PYONGYANG,
North Korea (AP) â€" A little boy skips along grasping a classmate's hand, his cheeks flushed and a badge of the Great Leader's smiling face pinned to his Winnie the Pooh sweatshirt. Men in military green share a joke over beers at a German-style pub next door to the Juche tower. Schoolgirls wearing the red scarves of the Young Pioneers sway in unison as they sing a classic Korean tune I, too, learned as a child.
Everywhere I look, communist North Korea is a world both foreign and familiar to my Korean-American eyes, a place where the men wear Mao suits and children tote Mickey Mouse backpacks, where they call one another "comrade" and love their spicy kimchi.
Since becoming the
Seoul bureau chief for
The Associated Press in 2008, I have made five eye-opening visits to North Korea. Chief Asia photographer David Guttenfelder has traveled to the country numerous times over the past 12 years.
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EDITOR'S NOTE â€" Jean H. Lee, The Associated Press bureau chief in Seoul, and David Guttenfelder, AP's chief Asia photographer, have made numerous reporting trips to North Korea in recent years. They were granted unprecedented access on their latest journey to Pyongyang and areas outside the nation's showcase capital.
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We're among the few Western journalists who've been allowed into North Korea during a period of heightened tensions that began three years ago with the shooting death of a South Korean tourist. A parade of provocations has followed: a long-range rocket launch, a nuclear test, the sinking of a South Korean warship and a deadly artillery attack on a front-line island.
North Korea has come under financial sanctions again for its nuclear defiance and has been condemned for alleged human rights abuses. It has also turned inward, as Pyongyang maps out a sensitive succession plan for the nation's next leader.
The wariness in Pyongyang means most foreign journalists are taken on a brief and orchestrated trip through the showcase capital, with cell phones confiscated at the airport and minders shadowing every move.
But this year, David and I have been granted unprecedented access as part of AP's efforts to expand its coverage of North Korea. We traveled into the countryside, accompanied by North Korean journalists, not government minders. We had a cell phone, Internet access and a van with a driver who took us to Kaesong to the south, Mount Myohyang to the north and Nampho to the west.
During our wanderings, we got a glimpse of daily life in one of the most hidden nations in the world and found a country on the cusp of change.
Some things are entirely foreign: the armed soldiers everywhere, their faces lean and tanned; the banners and posters painted with hammer, sickle and rifle exhorting people to help build the nation's economy; the sense of paranoia that comes with wondering who's watching or listening to you.
Others are familiar: the tang of cold "raengmyon" noodles, the nursery rhymes children sing on both sides of the Demilitarized Zone, the quick, warm wit that emerges after a few rounds of liquor.
More than 60 years of socialism haven't stamped out Korean tradition. Orchestras still play the folk tune "Arirang," along with "The General is our Father." And children learn about the filial piety of the fabled maiden Sim Chung, not just the feats of their late president.
Much of what we see during our reporting trips is calculated to show the bright side of a nation suffering from chronic economic hardship. North Korea's economy produces an estimated $1,800 per person per annum, according to the U.S. State Department, considerably less than the $30,000 in South Korea. The World Food Program says a quarter of North Korea's 24 million people need food aid to keep from going hungry.
The poverty isn't immediately visible in the modern metropolis of Pyongyang. We are led through gleaming hallways and cavernous, chandeliered lobbies by guides in sparkling gowns or neat military uniforms, speaking as though from a script. The hedges are trimmed, the begonias in bloom.
But in between the staged visits, candid moments put a human face on a society enigmatic to the West, more complex and textured than typically portrayed.
At Kim Il Sung Plaza, a determined young man in a blue suit scoots by on inline skates, his tie carefully pinned to his shirt, as a friend spins circles around him. At a cemetery up on the hill, we spot a bride in a billowing, embroidered red Korean gown, a white-and-pink spray of flowers tucked into her hair. Her groom, tall and handsome, wears a red boutonniere affixed to his officer's uniform just beneath his Kim badge.
And, in an astonishing turn of events, we are invited to a briefing at the grand People's Cultural Palace, making us the first American reporters to cover a North Korean press conference, we're told. Journalists from the North Korean press corps snap open Compaq laptops and set up Sony video cameras, and portraits of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il serve as the backdrop.
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