WSJ -- Letter From North Korea: What Life Looks Like as Nuclear Crisis Mounts

Atomic design motifs can be seen on Mirae Scientists Street, where new buildings have been erected for the country’s elite scientists. Photo: Andrew Dowell/The Wall Street Journal

The Saturday Essay

Letter From North Korea: What Life Looks Like as Nuclear Crisis Mounts

A tightly controlled government tour of Pyongyang featured sculptures of atoms, children playing with toy rocket launchers and plentiful talk about not backing down         

Wall Street Journal | 22 September 2017

PYONGYANG, North Korea—North Korea’s nuclear ambitions are etched into the landscape of its showcase capital city.

A giant sculpture of the atom sits on top of a new apartment tower built for nuclear scientists. Atom designs adorn road overpasses, lampposts and building facades.

Bomb imagery colors daily life. At an orphanage, children play with plastic mobile rocket launchers instead of toy trucks. Shops sell commemorative intercontinental ballistic missile stamps, while a bakery sells cakes featuring an upright rocket, ready for launch.

During a recent visit, the first by The Wall Street Journal since 2008, the city’s atomic aesthetics reinforced the message government officials conveyed repeatedly to the Journal reporters: North Korea won’t part with its nuclear weapons under any circumstances and is resolved to suffer economic sanctions and risk war with the U.S. to keep them.

“It is too late, we have grown up,” said Ri Yong Pil, the vice president of the Institute for American Studies, a division of North Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. “We are not interested in dialogue to undermine our newly built strategic status.”

The Journal reporters traveled to Pyongyang for a tightly controlled reporting trip between Sept. 14 and 19 amid rising tension between the U.S. and North Korea, one of the world’s most brutal and isolated dictatorships. North Korea launched a ballistic missile over Japan on the second day of the trip. Hours after the group departed, U.S. President Donald Trump vowed to “totally destroy North Korea” if the U.S. is required to defend itself or allies, saying leader Kim Jong Un —whom he called “Rocket Man”—was on a suicide path.

On the day the Journal group flew into Pyongyang, North Korea’s state news agency declared in a news release that all “Yankees” should be “beaten to death, as a stick is fit for a rabid dog,” for persuading the United Nations to enact economic sanctions against the country.

Two affable, English-speaking diplomats in dark suits who received the Journal at Pyongyang’s new glass-fronted international airport took a more measured tone.

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A Photo Tour of North Korea’s Capital

What Wall Street Journal reporters saw during a recent visit to Pyongyang that was tightly controlled by government officials.

Children play with plastic weapons at an orphanage in Pyongyang.

John Lyons/The Wall Street Journal

Over the next few days, the supervised series of official interviews, visits to city landmarks and brief encounters with a handful of Pyongyang residents appeared to signal a rare outreach campaign by the government, which has included other U.S. news organizations, to describe what it sees as the logic of its nuclear-weapons program. The U.S. and North Korea don’t have diplomatic relations, and even informal contact between the two nations is limited.

Official reporting trips to North Korea only happen with the explicit sanction of the state, and visitors are kept under close watch. Authorities granted Journal requests to visit factories and stores, which were chosen by the government. Some requests, such as to meet two U.S. citizens detained while working at a Pyongyang university, were denied.

Handlers allowed the Journal to talk to residents encountered along the way, but translations were done by the North Koreans and it was unclear if people felt free to speak their minds.

A television in a Pyongyang bar broadcasts the announcement on Sept. 16 of a missile test-launch. Photo: Paolo Bosonin/The Wall Street Journal

North Korean officials said their weapons, which include nuclear missiles being designed to reach the U.S., were meant for defensive purposes only. They described them as necessary to end what they said was a constant threat of attack by the U.S., which has maintained troops in South Korea since 1953. The officials said they wanted to force the U.S. to coexist under a system of deterrence, much as it did with the Soviet Union in the Cold War.

The North Korean officials expressed curiosity about difficult-to-answer questions such as: Who is Mr. Trump’s chief adviser? And will Secretary of State Rex Tillerson keep his job? One official had followed the heated U.S. debate over transgender soldiers, and wondered if the U.S. had many.

