5-21-06, 9:30 am
Editor's note: We present here the fourth installment of a four part extended memoir by Philip Bonosky on a trip he took to Asia in the late 1950s. This portion focuses on his brief stay in North Korea in the summer of 1959. The full essay was written during and immediately after the trip, and parts of it may no longer reflect the author's thinking. It is, however, important for its recording of historical information generally ignored by mainstream sources.
For Part I, click here For Part II, click here For Part III, click here
–11–
We said goodbye to our chairman, and rode further on to Mankyungdai Agricultural Cooperative which was the birth-place of Kim Il Sung. The cottage in which he was born and the grounds around it had been preserved by the government, and we stopped off to visit it.
We got out on a road being repaired by workers, and went down an embankment at the foot of which stood a horse on a tether. Then, following a footpath along tall corn, we came to a compound of cottages in one of which Kim Il Sung had been born and had passed his childhood. It was a modest cottage, and obviously it lacked the original objects which surrounded him in his childhood. A museum of his childhood and manhood was attached to the cottages and the entire set was to be contained inside the building. I understood eventually. The grave of his mother was nearby.
We walked about, but there was actually not too much to see. The photographs on the walls were the same I had already seen elsewhere and would see again. The fact of the matter was that the material for museums was still quite meager, and I would learn later that even the photographs of the war were not abundant. Apparently, the American penchant for photographing everything at all times had not become the custom in Korea.
On the way back to PyongYang, we stopped again to visit the fields where we came upon soldiers who were working there. In fact, the military in Korea can be just as accurately described as work battalions. You would come upon them marching along the road, singing lustily, and carrying over their shoulders, not rifles, but shovels.
The women worked often with their children bound to their backs. Once I saw a woman bend over slightly, her child take a running leap on her back, where she caught him with both hands and then efficiently bound him with a wide cloth. One would catch glimpses of children riding on their mother’s back, their heads lolling this way and that, and their eyes shut tight in sleep! In Korea too we saw naked children standing in doorways of huts or along the roadside and when I commented on this to Sung Chung, he said, with some pain: 'We are still at low cultural level…'
We drove into Pyonyang along Stalin Boulevard. Past the single large tree that seemed to have survived the bombing, and into our hotel. The waitresses with their high-waisted skirts wore sandals with turned up toes, like fairy children, and glided noiselessly as they worked.
Sung Chun wanted to order food for me that he felt I was accustomed to; but I wanted typical Korean food, which he promised to get for me before I left finally. He asked me what I ate at home, and I gave him a typical day’s eating. For breakfast, I said, I usually had only coffee; but most Americans had boiled or fired eggs, with toast, bacon or ham, butter or jam, and sometimes cereals; for lunch, I had usually a hamburger, though others had far more than I; but for dinner I often had steak, which I could afford only because I skimped on breakfast and lunch. With the steak I had a salad and a baked potato. Later, I would learn that on the pretext of asking out of curiosity what I ate, he had extracted information form me to guide hi in choosing my meals.
I couldn’t convince him that I didn’t want my home-town meals duplicated here; since I was in Korea I preferred to eat Korean food, but he told me that he was sure I wouldn’t like it.
The dining room filled up with foreigners. There were Russians, with their families, and their blond-headed, full-bodied women that entered the room seemed like visitors form another planet, judged solely on physical grounds. Korean women, like Chinese, are petite. They are instinctively graceful, and wear no cosmetics, nor western styles.
There were also Germans here, Chinese Mongolians (my friends on the plane), Hungarians as well as visitors form the Arab states.
A visiting troupe of Chinese arrived somewhat later, about 100 or more of them – variety artists – and I was able to make on-the-spot comparisons between the two peoples; and saw of course, immediately what differences existed between them. The Chinese seemed to be built on a much slighter physical scale, with more delicate features than the Koreans (I am comparing the men); not as tall, nor are their facial characteristics as pronouncedly Indian as the Koreans. They seemed far more exquisite, somehow, with individual cases that had the physical perfection of dolls, almost unbelievable in their beauty and sensitivity. The women, of course, had that flower-like fragility that seems to me to be the quality of the bloom on a peach or plum, almost like a breath. They were exquisite poetic creatures, who, if they had to, and many had, would go out on the instant and pick up a gun and kill any invader. Of course these were artists, but I saw this same exquisite quality in the women working in textile mills and factories everywhere in China. The Korean women are not like that, though how to explain and catch the difference is really beyond me. Sung Chun was an admirer of beauty, and passed rather harsh judgments on the waitresses. I asked him about his own wife, and he told me that she was not beautiful but was very intelligent – a rather comfortless combination I felt, like a consolation quality.
