Inside the Hermit Kingdom

A rare glimpse into a solitary, single-minded nation

Only last month North Korea brusquely rejected the latest call for bilateral talks with its U.S.-supported neighbor, South Korea. That gesture was characteristic of one of the most self-enclosed and xenophobic Communist countries in the world. North Korea has, however, opened its doors to a rarely admitted visitor, a reporter from a U.S. news organization. TIME's Peking Bureau Chief, David Aikman, sent this report:

There are only two ways to enter North Korea by commercial airliner: from China and from the Soviet Union. The symbolism is apt. For the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, as it is called, most closely resembles the China of the late 1960s or the Soviet Union of Joseph Stalin. North Korea's President Kim Il Sung, 71, is in fact the last surviving Communist leader installed by Stalin, and commands an idolatry that borders on the pathological.

The cult of Kim's personality dominates the capital, Pyongyang (pop. 1.8 million). With its broad streets, tree-lined parks and bucolic riverbanks, the city is in many respects attractive. But virtually all its public buildings are monumental paeans in stone to the "Great Leader," constructed in a style that might be called Marxist Triumphalism. Dominating the skyline is the Tower of the Juche Idea, a 561-ft. stone column topped by a 66-ft. torch that glows at night. Across the Taedong River is the 600-room Grand People's Study Hall, a new national library. Near by is the Arch of Triumph, a 198-ft. marble landmark that comfortably straddles a five-lane avenue.

Despite such public grandeur, the modern nation of 20 million strikingly conforms to Korea's ancient reputation as the "Hermit Kingdom." Though the library boasts a capacity of 30 million volumes, it has only four listings under "United States," the most recent a 1975 edition of U.S. Pharmacoepia. No foreign publications are on sale in Pyongyang. And at the Potonggang, the capital's newest hotel, foreigners are kept under almost constant surveillance.

This isolation is doubtless intensified by the lunatic extremes of the Kim cult and the Juche Idea, a somewhat opaque notion that stresses that the masses are the agents of revolution and man is master of everything. The result is government by total mobilization. Kindergarten children march, singing, to school; construction workers march, singing, to work. The Muscovite subway stations, all marble and murals, offer glass-framed copies of the party daily, Rodong Sinmun, on every platform. Meanwhile, at the Mansudae Art Theater, a multimillion-dollar showpiece groaning with chandeliers, the revolutionary opera Song of Paradise climaxes with the cast, assembled before a huge red sun, singing, "His grateful love has given us eternal life/ We shall relate his everlasting love from age to age."

Many of the encomiums heaped upon Kim Il Sung are, in any language, indecipherable gobbledygook. Korea Today, a monthly propaganda magazine, published this sentence: "His unexcelled prodigious wisdom . . . cyclopaedic knowledge of nature and society, clairvoyant scientific insight with which to perceive clearly the essence of inextricably entangled phenomena and ability to compress aspirations of millions of people in a simple proposition ... are his distinguished qualities with which to conduct ideo-theoretical activities." Moreover, North Korean officials steadfastly assert that the world looks to Pyongyang for inspiration and that the government's paid propaganda advertisements in Western newspapers constitute editorial acclaim for the Great Leader. "Korea," observed one high-level official, "is the freest country in the world."

The government has made some attempts to broaden its international links, sending military advisers to such countries as Libya, Syria and Zimbabwe. It has gained useful mileage from the tours of its daring and innovative acrobats. On occasion, it has even invited small groups of American academics and congressional officials to visit.

Yet all is not happy on the international front. North Korea has defaulted on several foreign loans and arbitrarily rescheduled others, piling up an overseas debt of more than $2 billion. In addition, the country's foreign envoys have occasionally been caught cheating. Last month Yu Jae Han, North Korea's Ambassador to Finland, was expelled for trying to bribe the former Speaker of Finland's parliament. Other North Korean diplomats in recent years have been ejected from Denmark, Sweden and Norway for attempting to sell drugs, cigarettes and liquor on the black market.

North Korea reserves its special loathing, however, for the U.S. and South Korea. Americans are portrayed as demonic war criminals bent on enslaving the Korean people. Although U.S. analysts suspect that China is counseling Pyongyang against aggression, North Korea's tough and well-equipped armed forces (at 750,000 strong, the world's fifth largest) are highly visible and heavily indoctrinated. Among their articles of faith: South Korea longs to be "liberated," and the U.S. and South Korea are preparing to invade the North.

Signs of an all-Korea detente that first emerged with the joint North-South agreement of 1972 have long since evaporated. Recent South Korean suggestions of renewed negotiations were, snarled a North Korean radio broadcast last month, "nothing but a dog barking at the moon." Pyongyang currently aims to create a "Democratic Confederal Republic of Koryo." As preconditions to further talks, however, it demands complete U.S. withdrawal from the peninsula and the overthrow of the present South Korean government.

Ordinary North Koreans seem afraid to express any views, however orthodox, on such matters. They make do on an average salary of $41 a month, most of which goes for food (a raincoat costs around $32 and a black-and-white TV $160). Rents are negligible or nonexistent. Consumer goods are generally drab and in short supply. Only imported Volvos, Toyotas and Mercedes racing through the quiet streets suggest a world of plenty beyond the walls of Kim Il Sung's socialist fortress. But North Koreans do not publicly acknowledge that possibility. As one movie commentary put it, "Now where can you find such a paradise, good for people to live in?" This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.