Travel to North Korea, the country where you plan to haircuts
Six years later, ABC regresa a Pyongyang, where journalists come with dropper
More than in space, to travel to North Korea is to go back in time to Stalin's Soviet Union or Mao's China. Six years after his first visit, ABC vuelve a Pyongyang, which only grants visas to 3.000 western tourists a year and prohibits the entry of journalists.
After the escalation of tension in recent weeks, in which the Kim Jong-un regime has declared a state of war and redoubled its warmongering rhetoric, the north korean capital is mobilized. But not for a contest, but for the slight economic opening that began after the death of Kim Jong-il, father of the current dictator, in december of 2011.
Upon landing in Pyongyang aboard the Air Koryo Tupolev from Beijing, the visitor is welcomed by the works in the new airport terminal. masons, soldiers in uniform, they look at us foreigners who disembark at the foot of the runway with as much curiosity as we look at them because, in the end, we have just crossed the last frontier of the Cold War. If before, customs agents seized the mobile phones of tourists and returned them to them on the day of their departure, now they only write down the model and even indicate to the traveler the counter where to rent for 50 euros a SIM card to call home. Curiously, It only works on the latest generation of smartphones., but not on the "old" iPhone 3 What does this correspondent carry?.
city road, and in the middle of a frenetic hustle and bustle, legions of men, women and children remove the earth with picks and shovels in the ditches, they repair the road with stone blocks that they carry on their backs, they paint the trunks of the trees white and clean the flowerbeds of the avenues. "When spring comes, The Government mobilizes the whole world in April to clean up the streets on the occasion of the celebrations for the anniversary of the birth of the founder of the country, Kim Il-sung, and the founding of the Army», explains our guide, that she will accompany us throughout the trip together with another companion to watch over us and that we do not go anywhere alone.
Like the urban brigades that we come across, they themselves were carrying bags of cement in the construction of the futuristic towers of 45 plants raised in twelve months on Changjon street to celebrate the centenary of Kim Il-sung last year.
cars and mobiles
Con 100.000 apartments, such modern skyscrapers are the new symbol of Pyongyang, next to the cars that are filling its formerly deserted avenues and the mobile phones that are beginning to hook the North Koreans with as much fury as their brothers from the South. Launched in 2008 by the local telephone operator Koryolink in collaboration with the Egyptian company Orascom, This service already has two million subscribers.. Although with these mobiles they cannot call the numbers that are rented to tourists and the internet is still censored by the authorities, that only allow access to an "intranet" with controlled content in offices and public libraries, Talking on the phone was an unthinkable luxury for North Koreans just a few years ago.
Just like driving a car. Previously limited to government Mercedes, Dacia taxis with the Renault line 12 and the rickety Chinese Army trucks, more and more vehicles circulate on the streets of Pyongyang. and newer. As revealed by their white license plates, most are owned by state-owned companies and are Fiparam sedans and local brand Pyeonghwa Samcheonri vans, which are based on Italian and Chinese models. But private individuals in Pyongyang can already buy their own private car…as long as they have an impeccable ideological record and the 7.000 euros which costs the cheapest. To choose they have Audis A4, Volkswagen Passat and Ford Mondeos brought from China... And even a Porsche Cayenne that crosses Kim Il-sung Square!! There still hang the portraits of the "Eternal President" and his son, the "Dear Leader" Kim Jong-il, in the Great Hall of People's Study, but the paintings of Marx and Lenin that adorned the facade of the adjoining Ministry of Commerce have disappeared.
Under this sober building pass four young people with sunglasses and baseball caps pulled down like rappers, fashionable in the conservative North Korean society. Continuing with these new airs, the Moranbong Women's Orchestra, who appears on television playing for the young warlord Kim Jong-un, has not only popularized the image of Disney's Mickey Mouse, that many children wear in their backpacks, but also skirts above the knee.
the permanent number 9
But even the hairstyle is still planned in this country, as can be seen in the posters with the 24 types of haircuts for men, and 18 for the women, offered by the Changgwangwon Body Leisure Center, whose 400 employees serve some 2.500 customers a day while the television endlessly repeats images of military parades. With the curlers on the head, among them stands out Mrs. Won, employee of the Ministry of Labor who chooses the permanent number 9, she comes a couple of times to this beauty salon, speaks English and is part of the North Korean elite.
to the official change, The median salary of state civil servants is 3.000 won al mes (15 euros) and, according to communist logic, should be enough to purchase the basic products subsidized by the Government, that each month delivers to public employees 14 kilos of rice and 28 to army officers. But in recent years the market economy has been imposed by the entry of foreign currency and all kinds of items imported from China, from Australian beef to Hennessy cognac to computers and plasma screens, that are openly sold at astronomical prices in shops and supermarkets. Due, an unofficial market has flourished, but real, that changes the euro to about 8.000 won. In Warehouse Number 1, that's how much the bag of detergent costs for which a group of women are fighting. But also something less than the cost of a Coca-Cola in the Pyolmuri cafeteria, where some diners give a good account of a portion of prawns, pizza and red wine with the Kim pin on his lapel and two packets of Marlboro and Camel on the table.
bribery of officials
«Only with their salaries, officials cannot survive or have mobiles, so they take bribes", explains to us via email from Seoul Jung Gwang Il, a former military man who worked at a state-owned company and defected to China, and then to South Korea, after spending three years in a re-education camp.
Farmers, that now they can sell the vegetables they grow in their backyards, they crowd the roads with bundles that they carry on their backs or on their bicycles to sell in street markets. with the money earned, they can buy other products for their own consumption or to resell them in their villages.
"The situation now is much better than during the Arduous March", says grandmother Choe Okseon at the Chongsanri model cooperative, referring to the "Great Famine" that took place between 300.000 and two million lives in the 90. According to the UN, six of the 24 Millions of North Koreans still need humanitarian aid, but any change seems like remarkable progress in this isolated country. Even if in the end everything stays as before.
http://www.abc.es/internacional/20130428/abci-corea-norte-201304271953.html
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