Fear of attack builds on streets of Pyongyang

The diet of the residents of Pyongyang is short on rice and meat. But there's never a dearth of patriotic war music - on the radio, television, and from loudspeakers in the subways and streets.

"Little Tank Rushes Forward," anyone?

Nowadays, the morning commute in North Korea's frigid capital also includes a duck-and-cover dress rehearsal for the apocalypse.

At 10 a.m., a siren wails, and hundreds of workers in drab coats run across Kim Il Sung Square, scrambling into cavernous subway platforms 300 feet underground.

North Korea's self image - reinforced by such drills, military posters everywhere, and flickering lights, is of a fortress being starved into submission. The recent American cuts in oil shipments, and a shortfall of international aid only serve to confirm it.

Even at the General Hospital of Koryo Medicine in Pyongyang the doctors are preparing to fight America, not malnutrition.

"If Kim Jong Il calls us, I'll leave the hospital and fight in the army," says Hyon Chol, the hospital's deputy director. "A lack of food and energy does not really have an effect on our people's health," he insists.

"We want help, but we are not going to beg for peace."

This is one of the coldest winters in recent times, with the Taedong River freezing over amid temperatures as low as -6 F. The electricity shortage is apparent in classrooms where students wear coats and gloves; in apartment blocks where all elevators are out of action; and in dimly lit museums and universities.

"Please let the world know of the needs of our country," says Yun Su-chang, head of the Flood Damage Rehabilitation Committee. "Some countries, such as the United States, are trying to link food with politics. That is a flagrant violation of humanitarian principles.

In a defiantly proud country, the statement is a rare public plea by the top official for disaster prevention. That it came through the media - rather than quietly through relief workers - underscores the desperate concern of the North Korean government.

Formerly one of only two industrialized nations in Asia, North Korea has steadily regressed as natural disasters, sanctions, and calamitous policy decisions have deprived it of energy, both calories and kilowatts.

Poverty is apparent even in Pyongyang, where electricity is in such short supply that the government has closed the Children's Palace - one of the centerpieces of national culture - because it cannot heat the building.

The deprivation gets worse, further from the capital. On the road to Shinchon, an hour's drive south, cars are scarce but an endless stream of farmers, soldiers, and children walk along the rice paddies. Only one tractor is visible in one of the most important agricultural regions of North Korea. Large, open-backed trucks pass by, overflowing with people.

Page: 1 | 2