Remembering the “There Is No Spoon” Tour Posted by The Editors

This post by Price Floyd, who served at the U.S. Department of State from 1989 until 2007.

Yesterday's passing of DPRK leader Kim Jung Il has brought back memories of Secretary Albright’s visit to North Korea in October of 2000. I was on the advance team that arrived a week before the Secretary and stayed until the day after she left.

The title of this blog refers to a quote from The Matrix movie which had just come out the year before and highlights the fact that nothing we saw was authentic or “real.” (For the film clip, see here.)

We arrived in the capitol of Pyongyang via multiple cars and vans that we drove across the DMZ from South Korea. Each of our vehicles had any South Korean or western writing and/or images covered up with tape. This included the license plates and even the Chevy symbols on the car hoods. 

We saw the massive defensive works put in place by the North to thwart any invasion by South Korea -– huge cement boulders that could be rolled into the road way, giant anti-tank barriers, etc. During the entire drive from the DMZ to the capitol there were thousands of people digging a trench along the road with wooden shovel –- not sure why. Not one of them turned around to look at our motorcade, even though we were the only vehicles on the road.

When we arrived at our hotel and checked in, I met a Russian hotel guest who was grateful for our visit as they now had electricity and hot water for the first time since he had been there –- he noted that the power had been turned on the day before our arrival.

We then began a series of visits to a circus (where they used an electric cattle prod to get a bear to “dance,” a dance performance at a fairly small theater, visit to the Great Leaders Mausoleum and a visit to a kindergarten class. We demurred on the need to bring the Secretary to the bear “dance” and the visit to the mausoleum (but I have to admit the glass sarcophagus was pretty cool looking) and had settled on most of the visit being all business and bilateral meetings.

Here is a list of some of the highlights of what actually happened:

When the Secretary’s plane arrived all the reporters had their satellite phones confiscated since the DPRK officials didn’t want uncontrolled information getting out of the country.  NOTE: These were returned after negotiations.

Bilateral meetings did take place and happened at their own pace and schedule.

After several rounds of meetings a senior staff member emerged from the talks and said that the sides had agreed to attend that nights performance of what was described as a gymnastic exhibition at the local stadium.

I was dispatched along with the other advance officer to reconnoiter the site and make sure there all was as it was supposed to be. What we found was a huge stadium filled with tens of thousands of North Koreans practicing what seemed to be cheers. On one side of the stadium directly across from the official seating area there was an entire section devoted to a massive flip card display that rotated through hydroelectric power images (not sure what the fascination is among pseudo-Marxist with hydroelectric power), launching of their latest missile –- the Taepo-dong I think -- and various other impressive totalitarian images.

We could not communicate back to the Secretary’s party as the North Koreans wouldn’t allow us to have repeaters so they wouldn’t work and at the time there was no cell phone coverage in country. Secretary Albright arrived and we sat through what seemed like hours of precision marching, goose stepping, etc… all set to ear piercing traditional North Korean Marxist music (at least it sounded traditional to me).

I also negotiated the return of a camera from NBC Correspondent Andrea Mitchell’s production team as they had gone walking around town without their “minder” and took pictures of people walking out of a barber shop.  Tisk-tisk.

Then there was the final press conference by Secretary Albright. I was standing outside the location and it was pitch black outside as there were no street lights that I could see.  Suddenly, when the Secretary was about five minutes away the street lights did come on.  Then the outside lights of the building across the street, and finally the traffic lights came on (remember there are no cars on the roads). All of a sudden the entire scene looked like a perfectly normal downtown city anywhere in the world. The only problem is that it hadn’t existed five minutes before then.

And the highlight: I was asked to be the protocol person since we had not brought someone to perform those duties. I stood between Secretary Albright and Kim Jung Il as our interpreter explained to the Dear Leader what our gift -– a basketball signed by all of the Chicago Bulls. The Dear Leader seemed appropriately impressed. I can’t remember what his gift was to Secretary Albright as I was intent on not dropping the basketball.

In short while I have no idea what will happen next in North Korea, if past is prologue, what that regime wants to have happen will play a large role.

Photo: Flickr

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