I haven't played hide-and-seek since I was a little girl, but I had plenty of opportunity to do so during my brief visit to Pyongyang in North Korea. My playmates were Hanyong, my official North Korean "escort" for the 36 hours I was in the country, and a lady in a purple two-piece suit whose name I never did find out. Hanyong is a handsome, 25year-old languages lecturer who teaches students Thai in the foreign college in Pyongyang.
At least that is what he told me. This cheerful, extremely likeable individual was one of 25 men assigned to "escort" the 75 journalists covering the visit of an EU delegation to this reclusive state last week. Each "minder", all dressed in dark suits and crisp white shirts, was responsible for three journalists. Hanyong had good English and made it clear that I was never to leave the hotel without him. The Koryo is one of three hotels that Western visitors are confined to in Pyongyang.
I will be in the lobby at all times just in case you need anything", he said. North Korea is one of the last remaining Stalinist regimes and is ruled by the Kim dynasty. The founder dictator was Kim il-Sung, who was succeeded on his death in by his son, Kim Jong-il. Kim il-Sung is still described as the president and is spoken of in the present tense by his devoted followers, which is everyone in North Korea. Journalists are rarely allowed into the country, which is in an economic mess and which has been gripped by famine since the mids, a food crisis that has gone largely unreported.
I told Hanyong I was going for lunch to the third-floor restaurant. I hopped into the lift, went to the third floor and immediately pressed the ground floor button again. I walked out of the lift to the hotel entrance and turned right. I hadn't a clue where I was going. Ignoring the dark-suited men wearing sunglasses dotted every 20 yards or so along the street I made my way into a department store.
The shop was virtually empty. Scores of assistants were standing around surrounded by ancient stock. In the footwear department there were hundreds of children's shoes, all plastic and all in the same size, lined up on racks. But no one to buy them. The scene was the same on each floor, and I ventured out again. I could see Hanyong rushing towards me in the distance and I ran and turned left, happy I had given him the slip again.
