I first visited North Korea in 2009. I bear in mind feeling nervous and anxious within the days and weeks main as much as the journey. I had grown up pondering of solely the south as my homeland, and the north appeared distant and overseas. This was additionally the identical yr that United States journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee had been detained in North Korea, often known as the Democratic Folks’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), and I bear in mind colleagues half-joking saying issues like, “Hope you come again!” One other individual in my North American delegation, additionally of Korean descent, had been subjected to a household intervention, together with her mom pleading together with her to not go.
I went as a part of a program organized by Nodutdol for Korean Neighborhood Growth, the DPRK Training and Publicity Program, of which I’m a member. The mission of this program was explicitly political: to create people-to-people connections with North Koreans and demystify the dehumanizing depiction of North Korea as a harmful place that’s populated by a brainwashed populace without human emotions.
However nobody else has been in a position to take part within the Nodutdol program since journey to North Korea was banned below former President Trump in 2017, leading to Nodutdol suspending its program. On August 23, President Joe Biden renewed Trump’s ban for one more yr. The State Division cited North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile applications as the rationale.
Dehumanizing a individuals by depicting them as brainwashed, and their management as irrational, is a time-honored observe in manufacturing consent for battle. Now we have seen this play out tragically in Iraq, Libya, and extra. These journeys to North Korea enabled individuals from the U.S. — a rustic that also stays technically at battle with North Korea — to satisfy instantly with North Koreans and look at firsthand elements of life in North Korea. It lays the essential groundwork for a real peace.
North Korea’s nuclear program, claims about its human rights file and the previous detention of U.S. residents are generally cited as causes to isolate North Korea. But reducing off engagement and diplomacy with North Korea finally leaves us blind to the realities there, and perpetuates U.S. assumptions that it’s solely we who’ve one thing to show North Koreans and nothing to study from them in flip. It additionally forecloses the potential for peaceable decision on any challenge, regardless of how small or massive.
I had been conditioned to think about North Korea via the lens of concern, and it was laborious to dismiss my emotions of tension. But instantly upon touchdown in Pyongyang, I used to be confronted with direct proof that my fears had been unfounded as we interacted with North Korean customs officers and met our guides. In actual fact, upon seeing one in every of our guides, our coordinator rushed to offer him an enormous hug, excited that he was accompanying us once more this yr.
When instantly confronted with experiences that had been mundane and unremarkable, quite than heightened and imbued with a vaguely sinister air, I used to be in a position to put apart manufactured fears and interact with individuals on an on a regular basis degree. Our experiences with our guides particularly confirmed the distinction between the widespread depiction of guides as a constraint and our expertise with our guides as invaluable sources who offered perception and facilitated our engagement with the individuals we met.
We visited a maternity hospital, a Buddhist temple, an orphanage and a farm. We went on walks alongside the Taedong River, unaccompanied by guides, and met aged North Koreans doing their morning workout routines. We met with college students, farmers, manufacturing facility employees and lecturers. We had random interactions with North Koreans dwelling their on a regular basis lives: In the future, a bunch of us was standing outdoors of our lodge, chatting casually to one another. It was rush hour, so individuals had been heading residence from their jobs, and schoolchildren had been presumably on their solution to some after faculty exercise. Most overlooked us, however out of nowhere, a bunch of three schoolchildren, possibly 8 years previous, took one have a look at us and mentioned enthusiastically, “Howdy!” and “How are you?” in excellent English. We responded “Nice! Howdy!” They giggled at us and saved strolling, pink scarves marking them as youth.
Our assembly with college students at Kim Chaek College of Expertise stands out. We had been ushered right into a room with a number of chairs. After introductions, every of us wound up sitting amongst a bunch of scholars to have smaller, extra intimate conversations. The intention was not solely to know them higher, however to additionally share about our personal lives and experiences.
In my group, everybody was actually pleasant and eager to listen to from me, and I bear in mind one scholar particularly being actually pleasant and good at retaining the dialog going. This isn’t my power, and I used to be grateful. I shared particulars about my household and day by day life and heard about their households and experiences as college students. Then, the pleasant scholar requested me, “What do individuals consider North Korea?” I hesitated, embarrassed. I recalled my nervousness previous the journey and had been in Pyongyang for lengthy sufficient to know that my reply would sound ridiculous. “They instructed me to watch out, that it’s harmful right here.”
The scholars weren’t shocked or shocked at my reply, however they had been saddened. They requested me to inform individuals about my experiences. This can be a chorus we heard at lots of our website visits: “Inform individuals what you noticed.” At no level was I requested to color North Korea in a specific gentle or to say solely good issues. They solely requested me to share my experiences.
After I was again on the airport 11 days later, I felt the burden of leaving one thing behind. I bear in mind tearfully saying goodbye to our guides and bus driver, and once we handed via the boarding checkpoint, the airport official smiled at my teary face and instructed me to come back again quickly.
In June this yr, the fifth yr of the journey ban, Nodutdol launched an open letter to President Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken, signed by 64 organizations, demanding that they elevate the ban on journey to North Korea. We additionally despatched greater than 1,000 signed postcards to the State Division demanding the identical.
The letter states:
The displacement and separation of Koreans as a individuals since 1945 are a direct results of the division of the homeland by overseas powers and the continuing Korean Warfare…. To determine peace in Korea, we should proceed to have interaction in direct, in-person relationship-building. Separation creates alienation, whereas reciprocal change fosters understanding. The journey ban prevents us from pursuing these peaceable and diplomatic connections. Earlier than the 2017 journey ban, we organized common journeys to North Korea the place we delivered medical support to hospitals and fostered heat relationships and in-person kinship networks with the individuals of North Korea. We additionally supported separated members of the family in reuniting with family members and facilitated translation and logistics. These journeys forge important pathways in direction of peace on the Korean peninsula and within the Asia Pacific area. Lifting the journey ban will permit us to go to the northern a part of our homeland once more, deepen our kinship networks, and additional our peace work.
With out peacebuilding efforts like these, tensions between North Korea and the U.S. and South Korea will proceed to escalate, as we see with the U.S.’s current Nuclear Consultative Group (NCG) with South Korea through which the nations plan “for contingencies on the peninsula that might involve nuclear use.” The NCG, Biden’s extension of the journey ban, the continuation of war games, and the formation of a trilateral security agreement between the U.S., Japan and South Korea all inflame tensions on the peninsula. What all this factors to is the truth that the armistice is precarious; the Korean Warfare should be formally delivered to an finish if we’re to maneuver towards peace and justice on the Korean Peninsula.
My go to to North Korea in 2009 was transformative. I grew to become conscious of the fact that my homeland encompassed the entire peninsula, not simply the south. I returned in 2011, 2013 and 2015, every time as a part of Nodutdol’s program. Narratives about North Korea have change into skewed within the U.S., and North Korea is ceaselessly invoked in popular culture as a stand-in for one thing weird and utterly overseas.
These journeys by themselves received’t create peace. However they’re a vital a part of the bigger spectrum of peace efforts, small and enormous, to make sure that the tragedy of lively battle on the peninsula not start anew.
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