Far Eastern Economic Review 8 April 1993 page 30 TRAVELLERS TALES Andrew Mack Pyongyang, North Korea It is one of those slightly outlandish rail journeys that Paul Theroux has not written about. It starts in Peking in the early evening and finishes in North Korea's timewarp capital of Pyongyang some 24 hours later. We travelled "soft class," which on Chinese long-distance trains is not bad at all. The train pulls out at dusk and Peking's sprawling, dusty suburbs are soon left behind. Chinese, Korean, a few East European and the four Australian passengers settle in for a long night. Dawn brings vistas of mist-shrouded picture postcard mountains, terraced fields and meandering streams. At around 9 a.m. we pull into the border town of Dandong, on the Yalu River, where the train is dismembered. Only two carriages of the many that left Peking will continue to Pyongyang, North Korea receives very few visitors, which helps insulate the nation from corrupting outside influences. Minutes after leaving Dandong we rumble over the Yalu and are in North Korea. We are intensely curious. The economy is in deep crisis. Industrial production is down by 30% to 40%, according to some estimates. The level of trade is only half that of 1988. GNP has dropped for three years in a row. There have even been reports of food riots. Because of this, some Western and South Korean observers argue that the regime is on the verge of collapse. We came away sceptical of "collapsist" claims-things were tough but not desperate. We saw few fat people, but also no signs of hunger. The countryside is reminiscent of parts of Spain-craggy mountains with cottages with red-tiled roofs nestling at their base. There are maize plots and a few orchards. Every cottage has an intensively cultivated private garden alongside it. By early afternoon we have reached the flat plain that flanks the eastern coast. It is shortly after harvest time, and many of the neatly terraced rice fields are filled with schoolchildren painstakingly searching for any last grains that the harvesters might have missed. We cross the Daeryong River, whose waters are reputedly toxic with nuclear waste from the controversial Yongbyon nuclear complex upstream. We are now moving through the industrial heartland of North Korea, but much of it is quiescent-a result of the near-total cut-off of Russian oil supplies. In the late afternoon our train draws into Pyongyang. It is a surprisingly pleasant-looking, relatively unpolluted city, with wide streets, trees, parks and gleaming new Russian trams. There are, it is true, many hideous Stalinesque buildings, but they are no worse than those in Peking. We are checked into the Coryo-a huge, twin-tower hotel. The rooms are fine. Food and service are pretty awful, but no worse than we expected. This does not really matter-North Korea's attraction does not lie in its cuisine. It is the fact that this is the world's last redoubt of what appear to be genuine communist true-believers that makes it fascinating. In Russia and China, even at the height of the Cold War, pervasive anti-communist cynicism would become apparent after a very few drinks with locals. This never happens in North Korea, where support for the government among ordinary people appears almost religious in its fervour. Whether this is due to genuine conviction, indoctrination or fear is not clear. But one factor must surely be lack of knowledge of the outside world. The regime controls information to an extraordinary degree. Western papers are unobtainable, radio and TV sets cannot be tuned to foreign stations. The Western presence is minimal-only one Western ambassador (a Swede) is in residence. The images of the outside world projected by the media are uniformly depressing. Catch the evening TV news in Pyongyang and South Korea appears as a country whose populace is constantly being beaten by riot police, while the US seems beset by race riots and populated by the homeless. Believe only half what the media says about the outside world and North Korea will seem positively benign by comparison. On the home front, art, literature and politics are all directed to the greater glorification of the Kim dynasty. We visited a big cinema studio-museum complex totally dedicated to eulogising Kim II Sung's son and heir Kim Jong II. If the displays are to be believed, "Dear Leader" Kim is the inspiration of every cultural activity in the nation. A very ordinary desk and simple reading lamp are reverentially displayed-their sole claim to history being that they had once been used by him. The most common response of most Western visitors to the seemingly endless series of propagandistic museums, palaces and monuments, plus the schools with their meticulously drilled performing children, is bemusement or revulsion. Yet the regime has remarkable achievements to its credit, especially when one remembers that 40 years ago the Korean war had left North Korea a battle-ravaged wasteland. Today many of these achievements - the transport infrastructures, industrial complexes and comprehensive social services-are under threat as the crisis in the economy deepens. Things look very bad. Russia, once a stalwart ally, has cosied up to the "imperialist lackeys" in South Korea. Pyongyang has no other friends; even China now wants hard currency for its exports. We stayed a week and asked endless questions of officials who either knew or would say little. We travelled to a resort in stunningly beautiful mountains for the weekend. Two of us caused offence by refusing to visit yet another museum-this one stuffed with gifts (many hideous) presented to the "Great" and "Dear" leaders from "the peoples of the world." We went for a walk instead, and met cheerfully drunk North Korean workers-all men-having a party in a mountain ravine. North Korea is not going to be a major tourist destination for many years, but it is a fascinating place to visit. When the 80-year-old Kim II Sung dies the regime may well collapse. So it is worth going soon, before this last redoubt of dynastic communism meets its inevitable fate. Andrew Mack is Professor of International Relations at Australian National University.