North Korea

SECTIONCODE: 36-food- UTT
SECTION: food
SUBSECTION: Under the table
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P/Q: A culture is best experienced through its food I’m told. But I’m still miles away from understanding, and miles away from Pyongyang.
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TEXT:
A funny thing happened on the way to North Korea. Two American journos were caught sneaking into the Hermit Kingdom and sentenced to 12 years in a hard labour camp. I have a slight obsession with North Korea and these idiots were the reason why my visa was revoked. Like a spoilt child, I wanted to throw something.
I was looking forward to a weekend of feasting on small abalone from the East Sea of Korea –while the rest of the country starves; I wanted to stuff my face with pine needle mushroom – picked by hard labour prisoners; I wanted to eat dog. But most of all, I wanted to indulge in commie kitsch.
So with purchased tickets to my departure city of Beijing, I go for some solo commie fun. In BJ, I decide to stay clear from Peking Duck, boiled dumplings and all those delicious red bean pan cakes that have upped my pants size on previous trips, instead I contact the North Korea embassy for a list of North Korean restaurants in the Red Capital. A list of three names reverted to me, diners all owned by the embassy itself. The internet turned up a half-dozen more.
Pyongyang Haedanghwa is the most well-known of the bunch, and I thought I’d start my commie 101 class there. Inside, my cellphone was not blocked, but calls would cut off after the first words were spoken. It was so comical I would multi-call my friend to split out one word each time. My itinerary of restaurants tucked inside a plain manila folder was pulled out of my hand and examined upon entry by pretty hostesses in traditional hot pink robes. “Where are you from?” one host asked me in three languages.
The thing you need to know about these girls is that they are spies. Ok, those are incriminating words. These government officials’ daughters and nieces are hand-picked, given intelligence training and the pretty ones get shipped out to Beijing on a three-year rotation to work in their restaurants. A bus drops them off in the morning, and a bus picks them up at night. They live together. Once in a while, they take group excursions around the city, but they are never to interact with foreigners except when working. They are the lucky ones.
“I’m from Hong Kong,” I reply. “You skin is very tan. Hong Kong women like white skin, you are really from Hong Kong? You look like ABC, a little bit,” she says right on. “Say something Chinese,” my dinner companion urged. It slipped my mind that North Koreans are not very friendly with Americans, just Bill Clinton. But I just smile.
There was the dining room, and there was the state’s dining room. The positioning of each table tells a story of where on the important scale you rank. We were sat by the kitchen entrance, how does that translate?
Two men in grey boxy suits with mandarin collars sporting the fashionable cut of the day, the Kim Jong Il, strolled by and I whipped out my camera. Before I could even position myself, it was ripped from my hands. “No photo,” our hostess said sternly, smiling. I assume I’ll get that back.
They uncomfortably surround me as I jot thoughts in my notebook. “Personal space is not exercised here” I write in BIG letters. My companion was thoroughly embarrassed or scared, I couldn’t tell from his facial expression.
A seashell came out on a flame. Sliced Korea turbo fish and shitake cooked in a fragrant broth boiled inside and we were instructed to eat it very quickly. Our host was never far from the table. She knew I was up to no good. An assortment of kim chee came out. This looked like kim chee served at any Korean meal, but its taste was more sour than heat, more fresh then pickled. And when the mild-tasting kalbi came out I understood why. They don’t use MSG. Since they don’t trade much with foreign purveyors, MSG is probably not a common kitchen item like it is in South Korea.
In the next room, I heard singing, spinning Korean girls entertain dignities. They get the full show of dancing, piri (Korean flute) playing, and who knows what else. I didn’t see a picture of Kim Jong Il anywhere, and as if my dining companion read my mind, he said as a deal with Beijing, they cannot put up a mural of their leader here. But they did have pleasant oil paintings of vistas and happy families by the winter lake. It was all the commie fun I had wished for and more. The dog meat and steamed dog trotters were not the highlight. This was a cross of The List; this was a one-bite curiosity—satisfied.
There were lots of pine nuts, pine tree mushroom and corn noodles served. This special corn and soybean noodle is said to delay hunger, a gift from the Japanese. After one bowl of cold noodles I was still left hankering to taste more of what North Korea had to offer. And when I asked for the menu for round two, the waitress looked at our table dotted with half-eaten plates and said, “No waste.”
That was when I was reminded of the people of North Korea and its leader who threatens the world with nukes –all for a bag of potato to feed his happy, dancing, singing people. Who was this wasteful American who infiltrated their dining room, whose presence in this restaurants challenged their commie ways, and what rights does she have to comment on their way of life without having faced hardship herself? A culture is best experienced through its food I’m told. But I’m still miles away from understanding, and miles away from Pyongyang. And with complimentary bowls of sweeten red bean congee, I thanked the host in my most gracious Cantonese.