IN NORTH KOREA: Lives and Lies in the State of Truth

By Rory Maclean and Nick Danziger

North Koreans could change the world. Today their country can annihilate South Korea and Japan. By 2020 their aim is to have submarine-launched missiles able to nuke the US mainland.

So who are the North Koreans? What do they think and feel? Are they belligerent automatons, indoctrinated by years of propaganda, with fingers hovering over trigger buttons? Or simply ordinary men and women who have been shaped by fear or national idolisation, willing to do anything to be accepted and to survive?

To answer these question, photographer Nick Danziger and author Rory MacLean, two of today's most sensitive chroniclers, travelled across the country, meeting farmers, fishermen and the captain of the national football team. They spent a morning one hundred metres underground with a 22-year-old subway train dispatcher and afternoons at the capital's dolphinarium, a lavish entertainment complex created to convince North Koreans of their prosperity. At the Museum of the Victorious Fatherland War, as the Korean War is known in the country, they spoke to a much-decorated national hero who boasted, 'When I was eighteen years old I shot and killed 367 enemy soldiers.'

From the spotless streets of Pyongyang to the pine-fringed beaches of Wonsan, along the Youth Hero Road, an all-but-deserted strategic highway built by some 50,000 conscripts out of 'patriotic duty', Danziger and MacLean create a telling portrait of both ordinary and extraordinary North Koreans, catching a glimpse of real life in the world's most secretive nation, at a turning point in its – and our – history.

'Danziger is the stuff that legends are made of.' -- Literary Review

'One of the world's top photojournalists.' -- Practical Photographer

'Rory MacLean is more than a gifted writer. He is a man whose artistry is underpinned by a powerful moral sensibility.' – Fergal Keane, BBC

'MacLean is one of the most strikingly original and talented travel writers of his generation.' – Katie Hickman

• Language: English
• Publisher: wander2wonder press
• Release date: Sep 16, 2017
• ISBN: 9781912022786

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Introduction: State of Truth

At dawn the curtain rises on an empty stage. Actors stand poised in the dark. Dancers and singers wait in the wings for their cue. Musicians hold their instruments to their lips and bodies, at the ready, ever ready for the nod of the director, waiting for the show to begin.

In North Korea every scene of life has been scripted, every public performance rehearsed, every political proclamation calculated to convince and coerce. Its 23 million people live in a kind of national theatre, cast in the role of players and audience alike, as well as those of choreographers, prompters and stage managers. On the spotless streets of the capital Pyongyang and the pine-fringed beaches of Wonsan, from the bustling canteen at the elite Kim Chaek University to the silent soup queues at Kaechon Penal Labour Camp 14, North Koreans act out their lives as if on a stage, tailoring their performance for partners, neighbours, co-workers and political commissars, knowing that their every move is watched.

To meet some of its compliant cast, photographer Nick Danziger and I travelled to North Korea. The purpose of our visit was not to sensationalise national tragedies, to demonise leaders or to profess to be uncovering state secrets. Instead we wanted to look beyond the theatricality of massed marches, goose-stepping automatons and posture politics. We wanted to step backstage to catch a glimpse of life as it is lived in the world’s most secretive nation, at a turning point in its history.

To that end we invited a dozen individuals to relate their personal story to us, and so reveal the script that they have internalised, thereby enabling the bigger, truer picture to unfold. Over the course of our journey we met a farmer, a fisherman and the captain of the national football team. We spent one morning 110 metres underground with a 22-year-old subway train dispatcher and two afternoons at the capital’s newly opened dolphinarium, a lavish entertainment complex built to convince North Koreans of their prosperity.

At Migok we watched ‘volunteer labourers’ polish by hand the cement base of a roller skating rink. We travelled to Nampo on the Youth Hero Road, an all-but-deserted strategic highway built by some 50,000 conscripts out of ‘patriotic duty’ and wide enough for an A380 to land on. At Pyongyang’s Museum of the Victorious Fatherland War, as the Korean War is known in the country, we interviewed a much-decorated national hero who boasted, ‘When I was 18 years old I shot and killed 367 enemy soldiers.’ At the vast May Day Stadium, said to be the biggest in Asia, we met a professional dancer, Rhee Hyang-yon.

Two dozen times a year Rhee Hyang-yon performs alongside 80,000 other entertainers and ever-smiling gymnasts at the must-see (i.e. compulsory) Arirang Mass Games. In a dynamic routine she and a troop of khaki-clad, black-booted dancers salute, stretch and lunge forward to parry their silver swords, then form themselves into a protective shield around the red star of the Fatherland. Behind them on the stadium’s far flank 20,000 students flip coloured cards like so-many pixels in a huge man-powered screen, telling a tale about Korea.

That tale is a fiction. It is the narrative upon which both the nation’s identity and cohesion depends, which dissenting voices criticise at their peril: America started and perpetrates the 1950-53 Korean War, Seoul is the capital of a US colony where people dress like beggars and eat the leftovers of the ‘two-legged wolf occupiers’, Ebola was created by the US military as a biological weapon, North Korea’s survival depends on the ‘visionary’ Kim dynasty, all the world is envious of the country’s success.

In fact North Korea – officially called the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea – began its