–12–
The Hungarian basketball team had arrived in Pyonyang for a series of games, and I asked Sung Chun and Comrade Kim to make sure that we saw the game. They promised to get tickets. I asked Sung Chun how good the Koran team was, and very confidently he told me it was the best; and when I asked him whether he thought they would win next day, he had no doubts about it.
'Yes!' he said.
'Would you like to make a small bet?'
We didn’t make any bet, but I was afraid for Sung Chun that he was riding for a fall. I didn’t know anything about the Korean team, but I did know something about those Hungarians by just looking at them. They were tall and their huge hands fitted over the basketball as though over an apple. The Koreans have not had enough time yet to develop athletics to a high level, although their soccer team had been quite good. The Hungarians had played in China, just previous to coming to Korea, where they had done not too well; but then the Chinese are marvelously talented basketball players, as they are ping pong players, swimmers, runners, etc; and if they ever enter the Olympics word records will certainly begin to fall left and right!
I went to bed that night, closing the window though it was hot because, almost continuously, groups of workers marched past singing working songs, on their way to construction sites. Even with the window closed I could hear them singing.
We set out for the basketball game after lunch. It was hot and a bit of a hot wind was blowing. I kept leading Sung Chun far out on the limb as we rode. Yes, he was firmly convinced the Korean team would win; he brushed my skepticism aside without ceremony.
We had trouble at the stadium, for there had been a mixup about the tickets. So we stood awhile in the underpass and watched luckier people go in. Finally the thing was straightened out, though we had no reserved seats. The basketball court had been erected on the side of the huge playing field, and wind drove gusts of dust across it form time to time. The sun was hot, and when we settled finally on the stone bleachers, the stone was so hot it made me squirm on my haunches, just as though I was sitting, as I was, on a hot seat.
The whole town had come out to see the game. The sun shone bright in our eyes and I held a straw fan up over them. On the wooden court some utility players were tossing the ball about. Television cameras were trained on the court. Hungarian and Korean flags tossed in the wind. Gusts of dust rose form the end of the field and came charging down to the court and there swirled and danced and were off again.
Suddenly the loudspeakers opened up with the national anthems of Korea and Hungary, and the athletes marched forward on the field holding bouquets of flowers. A little ceremony took place in which the Korean players handed bouquets to the Hungarian, shook hands and at a signal both teams ran the court and started a practice session.
I looked over at carefully and shook my head. 'I’m afraid,' I said to Sung Chun. The Korean players wee taller than I expected, but compared to the Hungarian they looked much too slim, though weight is not decisive in basketball. Also the Koreans seemed to me not skillfully trained, as the Hungarians certainly were, as I could tell. Although I was no basketball expert, I’d played basketball and liked the game very much.
Well, it began, and it wasn’t too long before it became obvious to everyone that the Koreans were outclassed. The Hungarians were a well-trained team; the Koreans depended far too much on individual talent. The Hungarians kept the Koreans away form the basket and forced them into long shots, while they themselves took the ball right up to the basket and made their points from inside the foul line.
I stole glances at both Comrade Kim and particularly Sung Chun. Sung Chun had not yet given up hope, and his eyes danced whenever a Korean player made a good shot; on the other hand he was suffering too, as the Hungarians took point after point. The suffering was of a special sort, by the way; for Sung Chun’s partisanship for his own team collided with his internationalist obligations and no matter how much he rooted for his home team he had to temper it with recognition that the Hungarians were socialists too. But for all that he wanted his team to win – badly; he suffered keenly as they kept losing all the time. So did the other fans, and I could feel in them that terrible yearning to win, to do something distinctive, although they were used to and reconciled to failure, or loss, as all subject peoples are, as the Negro people are in the United States. I felt in the Koreans here, were the underdogs, that special kind of passion that I often felt among Negroes when they watched Joe Louis fight or other Negroes take part in some other kind of contest. After a while I caught myself, and found myself hoping that somehow the miracle would take place, and those slim Koreans would manage to outwit the big, blonde and powerful Hungarians.
