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

“There are no scary rides here, only fun ones,” asserts the neatly permed guide of the Kaeson Youth Park, as people scream on the Turbo Twister behind her. With so much else to fear in North Korea, I guess being flipped upside down and flung through space at 250 kilometres per hour, with nothing but a metal bar between you and certain death, really does constitute harmless fun. The funfair looks nothing like the pictures on Cool Things in Random Places: it is a neon-lit wonderland of fast-food joints and futuristic joyrides. Kim Jong Un revamped the park shortly after he assumed power six months ago, gifting it to the people of Pyongyang in gratitude for their loyalty. Now, up to seven thousand men, women and children come here every night, paying a small entrance fee to enjoy the state-of-the-art rides that Kim Jong Un personally imported from Italy.

“Our General Comrade Kim Jong Un came here in January 2011, and rode every ride to make sure our People would be safe,” the guide says proudly, and points at a space-age roller-coaster hurling people around a loop in bullet-shaped tubes. It’s difficult to imagine Junior 2.0 squeezing his tubby frame inside one of these things: they’re as narrow as bobsleds and streamlined for speed. The rider has to lie facedown and hold on; centrifugal force does the rest. Shrieking people shoot past in a blur, their screams hanging in the air. Lizzette’s keen to get on, but I am terrified and Eun doesn’t want to get her white denim dirty. They settle on the twenty-five-metre Tower Drop instead, and I make a pathetic excuse about wanting to film them, staying safely on the ground.

“It is important for ladies to wear pants, or they might be embarrassed,” the guide says gravely, as Eun and Lizzette strap themselves onto a platform next to twenty giggling North Koreans. A park worker in a yellow and brown uniform flicks a lever, and they slowly ascend to the top of the tower. The park must look spectacular from up there: a pulsing galaxy of neon in the middle of the city’s lightless sprawl. I’m sure Lizzette is enjoying the view—but all I can see of my fearless producer now are her tiny white sandals, dangling against the starry sky. The park worker nudges his lever forward with the concentration of someone landing a plane, and the platform plummets towards us through eight storeys of accelerating terror—screeching to a halt a few metres from the ground. Before Lizzette and Eun can stop screaming, the worker shunts them all back up again for another death-defying plunge.

“Would you like some ice cream?” the guide asks afterwards, leading the shaky Eun and Lizzette into a milk bar fitted out like Arnold’s diner from Happy Days . More comrades in yellow and brown polish spotless counters as families stand around eating the “meat with two breads sandwiches.” Hamburgers aren’t the only things on offer here: there are also hotdogs, popcorn, shoestring fries, and corn dogs on sticks. The ice cream display case is empty apart from two perfect pink spheres, each on a white paper doily. A beaming comrade walks up with two empty cones, as if she’s been waiting for us all night. Suspecting this may well be the case, we dutifully order the ice cream. It tastes the way most of Pyongyang looks: pleasant and oddly familiar, yet utterly alien. I can taste strawberries, lemons, and detergent. I wish I’d ordered a hamburger.

Ms. K and Eun pull on disposable surgical gloves and pick up their burgers. I look around and realise that the Pyongyang approach to fast-food hygiene is communal: everyone, from the burger flippers and waitresses to the customers, is wearing the gloves. Families eat and chat at high tables, the plastic gloves bunching at their wrists. There are no chairs. “Why is everyone standing?” I ask.

Eun shrugs as if it’s obvious: “The Dear Leader Kim Jong Il, when he designed this restaurant, took away the chairs. He said ‘fast food’ should be eaten fast. Otherwise, everyone would sit around for a long time talking, and others would not have a chance to enjoy.” Lizzette and I share a look, and Ms. K flushes with embarrassment. She’s seen enough McDonald’s in China to know that wearing latex, standing, and eating at Chollima speed is not the normal way you down a burger.

Back in the fair’s main boulevard, the crowd is heaving. We rub shoulders with a laughing throng of soldiers, schoolkids, and workers—all having the time of their lives. Throbbing speakers blast an odd fusion of Korean folk and Hawaiian surf rock as twenty-year-olds promenade past in aviators and leather jackets, somehow managing to make their khaki uniforms look sexy. Further up the park, parents squat in circles talking, as their children play tip. “Boo!” I say to one ruddy-cheeked five-year-old, and he stops, frozen in terror. His playmates freeze behind him. The smallest grabs her sister’s hand and starts to cry. To these kids, I am a pointy-nosed American, the devil incarnate. My ancestors bombed their ancestors until Pyongyang was a pile of ashes and there was no one left.

I bend down to the little boy’s level. “ Je ireum-eun Anna . Do you know Australia? Kangaroo!” I jump up and down in circles like a mad woman. The boy stares at me, fascinated. Then he bursts out laughing. The others join in, nudging each other. This mumsy foreigner is clearly ridiculous. I grin and bounce while the children shriek with delight, and I’m filled with the heartwarming truth that no propaganda is strong enough to repress a child’s impulse to laugh. The boy beckons me over to the games arcade, pointing excitedly at an eighties Speed Racer by the wall. Two little girls jiggle steering wheels from leather bucket seats, manoeuvring 2D Maseratis around an animated track.

“This is the same game our Dear Leader Kim Jong Il played with General Comrade Kim Jong Un, when he was just six years old,” the guide says, and barks at the girls to get up.

The girls let me take their place without a word, too stunned by my foreignness to protest. I race a yellow Lamborghini round the chequered flags of the Monaco Grand Prix, oddly chuffed that Kim Jong Il once gripped this same wheel. Behind me, there’s the crack of a rifle—and I turn to see the delicate Eun obliterating laser-projected targets with the precision of a sniper. I pick up a rifle to see how I compare, and soldiers, workers, and grandmothers all crowd in to watch. Marksmanship is highly valued in this country: according to Kim Jong Il: A Life , Kim was an expert gunman, able to hit targets from a galloping horse at the age of five. His mother, Kim Jong Suk, an unassuming woman whom Kim remodelled in the history books as a kick-arse, Jap-slaying “revolutionary immortal,” taught him how:

One day, Kim Jong Il saw his mother in a shooting stance with a pistol in hand, while inspecting the rifle range for the guards, and he said he would like to try his hand at it. She extracted the cartridge from the pistol, showed him how to aim and pull the trigger, and then said: “You must not start shooting without a definite target. You must have a noble aim before you start shooting. The day I shot my rifle for the first time during the armed struggle against the Japanese, I made up my mind to fight for the revolution to the end under the General’s leadership and destroyed many enemies. You must grow up quickly and safeguard your father with this pistol and hold him in high respect.”

Young Kim took these words to heart, determined to serve Kim Il Sung as faithfully as his mother—who, as all North Koreans know, used to warm the General’s wet socks against her holy bosom and line the soles of his boots with her hair. Kim practised every day in their guerrilla camp on Mount Paektu—until finally, “with everyone watching him, he aimed at his targets and pulled the trigger. Bang, bang, bang! The three shots hit his three targets. Kim Il Sung hugged his son and exclaimed, ‘Excellent!’”