Inside North Korea: Kim's Great Illusion fades fast

WE WERE driving through the centre of Pyongyang - two Western visitors, two government ``guides'' and a driver. As we passed an enormous bronze statue of a horse, one of the guides began the standard commentary: when the Chollima Horse Statue was built, how heavy it is, how the work troupes laboured day and night on its construction and how it symbolises the North Korean people's determination to work ever harder in the service of the revolution under the supreme guidance of the Great Leader, Kim Il Sung.

The other guide, who was sitting next to me, was listening to Pavarotti on my Walkman - he was curious to try out the little Japanese tape recorder which he had not seen before. He had not heard of the Italian tenor, but he recognised the tune of Funiculi Funicula and, as happens with people wearing earphones, he began to sing along without realising how loud he was. As he filled his lungs with lusty operatic enthusiasm and with a big grin on his face, the other guide continued, barely audibly, to intone statistics on economic production. He didn't seem to care if we weren't listening.

So North Korea today. After 10 days travelling throughout the country, it is clear that the old socialist system of surveillance, party loyalty and rigid social hierarchy is still intact. It is also clear that no one believes in it any more: the smell of cynicism is so strong that no perfumed propaganda can mask it.

Everywhere the relics of the past are visible - the statues of Kim Il Sung, the showcase museums celebrating the revolution, the sprawling heavy industrial complexes that are out of fuel, cold and unstaffed. This is the stuff of anecdote and ridicule, the bizarre tales of Stalinist extravagance that filter out to the West. But the talk in North Korea today is about a different future, of joint ventures with the once-despised capitalists, of investment, exports, better living conditions for the long-suffering workers.

Realising these goals will probably prove more difficult than most North Koreans expect. Their greatest achievement so far, which everyone talks about, is the agreement concluded with the US in October under which they will receive oil supplies for 10 years in exchange for halting their suspect nuclear programme. Brought up to despise the ``American imperialist aggressors'', North Koreans are now looking to the US for their salvation. It is as if someone had gone around the country whispering into everyone's ears that ``it is all over. Our socialism is just a charade. Things are going to change soon''.

A waitress said to me in a quiet moment: ``Don't blame the ordinary people - we are just like everyone else in the world. It is the top officials who have got us into this situation.'' This was a long way from the icy reserve and unquestioning conformism of the country when I visited four years ago. My guide then told me without a trace of sarcasm that his six year-old daughter ``loved'' the socialist philosophy of Kim Il Sung. Things have changed in North Korea - starting from the top.

Our first stop is Mansu Hill in the centre of Pyongyang, dominated by a statue of Kim Il Sung, arm raised, looking out over the city. It was here that millions of near-hysterical North Koreans came to offer flowers and mourn in public after the death of the Great Leader on 8 July. Four and a half months later, they are still coming, delegation after delegation, trooping up the steps and bowing in front of the monument as an attendant switches on a tape recording of a mournful dirge. Some manage a few tears before laying their bouquets of flowers and leaving in silence. The attendant turns off the tape recording until the next group appears.

``I couldn't believe the news when I first heard it,'' said Mr Lee, the younger of our two guides. ``It was on the TV - then I saw people on the streets. In the evening I came here, but I couldn't get near the monument - I was standing way down the hill in the crowds.''

Whatever his ruinous economic policies, the charisma and longevity of Kim Il Sung, who ruled over North Korea from 1948, made him a popular figure among his people. From North Korea's perspective, he was indeed a Great Leader, and his death was as much a shock as the passing of Mao or Stalin in their countries. But now he has gone, the centre has fallen out of the system.

His son Kim Jong Il, the appointed successor, has still not taken up the posts of president and party leader, and has barely appeared in public. Although people are still very careful about voicing any political views openly, in private no one can find anything positive to say about the reclusive 52-year-old who has none of his father's presence or bonhomie.

The current political strategy seems to be to have Kim Jong Il rule as a proxy for his departed father: there is no move to promote Kim Jong Il on his own merits. The entire nation is still wearing Kim Il Sung badges on their lapels, and the posters of Kim Il Sung which used to proclaim ``Long Live Comrade Kim Il Sung!'' are now being repainted with the quasi-religious ``Comrade Kim Il Sung will live forever''. This is a quaint reversal of the old Stalinist practice of airbrushing out of photos the faces of those disgraced or executed: in North Korea it is the image of the dead leader that is to remain, a talisman of good fortune for his people in the days of change and turmoil ahead.

And change there must be: North Korea is just about on its last legs. Since the collapse of the Soviet-led socialist bloc and the end of the flow of subsidised oil and other raw materials to North Korea, the country's economy has been contracting by an estimated 5 per cent a year. North Koreans no longer bother to pretend their society is a workers' paradise. ``You can see for yourself, our living standards are quite low,'' said Mr Lee. Everyone knows that South Koreans are better off. Even the attendants on a railway train concede the South is richer during a late-night conversation, although they add the pro forma objection that inequality in the South must mean that some people are more happy than others.

But domestic happiness is in short supply in North Korea. Walking through the backstreets of the city of Kaesong, 125 miles south of Pyongyang, as night is falling, we can see into people's homes - two-room hovels lit by one faint electric bulb that is not bright enough to read by because of power shortages. Most have a mirror on the wall, a closet, bedding rolled up in the corner, a television and a few cooking pots hanging from the back of a door. On one wall are the omnipresent portraits of the Great Leader and his son, the Dear Leader, and there is little other decoration. The evening meal consists of rice sometimes mixed with low quality corn meal and pickled cabbage. Breakfast will be the same.

The entire country is one bleak tableau of systemic failure: people wander through grey streets looking in the windows of shops with the same meagre display of goods as the last time they passed by. On the highways one in every three or four trucks is broken down on the side of the road, the driver's legs protruding from the bonnet as he tries to coax another few miles out of the creaking engine. Hotels are empty and unlit when we pull up - as the only guests we wander along dark silent corridors that smell of damp and rotten cabage.

We travel to Nampo, about one and a half hours south-west of Pyongyang. On the way we pass the enormous Chollima Steel Works, constructed with Soviet help after the war to supply steel for North Korea's industrial development. Today it is empty and apparently unused: the chimneys are cold, the gates are locked. Mr Lee loyally explains: ``Just because there is no smoke from the chimneys doesn't mean the factory is not working. We have ways of controlling emissions . . .'' But he doesn't expect me to believe him.

There are nightly documentaries on television on the tremendous achievements of the industrial and agricultural sectors of the North Korean economy, with an announcer listing the latest feats in a fawning, breathless tone of admiration for the revolution. But North Koreans know what they have on their dinner tables every night, under the dim bulb that barely illuminates the corners of the room. North Korean socialism is terminally ill. ``Things will change,'' said Mr Lee. ``Soon.''

Further reports from Terry McCarthy in tomorrow's Independent

(Photographs omitted)