers, calligraphy and
embroidery, and more. Around 5,000 children daily attend this facility. They
may indeed be the most talented children in Pyongyang and surroundings, but
encouraging the growth of talent is something done worldwide. Unlike in many
Western nations, in the DPRK lessons are free of charge.
The
Pyongyang International Football School opened in 2013. The complex includes a
massive stadium and a school teaching all subjects, with football as a focus
for the roughly 200 students. Different classes practiced their skills outside,
doing warm-up drills to energetic music. When years ago I lived in Korea’s
south, practicing Tae Kwan Do I warmed-up to similar drills.
Students at the Mangyongdae Children’s Palace playing the traditional
Korean instrument, the kayagun. Listen to their
performance here.
In Pyongyang Middle School. Students spoke in English of the universal desire for
peace, one girl urging people to struggle for peace. On the issue of North
Korea’s weapons, one teenage boy said: “We make intercontinental ballistic
rockets, not for invading other countries but for our national defense. To
protect one’s country, the country must have a powerful defense. To my
questions about the U.S. sanctions, a girl replied: “The sanctions are not fair, our people have done nothing wrong to the USA.” Another
boy spoke of the silence around
In a hallway
in the Middle School, a poster encourages students to alert authorities if they
come across unexploded ordnance (UXOs). Our host, Kim Song-Nam, said: “We’re
still discovering old bombs, for example when we dig to lay the foundation for
a building.” This article noted the discovery of nearly 400 UXOs near an
elementary school playground, that farmers periodically come across UXOs, and
that the cleanup period may take longer than 100 years. At the
Students playing football outside the Middle
School. Watch the clip here.
Student in the aquarium section of
The Okryu
Children’s Hospital is a six-story, 300-bed facility across from
The Children’s Hospital provides classes to inpatient
children to continue their studies while in hospital.
Dr. So-Yung
(60) works in the tele-consultation department of the Children’s Hospital. “We
have contacts with provincial-level and county-level hospitals, mostly about
children’s diseases or illnesses. When they have difficulties with diagnoses,
they request consultations from this hospital,” he explained. “I cannot
suppress my anger about the sanctions imposed by the
While
walking up a path to the Pakyong Waterfall, over 100 km south of
Beneath a tree near the waterfall, soldiers took turns
being photographed with the waterfall as a backdrop. Later, they repeated at the waterfall. Watch here.
A group of men sit and chat near the base of the
waterfall. Watch kids playing nearby here.
Plots of
land surround houses in the Jangchon Cooperative Vegetable Farm. Homes are
equipped with solar water heaters, and use methane gas for cooking. Song
Myong-Oh moved with her husband from Kangnam county to
the farm. Outside their home grew eggplants, peppers, corn, and herbs. Of
Inside the child-care center of the Jangchon
Cooperative Farm. The cooperative also includes a cultural center for meetings and events,
and rows of greenhouses.
At the
Under
colonial Japanese rule,
Fruit stand seen in
A revolving
bar and restaurant at the top of Yanggakdo Hotel overlooks a modern, rebuilt
city. The DPRK receives tourists from around the world — especially
At
This is something former U.S.
President Jimmy Carter, who has visited the DPRK three times, confirmed — saying he had met with Kim Il-Sung in 1994 “in a time
of crisis, when he agreed to put all their nuclear programs under strict
supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency and to seek mutual
agreement with the United States on a permanent peace treaty, to have summit
talks with the president of South Korea.” Carter maintained Kim Jong-Il pledged
he would honor these promises.
In a hall
near the DMZ, photos depict 2000 and 2007 meetings between North and South
discussing reunification, as well as the support of the people in both South
and North. Our guide at
One of our hosts, Kim-Young, holding the flag of the DPRK. Behind her, the Juche tower, so-named after the
dominant philosophy of self-reliance. Our other host, Kim Song-Nam, explained:
“The Juche philosophy was created by President Kim Il-Sung.
Man decides his own destiny, we rely on our own
resources.”