The Threat From North Korea’s Missiles They were convinced the U.S. has wanted the destruction of their government since the Cold War, and reminded reporters that the U.S. designated North Korea as part of an axis of evil in 2002. They expressed chagrin at perceived U.S. slights, with Mr. Ri recalling taking offense once when a U.S. immigration officer at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport didn’t realize that the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea was North Korea, not South.

Most Washington policy makers view talk of coexistence with a nuclear-armed Pyongyang as a nonstarter. Allowing an unpredictable leader such as Kim Jong Un, who has threatened to attack the U.S., to have such capabilities is simply too risky.

North Korea has long ranked among the world’s most repressive nations. During the 1990s, the country fell into a famine that killed hundreds of thousands, even as the government diverted resources to the military. Today tens of thousands of North Koreans are believed to languish in gulags and the state allows no dissent.

Pyongyang officially denies the existence of gulags and says all of its citizens enjoy human rights. It acknowledges the famine, but blames it on U.S. sanctions and bad weather.

The entrance hall at Pyongyang’s new science library displays a large painting of former leaders Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il above an atom-shaped logo. Photo: Paolo Bosonin/The Wall Street Journal

In interviews with grocery-store employees and other workers arranged by the government, and in conversations struck up with people approached by the Journal, all said they supported the missile program and were resolved to make sacrifices if sanctions squeezed the economy.

A restaurant bartender approached by the Journal expressed pride in the country’s advancing missile capabilities after a broadcast of a Sept. 15 missile test played on a television over the bar.

“We will accomplish the final victory against the U.S.,” the bartender said. “I wish they would launch 20 or 30 missiles a day.”

Several people, including some government officials, expressed wariness of China, a longtime friend of Pyongyang that historically has opposed any talk of regime change. China supported recent steps to tighten sanctions against North Korea, and some residents said they question the quality and safety of Chinese foods and other products.

Pyongyang appeared spotless. A Korean War museum with marbled halls that supposedly takes four days to tour didn’t have a single visitor one morning. Broad avenues had sparse traffic despite the city’s three million residents. A Protestant church service had no North Korean families in it, just individuals, mostly elderly women. The sermon was an anti-American diatribe.

It is also a city undergoing a growth spurt, thanks to an economic miniboom driven by trade with China. Kim Jong Un is adding futuristic-looking skyscrapers, many built for scientists and university lecturers, plus cultural amenities including a water park. A new science-and-technology library has computer labs connected to the country’s internal internet system, which for nearly all North Koreans is cut off from the World Wide Web.

A replica of a North Korean rocket stands in the center of a new science library in Pyongyang. Photo: John Lyons/The Wall Street Journal

The Journal’s team was housed in a lavish villa of white marble and glass on the rural outskirts of Pyongyang, and was encouraged to walk the grounds freely after long reporting days. On two occasions, a guard with a rifle motioned reporters back to the villa, ending the strolls.

Propaganda is ubiquitous, from anti-U.S. posters and slogans to the constant sound of patriotic hymns, sometimes set to rock beats. The messages exalt three generations of Kim family leaders, who have stayed in power for more than seven decades by building a police state and instilling in the populace a quasi-religious devotion.

At a new ophthalmology hospital with a giant bubble window shaped like a human eye, external-affairs director Kim Un Ae said the facility was completed in six months and that supreme leader Kim Jong Un visited on May 26, 2016, during construction to give “on-the-spot guidance.”

Mr. Kim suggested changes to the hospital’s eye-shaped logo, including adding a second line to the eyebrow, the hospital’s external-affairs director said. Mr. Kim picked green as the main interior color because it soothes the eyes, and guided the glasses shop inside to organize frames by gender and price.

Time-to-completion information and dates of leaders’ on-the-spot visits were recurring themes at museums, a dolphin-show facility, a factory, hospitals and other buildings.

Elites appear to be living well. A sushi restaurant run by deceased leader Kim Jong Il’s former sushi chef serves $100 platters of raw fish. A supermarket in Kwangbok Street had products ranging from locally made tea to $70 imported Japanese whisky.