The Hungarians were determined to play clean ball, to remain courteous and even generous, and when incidents occurred – as a couple did – they made sure that tempers stayed under control and everybody acted the comrade, remembering that they were also ambassadors of their country.
So, when the end inevitably came, with the sun falling quickly over the horizon and the wind dying with it, there were handshakes and hugs and good fellowship all around; but still their were victors and vanquished.
On the way back I couldn’t resist saying to Sung Chun: 'You know, it’s not enough just to be Korean; you’ve got to be able to play to!'
He agreed – a bit glumly.
The final score turned out to be: Hungarians 70, Koreans 50.
When I was a boy and we played a hard game and lost – we wept bitter tears. Nobody cried that night, but when we saw the Hungarians again at dinner – and they stayed at the same hotel – they looked fresh and bright and triumphant. They were to tour the country and then come back for another game, and I told Sung Chun I wanted to see the return match.
This was the one and only time that Sung Chun ever turned on me and forgot his duty. He said to me: 'You can go – I’ll take you there. But I won’t stay for the game.'
I looked at him and laughed and accused him of cowardice and teased him. But he was adamant. No, he would not see the return match; that was final. (He was right, as it turned out; the Hungarians won the return match, too.)
–13–
Sung Chun had progressed so far in his mastery of English – in his own estimation – that he had started translating an American novel in Korean. He saw a golden opportunity in me to resolve some of the problems he had encountered, mostly to do with unusual words, proverbs, slang, idioms. He was never to untangle the remark: 'It’s an ill wind that blows no good.' Nor could he quite catch what I meant when I’d say suddenly to him in the early afternoon: 'Well, let’s call it a day.' When he looked puzzled, I added: 'We’ve done enough work for a full day, so let’s just assume it is a full day, even though it’s only three o’clock.' He had to go along, since I was the 'honored guest' and besides which, his 'teacher.'
As his teacher I ran into problems I hadn’t anticipated. He came to me one afternoon with an open book and his finger placed on it. 'what is this?' he asked, the responsible student.
'Oh, well,' I said, 'I don’t think you want to know that word.'
'Fock. Fock,' he repeated thoughtfully.
'Besides, you’re pronouncing it wrong,' I corrected him, the compulsive teacher that I was. The notorious 'f' word – here it was in its original innocence! I suddenly felt embarrassed and about to enter into some kind of perversion, some violation of innocence.
'I’ll make a bargain with you,' I said. 'If you tell me the Korean word for it, I’ll tell you the American.'
He shook his head firmly. 'That is the first Korean word every foreigner wants to know,' he said.
'You mean to tell me,' I said, shocked, 'that your women are so susceptible that they give in to anyone whosays the word to them?' (The image of those husky blonde models of male virility, the Hungarian basketball players, flashed across my mind.)
Sung Chun was outraged. 'Our Korean women are virtuous!' he declaimed.
'Do you think that’s why I didn’t ask you?' I said.
Sung Chun shook his head, already my defender.
'I’m married and the father of two children,' I heard myself saying virtuously.
Sung Chun accepted my disavowal.
We finally struck a bargain. He would tell me the vital Korean word only at the airport on my way out of the country, and we left it at that. I didn’t know finally whether to b flattered or insulted. In any case he neglected to tell me the word, whether in potential defense of the virtue of Korean womanhood, or as a political act in general, I would never know. But this I would know: The Korean people as a whole have every right at independence, free of the murderous interference of the monumental hypocrites of all time, the US imperialist would-be rulers of the world.
For Part I, click here For Part II, click here For Part III, click here
--Philip Bonosky is a contributing editor of Political Affairs, a former international correspondent for the People’s World, and the author of several books including Afghanistan: Washington’s Secret War, Brother Bill McKie: Building the Union at Ford (International Publishers), the novels Burning Valley (University of Illinois Press) and The Magic Fern (International Publishers), and two collections of short stories.
