It’s unsettling to hear ordinary North Koreans talk of war with calm acceptance.
Pyongyang, North Korea — North Korea’s capital city is awash in propaganda. Posters depicting missiles, some striking the United States Capitol, hang along major streets. In recent days, a million civilians, including high school students, factory workers and older men who long ago completed their military service, have signed up at the government’s request to fight the United States, if needed.
“The situation on the Korean Peninsula is on the eve of the breakout of nuclear war,” Choe Kang-il, a senior Foreign Ministry official told me and three Times colleagues during a visit last week. Does that mean war is inevitable? “I think it depends on the attitude of the United States,” he replied.
There is no sign of any unusual military mobilization in Pyongyang or along the perpetually tense border with South Korea to suggest imminent conflict. American, North Korean and South Korean soldiers stand duty as usual at the demilitarized zone separating the sides since the 1950-53 Korean War, and tourists, as well as journalists like us, still visit there.
Yet as Washington and Pyongyang confront each other over the North’s advancing nuclear weapons capability, the warlike rhetoric is escalating and, with it, the risk of conflict. After four days in North Korea, I am not at all sure that this standoff will end well.
It was unsettling to hear ordinary North Koreans talk of war with calm acceptance and buy their government’s propaganda happy talk about certain victory over the United States. We also heard some people say that while they hate the American government, they harbor no ill will toward Americans and would prefer to live in peace. One woman was nearly in tears describing her mixed feelings about the United States.
I have been writing about North Korea since 1992, when President George H. W. Bush’s administration held the United States’ first meeting with Pyongyang since the Korean War to discuss what was then an incipient nuclear program. I had long wanted to visit. What made it possible now is that North Korea, the world’s least transparent country, has decided to embark on a charm offensive, inviting major American news organizations on separate visits this year to learn more about its economic and political goals.