People are playing videogames on locally made smartphones that are becoming more common yet remain disconnected from the global internet. One of the Journal’s handlers said some parents worry about how much screen time their children get, much like Americans.

Solar panels have sprung up across Pyongyang, appearing on apartment balconies, providing an alternate power source for individuals and insulating them from power outages while also easing their reliance on government-supplied power.

Although the Journal’s team didn’t leave Pyongyang, foreign aid workers who have access to other parts of the country describe a strikingly different scene in the provinces. Even on the city’s outskirts, the drop-off in living standards is stark. Journal reporters saw farmers relying on ox carts in fields just a short drive from the new dolphin-show facility and science complexes.

North Korea’s economy grew 3.9% last year to around $32 billion, according to South Korea’s central bank, which makes estimates about the economy of its northern neighbor in the absence of reliable figures from Pyongyang. That is the fastest growth since 1999, according to South Korea, and may have been helped by government spending on weapons manufacturing.

The U.S. strategy is to squeeze Mr. Kim by snuffing out North Korean growth with sanctions, including limits on purchases of oil. The supervised nature of the Journal’s trip made it impossible to draw conclusions about whether Pyongyang can outlast the sanctions.

During the trip, Mr. Trump suggested in a tweet that new sanctions were causing long lines at Pyongyang gas stations.

A European aid worker in Pyongyang interviewed by the Journal said gas prices had risen significantly since November. But there were no lines at four gas stations that reporters saw while touring the city. At one station where reporters waited for 20 minutes seeking permission to take a photograph, two cars came in to fill up.

There were no lines at this Pyongyang gas station when Wall Street Journal reporters visited hours after U.S. President Donald Trump said in a Sept. 17 tweet there were long gas lines forming in North Korea. Photo: Paolo Bosonin/The Wall Street Journal

Ri Gi Song, an economist at North Korea’s Academy of Social Sciences, said North Korea was well positioned to weather sanctions after enduring them in some form or another since the end of the Korean War. Cryptically, he said the country could rely on oil-producing North Korean allies to get around the sanctions. “I’ll let you guess which,” he said. When the Journal suggested a few possible countries, including Iran and Venezuela, he smiled and repeated his answer.

What’s more, he said, the nuclear-weapons program was already allowing the country to reduce spending on conventional weapons and channel that money to economic development.

Ri Song Ho, director of the Golden Cup Trading Co. factory, stands in front of picture of himself and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, who visited the factory in 2015 and 2016. Photo: John Lyons/The Wall Street Journal

“You can’t hurt this economy with sanctions,” said Ding Jiansheng, a Chinese coal trader who lives in Pyongyang and was enjoying a musical performance by the waitresses at a bustling new Pyongyang pizza restaurant on the banks of the Taedong River. He said his coal business was thriving despite U.N. sanctions designed to stop coal sales to North Korea, though he declined to say how.

The Journal also spoke with Ri Song Ho, who directs the Golden Cup Trading Co. factory, which produces some 700 different snacks, sodas, bread and sweets, including a cake featuring a North Korean rocket ready for launch. He said his experience during the lean years of the 1990s inspired him to produce more food to offset the sanctions.

“Since we were kids, we’ve known how to find a way to make things work,” he said.

Like all companies in North Korea, the Golden Cup is state-owned. An economic policy introduced in 2013 gives managers such as Mr. Ri more decision-making power, he said, as well as the freedom to sell any surplus production directly to customers for extra profit.

Much of the building was dedicated to other activities. On a higher floor, a hallway decorated like a cave led to a large tropical-themed swimming pool featuring live banana trees.

Mr. Ri had two rooms dedicated to the two visits made by North Korea’s leader.

His conversation moved quickly from making snacks to nuclear deterrence. He was convinced that the threat of war would fade as the U.S. came to accept North Korea’s nuclear power as a fact of life.

“We now have all these nuclear weapons to defend us. I believe in a few days there will be news that will mean that the U.S. will not attack us, but I can’t say what that is,” Mr. Ri said.