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Robert Willoughby
Published in The Guardian Weekly, 5 September 2008
As we strolled along Wonsan's waterfront, my guide Mr Li told me we would dine in Restaurant No 2. My heart sank.
Restaurant No 2 was the cold and spacious eatery of the Wonsan Hotel where my two guides and driver had had a lunch of thick, heavy noodles in iced water - a speciality, but one that made dining in the spacious, unlit restaurant no more convivial. Upon our arrival, the other diners seemed to gobble up and head out. Although accompanied by two guides and a driver as I toured North Korea, such things often left me feeling lonely.
Wonsan is a port east of the North Korean capital and is a handsome town of boulevards and plazas. Flattened during the Korean war, Wonsan was rebuilt during the Soviet heyday, though its docksides now sit underemployed.
This city of several hundred thousand seemed in its inertia to symbolise much of North Korea's stifled potential. As part of my tour, I was hammered to Wonsan in a 1980s Volvo along runway-straight roads, past anodyne collective farms and paddy fields. South of the city we'd stayed at a lakeside hostel where I'd endured a near-scalding mud bath and a lengthy drinking session with a group of Russian embassy staff.
Packed in the dawn-to-dusk itinerary was an excursion to a model collective farm, where a family showed me their home and shared a bowl of tomatoes as their son belted out patriotic songs. We also visited the International Children's Youth Camp, where children from across the region, including western ones, can kick around. Unfortunately, it was empty and silent. Back in Wonsan, we walked the promenade. The city seemed to reinforce perceptions of North Korea - impenetrable and austere. Like our forthcoming dinner.
"Right," I commanded Li. "Find somewhere else, and we'll have dinner on me." Outside the hotel, we headed through a tiny side-door into two small rooms and sat cross-legged upon the floor. Kimchi and anchovy-like fish arrived along with a steaming great hairy crab. Wine and beer flowed. Suddenly the lights flicked off - was it a power cut or the city's electricity ration finishing for the night? No, it was "The Bloody Americans!" one of the guides yelled, and we laughed, cheered and talked about our lives in an evening as warm as I had had anywhere. |
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