Opinion

Mystery Is the North's Bargaining Chip

By JULIET HINDELL

I am not in North Korea as I write about the secretive nation but I am in the other half of the Korean Peninsula. Seen from South Korea, the North is perhaps at its most mysterious.

You can't telephone Pyongyang from here; you can from Tokyo. You can't send a letter from here; you can from Japan. Television pictures of North Korea that arrive by satellite around the world don't arrive in Seoul until later and then often via shady routes. You certainly can't travel directly from South Korea to North Korea. Here, one is so near and yet so far from the North. It's a curious situation to be in.

South Koreans aren't usually allowed to visit the demilitarized zone but foreigners can go on tours. The nearest South Koreans can get to their northern neighbors is the unification observatory located on a hilltop overlooking the river that divides the North and the South. Visitors rent binoculars to look at the mysterious North, but you can't see much: a few neat-looking apartment blocks and perhaps a bit of activity, people going about their daily lives. No signs of hardship, deprivation or starvation are allowed to show.

Each side has put up huge notice boards with slogans praising the merits of its own country for the other side to read.

In the souvenir shop, you can buy North Korean liqueurs and sometimes dried locusts, a delicacy from the North.

However, other people, in China, in Japan and in the United States, have much better information about the North. They say that there are millions of people there suffering severe hunger and that this winter many will die from starvation. North Korea admits it has problems but won't let anyone see how bad they really are. But soon South Koreans may get a much closer view of the North. Several companies, including the giant Hyundai, are going to run tours to the North by boat. Visitors will go to Mount Kumgang, renowned as the most beautiful mountain on the Korean Peninsula but unknown to most South Koreans because it is over the border.

As you tour such sights you'll feel like you're helping poor North Koreans because $300 (¥40,500) per tourist will be paid to the North Korean government. But it's highly unlikely that the North will allow the tourists to see anything of the real North Korea. It is likely that the area will be cleaned up for tourism purposes. Anyone who looks hungry will be moved out.

The most likely effect of the new tours is that the North Korean mystique will increase. Not only will people believe they know something, they may even feel that North Korea is a relatively normal country. North Korea can frighten the world because no one really knows what is going on there. If that mystery is eroded, some of Pyongyang's bargaining power will disappear with it.

Shukan ST: Sept. 25, 1998

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