Travel
Tuesday, 25 August 2009 06:08
Written by Ned Kelly

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The Pyongyang Circus is good, at times freakishly good. But it has nothing in the freaky stakes compared to the show one is witness to at the Children’s Palace. It is, simply put, grotesque. Before ending up in the auditorium one is given a tour of the entire building. The entrance hall is dominated by a huge painting of Kim Jong Il and his father, Kim Il Sung - the founder and father of the country - surrounded by adoring children. His position as patriarch of the nation is drummed in early – every morning from nursery up children start the day by thanking him for their education, their country, their existence.

Moving up the stairs we are taken through a procession of rooms in which groups – always groups, the individual giving themselves over to the collective – perform in their given medium. In the first, an incredible accordion performance by a dozen young girls, in the second children practice their calligraphy. The third contains a quartet of pianists who are overseen by a strict instructor who is clearly very anxious that nothing goes wrong while we are watching. It doesn’t, their timing as they play together is immaculate. Room after room the same; it is billed as a place of “comprehensive extracurricular educational for schoolchildren.” But it’s the middle of the day, shouldn’t these children be at school? My suspicion that it is all for our benefit is given weight when I sneak a peak into the calligraphy room on our way back past – with nobody to watch them the kids have all downed brushes, charade over.

Passing through a gym, where tough little characters learn martial arts, we reach the theater where the main show is to take place. This is no charade, rather an unashamed, over-the-top and distasteful propaganda piece. For over an hour we are ‘entertained’ by a wretched all-singing all-dancing cast of hundreds of five and six year-olds who perform perfectly with painful-looking synchronized stage smiles permanently fixed on their faces. Contemplating what kind of life these kids have once the curtain falls sends a shiver down the spine. The cutesy-creepiness cranks up off the scale once our translator tells us what they are singing about. A five year-old boy cheerily extols the pride of launching missiles, followed by a snappy little number in which a six year-old girl congratulates the On Sen City power station for running at 160 percent output. Cynics might suggest they had not written the lyrics themselves.

There are times in North Korea when, despite the constant accompaniment of tour guides, one feels one is seeing beyond the ‘what-they-want-you-to-see’. This is not one of them. The words stage-managed have never been so apt.

Check out the first installment of the DPRK Files: Ryugyong Hotel right here 

Check out the second installment of the DPRK Files: The DMZ, right here.

Check out the third installment of the DPRK Files: Big Kim, right here.

Ned Kelly has just returned from the DPRK, watch out for excerpts and extras in the coming weeks from the trip as we build up to the big article in the September issue of That's Shanghai

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