Anna Broinowski - Aim High in Creation! - A One-of-a-Kind Journey Inside North Korea's Propaganda Machine

Lined up in front of Air Koryo’s check-in counter the next morning, I feel a shiver of excitement. Our trip back in time has already begun. Lizzette, Nick, and I are the only people in jeans. Everyone else wears mid-century suits and twinsets, with shiny buttons of Kim Jong Il on their lapels. They are fit, thin, and impeccably groomed. The men have pomaded crew cuts, the women neatly permed updos. It’s like encountering rare wildlife, or alien beings. Holy shit, I tell myself. I am standing in a line with living, breathing North Koreans. They’re not extras from a James Bond film. They’re real. Then I look down. We do have one thing in common: we’re all holding duty-free bags.

I CLIMB UP THE STAIRS OF an old Soviet Ilyushin and step inside a squeaky-clean cabin. A beautiful young woman greets me with a dazzling smile. It’s not the fake smirk of a free-world trolley-dolly; it’s genuinely friendly. She wears a red-and-white suit and a girl-guide scarf. She shows me to the seat that has been chosen for me—a window, above the wing. Lizzette and Nick are also seated alone, at opposite ends of the plane. On my way down the aisle, I notice a pudgy man in gold aviators and a khaki Mao suit, with a fake tan and fluffy perm. He’s a dead ringer for the Dear Leader, and he’s sitting at the pointy end. Is he one of Kim Jong Il’s famous body doubles? And if so, how does he earn a living now? Or did Kim actually never leave the building? Was the funeral just his way of retiring, so he could lie on a beach somewhere in Bermuda? I try to get a closer look at the man, but the hostess nudges me forward with her sunny smile.

The Ilyushin bumps along the runway, and I feel the wheels leave terra firma. For the next three days, I will have no idea what is happening in the outside world. North Korea could nuke Seoul, and I won’t know until I get back. The plane starts climbing the cloud line, and the hostess plumps down beside me and buckles her seatbelt. She asks what I’m writing.

“It’s a letter for my daughter,” I lie. She is giggly and persistent: “You are a journalist, right?” “No,” I say, firmer now. “Just a tourist.” I hunch over my notebook, trying to show her, in the politest possible way, that I am busy. But she leans against my arm, reading my words out loud. I look at her, astounded. She claps her hands in delight, as if we’re playing a little game: “You are a journalist!” Now I’m spooked. I’ve heard that one in five North Koreans is a spy, more ruthless than the Stasi. This hostess is keeping tabs on me. She knows about my film. As soon as we land, they’re going to take my notebook and throw me in a gulag. I tear out the page, fold it in a tiny square, and, as surreptitiously as I can, tuck it into my sock.

I gaze pointedly out the window. I can feel the hostess’s hundred- watt smile, warming the back of my head. Then, as if nothing weird has just happened, she stands, wishes me a lovely time in Pyongyang, and walks off.

As we hurtle towards North Korean airspace, the cabin—which appears to be held together by fresh paint and Blu-Tack—rattles. Loudly. It still carries 1960s-era emergency equipment and a safety brochure that does not inspire confidence. A safety video shows my hostess friend doing the usual things with an oxygen mask, but her orange vest looks disturbingly retro, and there don’t seem to be any inflatable slides. The video segues to a crane, the symbol of Air Koryo, soaring through a glorious sunset. A voice kicks in over a military choir. It’s the same bizarre accent I heard on the phone back in Sydney, all soft American Rs and crisp colonial Ts. The North Koreans must all learn English from the same two people, I decide: a Mumbai call-centre worker and one of Kim Jong Il’s captured American movie villains.

“Welcome to the Socialist Paradise of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea!” the voice-over intones, as the camera pans over a shaky shot of Pyongyang. “What kind of place is Pyongyang, and what kind of country is Korea? Many countries have environmental damage by growth of industry. But what is most attractive about Pyongyang is its fresh air. People who visit it call it ‘The City in a Park!’” A shot of Western tourists in seventies leisure gear appears. They stroll by a tree-lined river full of happy people paddling yellow, duck-shaped boats.

The shot dissolves to a black-and-white still of Pyongyang, circa 1953, smashed to smithereens. During the war, the city endured one of the most concentrated bombing campaigns in US military history. General MacArthur had planned to end the war in ten days, by dropping twenty-six atom bombs on North Korea and thirty to fifty more, “strung across the neck of Manchuria.” But his proposal was turned down—so he opted for conventional ballistics. In 1950, the US dumped 700 bombs, 175 tonnes of delayed-fuse demolition bombs and 10,000 litres of napalm on Pyongyang—reducing its population from half a million to 50,000 within a year. In 1952, 6,000 people were killed in a single air strike, having been given fifteen minutes’ warning—just enough time for anyone trying to flee to be caught in the open. By the end of the war, an average of three bombs had fallen for every man, woman, and child in Pyongyang. The city was flatter than Hiroshima.

On the screen, skeletal people pulling dead babies from the rubble appear, and the voice-over grows stern: “The US imperialists had not planned that the city would rise again, in a hundred years. But Pyongyang has created a civilised urban culture, like today. It is really surprising!” Then the image snaps back to happy Technicolor, and laughing children run towards us in slow-mo on a bright green hill. Thanks to a technical glitch, the sound plays back warped and slow, along with the picture. The kids sound like they’re screaming.

There is no other audiovisual entertainment on board. But there is a newspaper. The Pyongyang Times is available in English and Korean, across a range of dates. Written in florid, sweeping phrases, the newspaper celebrates North Korea’s supremacy in everything and makes Rupert Murdoch’s publications look like fair and balanced news.

The three Kims—Senior, Junior, and Junior 2.0—beam from every page under inspiring headlines. Their names are always set in a slightly larger font. The articles are all about winning: from the Third World flower festival, where “Kimjongilia” has just won first prize, to the bumper cotton crop of Wonsan, which will be used to make world-class jackets designed by Comrade Kim Jong Ilfor grateful workers everywhere. The domestic news section features a story, “Inscriptions on Rocks Mirror Koreans’ Faith and Will,” about some Junsan farmers who carved the words Peerless Patriot General Kim Jong Ilinto the cliffs of Mount Sokta to commemorate his birthday. The foreign news section states that Beloved Comrade Kim Jong Unhas just stopped the heinous military provocations of the US aggressors and their South Korean lackeys by “successfully” detonating a rocket in the Sea of Japan. Meanwhile, in Pyongyang, international tributes to Generalissimo Kim Jong Il, the deeply mourned son of Supreme General Kim Il Sung, “are continuing with vigour” eight months after his death.

“Baskets of Messages, Gifts, Tributes Flow!” declaims a headline, above rows of red flowers lined up at the Palace of the Sun, where Kim Junior now lies in a glass box next to Kim Senior. “Pyongyang People and Service Personnel Part with Leader in Bitter Grief” reminds another, set over a picture of Kim Junior 2.0 handing out hot buns to the freezing masses as his father’s hearse trundles past. I have to hand it to Kim Jong Il: if he did design his own funeral, then the hot buns were a masterstroke. No one knew who Kim Jong Un was until a year ago. Kim Jong Il needed an effective way to position his youngest son as a benevolent saviour, like the heroic Kim Il Sung.