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Had Prince Potemkin been a 21st century man, he would have gone
into the luxury hotel business.
With help from South Korea and one of its major corporations
(the Hyundai chaebol), North Korea presents a deluxe picture to
more than 1.5 million tourists, nearly all from South Korea, who
have arrived at the Mount Kumgang resort, a complex of nine hotels
and lodges as well as a spa, gift shops and a coffee stand that
sells lattes at Starbucks prices.
 The
attraction, beyond the exotic of going into previously forbidden
territory, is one of Korea's most famous mountain ranges in a
nation where mountains have drawn nature lovers and artists over
centuries. The complex is a four-hour drive northeast of Seoul,
just off the coast of the East Sea/Sea of Japan and whose coves
remind an American of the Maine coast. The main activity is hiking
up mountain trails, viewing along the way inscriptions dedicated
to Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong IL Hiking here, however, is not for
those seeking solitude. Rather it is sharing narrow, rocky trails
with several hundred of your newly acquired best Asian friends
as convoys of up to 20 buses deposit their charges at the foot
of the mountain. Evening entertainment includes passable restaurants
and a spectacularly good troupe of acrobats, gymnasts and trapeze
artists.
Indeed, everything about traveling here is a group activity.
There are no solo tourists. Even the approximately 2,000 Americans
who have visited here, such as our group of editors and producers,
arrive in groups organized by Hyundai. A one-night tour package
that includes breakfast and bus transport can run US$500 per night.
And visiting a country that has kept itself pretty well sealed
off from the rest of the world for the past 50 plus years comes
with its own rules and regulations. Before arriving at the Demilitarized
Zone that separates the two Koreas, visitors must hand over all
newspapers and magazines as well as cell phones and video and
audio recording equipment. They are advised not to do anything
that would "aggravate or insult the North Korean people."
Don't take photos of soldiers anywhere and certainly not in the
North Korean customs and immigration building where a recording
loops a bouncy version of a song whose main lyrics seemed to be,
"Thank you for visiting North Korea." One hapless South
Korean was aiming his camera, and amid a blare of whistles was
separated from his group and hauled away. For all we know, he
may still be there.
In the hotel itself, it was all smiles and greetings in English
from a young and attractive staff. The party cadres can be identified
by lapel pins bearing the images of the Great Leader and Dear
Leader. Some can be quite chatty, others less so. The best and
the brightest appear to be from the capital, Pyongyang, raising
the likelihood they got their jobs through party and family connections
and may be training either for future jobs in business management
or intelligence.
Visits are limited to two or three days, and all transactions
are in hard currency, U.S. dollars or South Korean won. The tourist
complex originally was supposed to be a center for family reunions
between North and South, but only a handful has taken place there.
It is one of two major South Korean/Hyundai investments in North
Korea. The other is the Kaesung industrial complex, where South
Korean companies provide the capital investment and North Korea
provides the labor at $60 a month minimum. For North Korea and
the South Korean companies, it's a win/win proposition. The companies
get both cheap labor and the chance to say they are promoting
inter-Korean peace. North Korea gets desperately needed foreign
currency. Salaries are paid through the North Korean government,
leaving no assurance all the money reaches the workers.
 Even
our trip provided its small example of how the North Korean government
is selective in what it shares with the outside world. Requests
to go to Pyongyang and Kaesung were turned down. But our group
did have a chance earlier in our stay to speak to an American
considered by many analysts as well-informed as any foreigner
on life inside North Korea. He's Stephen Linton, a descendent
of Presbyterian missionaries and now chairman of the Eugene Bell
Foundation (Saemsori.org). His mission, on an admittedly small
scale, is to help North Korean doctors and clinics fight tuberculosis,
which he describes as "the number one, two and three health
challenges" facing North Korea. He says most Koreans, even
in the South, have been exposed to the disease and that TB has
"killed more people in a generation than the Korean War (which
cost an estimated 800,000 to a million lives)."
In his small quarters in Seoul (the foundation does not have
an office in the North), Linton described what happens to a universal
health care system when the money supposed to run it (in this
case from the government) is diverted to other priorities. In
subdued tones, he talked of surgery performed in hospitals without
lighting, patients anesthetized only with ether because the anesthesia
machines were broken, doctors exposing themselves to radiation
poisoning and burns with worn out X-ray equipment. And ultimately
doctors walking away from their clinics because they were not
being paid and needed to support themselves and their families
taking jobs running sewing machines at the Kaesung industrial
complex or becoming farmers.
"In this society, there is a capacity for enduring pain
that is almost unbelievable," Linton said.
Despite the gruesome portrayal of North Korean health care, Linton
said the country is rebounding from the famine of the 1990s and
that people are eating and dressing better. He certainly sees
no collapse of the ruling hierarchy or repudiation of the entire
system. Like other analysts here, he predicts more of an evolution
to a Chinese system rather than an East German style meltdown.
For other analysts in and out of government, that translates
into a leadership that will do anything to ensure it survival.
And curiously enough, according to one line of analysis, that
adds up to doing a deal with the United States and the other nations
in the six-party talks to give up its nuclear weapons. The nuclear
test was the wakeup call North Korea wanted to make the U.S. pay
it some attention, according to this line of thought, and now
the North is ready to trade in weapons it never planned to use
to obtain the aid and material it desperately needs.
That is not a line of thinking accepted at some Washington think
tanks, but it is the prevailing wisdom at the moment in Seoul.
It has the apparent advantage of proximity, but there are some
who recall that the last people to predict the 1989 demise of
East Germany were officials in West Germany.
-- By Michael Mosettig, NewsHour
with Jim Lehrer
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