[Reader-list] North Korea: Empathetic memories

[Jeebesh]

dear all,

a roundabout was taken over, with a huge plasma screen and hundreds  
watched a match. seeing the fever of the world cup my neighbourhood, i  
was reminded of a text by my riend (Irina) after the world cup  
football match involving north korea. this is part of larger writing  
that she intend to do on growing up in moscow in late 60s and early  
70s. she has not shared this text with many.

the text,  illuminates the act of viewing sports in an amazing way.  
thought i will share it with you during this time of fever pitch :).

hope some of you will write something too during these days, that may  
similarly illuminate our present.

warmly

jeebesh

-----------------------------

North Korea: Empathetic memories

As I sit here in Baltimore and watch North Korea play Brazil in the  
2010 World Cup, I am trying to imagine how North Korean children are  
watching it and feeling about it. I need to recollect my own feeling  
of watching Olympic Games or World Cups in hockey  and soccer in  
Moscow in the 1970s and 1980s.

  What I want is that feeling of not knowing anything about the  
‘abroad’, not ever having an idea of how people really live there. And  
being at the same time very proud and anxious about us.

  From the few encounters with those who traveled abroad I could never  
tell what it was like there. People looked as if there would forever  
keep that secret and never tell. Most of my encounters with Soviet  
sport, party or intellectual elite who was allowed ‘outside’ were  
consumerist: their children or they themselves were actively selling  
‘stuff’. I still remember a smart art historian who sold me a t-shirt.  
She wanted to become my intellectual mentor, that did not work out  
that well. However, I bought a few things from her. It was a long,  
pale pink t-shirt, with red pattern in front, and made of very soft  
cotton. I paid about 25 roubles for it, or around 20 US dollars.  
Soviet tea shirts would cost me between 1 and 5 roubles. The same art  
historian wanted me to buy a table from her too, for 300 roubles. I  
had no money and no place for that table. Or, as one Soviet joke went,  
after that table I would have needed to acquire matching things to go  
along with it: a different chair, a different bag, a different vase, a  
different kitchen, a different mother and father, and so on. In a  
word, that table would be from a totally different life. She needed to  
raise money since she just renovated her kitchen in this new flat of  
hers in the middle of Moscow. She told me vaguely what her parents did  
for a living, but it escapes my memory. We met at the evening language  
school where I went to improve my English skills for an entry  
examination at Moscow University.

  But back to North Korea. I had no idea what life was like ‘outside’,  
even though I thought I knew it all at the time. It is only much later  
I understood that I had no idea, no matter which country I went to it  
was totally different from what I thought it was like. I was attracted  
to the ‘outside’, but in the most banal form. I wanted to know what  
people were like. Are they like from Mars? Or are they like ‘us’? I  
was looking for a sensory experience: the look, the smell, the ‘feel’.  
Most Russian movies about the Western outside / abroad were taken in  
one of the Baltic republics. I knew it was not that, it was not the  
same. I could see it on the faces of people who traveled to what was  
called “far abroad”. There was a distinction between “near  
abroad” (other socialist republics), and “far abroad” (capitalist  
countries, like Japan or England). Cuba or other relatively friendly  
countries (India, Vietnam) were somewhere in-between. ‘Normal’  
citizens, as we called them - like my parents - could not travel near,  
far, or in-between. And all those who traveled kept impression from  
their travels to themselves, or to a very few friends and family. They  
never told me, for example. Those who traveled very far abroad,  
especially to capitalist countries, did not share. They only sold  
‘stuff’.

  Watching games that were played in those far away countries was both  
painful and exciting. To know, that one would never be in all those  
places that one could see and that are described in books, was very  
strange. In a way, the fact that it was not only a matter of money,  
but simply, of existential impossibility, helped. One blocks it out  
and does not long for traveling. It is not a matter of being able to  
afford to travel. Travel abroad was not an option. That is why when I  
heard that many children in other socialist countries could travel  
abroad and many studied abroad, I felt betrayed. They cannot possibly  
understand what I am talking about, if they had friends or relatives  
who sent their kids to German or Italian ‘summer school,’ or to do  
their university studies in the UK, for example! It did not happen in  
the USSR. Poor me.

  This idea – that one would never see anything that one reads about  
in books, colors life and a sense of the rest of the world. Now my  
family can travel to most places, it is only a matter of money, like  
for most people in the world. They chose not to, or they chose to go.  
For North Koreans it is not about money. At least, not only about  
money. I feel for them. I feel how they feel. Actually, it is not bad,  
not bad at all, when it is not only a matter of money. Then parents do  
not feel guilty that they cannot send their children to see the world,  
to summer schools in Italy. And families do not feel poor that they  
cannot afford few hundred dollars in their own currency for a  
sightseeing tour abroad. That’s the only good thing I can think about  
in this situation.

  Recently in a café in Baltimore I saw, once again, the same look of  
surprise and wonder on the face of a man. He was talking on the phone  
in Russian and I could see that he was still stunned. He is still  
surprised that he is sitting in Baltimore in a café in 2010. He was  
about my age, and probably, from my family background, like most of  
the country was. He was stunned and he was not at all ‘secretive’  
about his feelings. Those secretive types are different. Even today  
you see those Russian speaking travelers who look somewhat secretive  
about being abroad. They look like they are afraid that someone can  
take it away from them if they relax and are not anxious. The hand of  
Moscow will reach them anywhere, they are afraid. They buy property  
all over the world in secret, or in a discreet manner. One finds out  
that ‘there is another apartment in San Diego’ only after a few  
meetings, in a more ‘trusted’ conversation with a fellow country woman  
who does not have any connections with ‘elite’ or ‘mafia’.

  But the feeling of being ‘stunned’, not sure how to translate a  
Russian word obaldet’, in the comrades of mine are similar to how, I  
imagine, ordinary North Koreans would feel if suddenly the floodgates  
of hell would open, and North Korean government would tell them: do  
whatever you want with your bodies. Take them out of the country, if  
you want. It is a feeling that cannot be described. Many of us who end  
up in this ‘far abroad’ have to pinch ourselves once in a while,  
wonderous and, sadly, being always ready to loose it all. Therefore,  
don’t be too harsh on those Russian speaking travelers who are out of  
their mind when they are abroad. They still cannot believe it. They  
are overwhelmed more by their own country (?) allowing them to go and  
come back as they please. We are a dying breed, however. We forget  
that feeling of existential ‘never far abroad travel’ situation, and  
younger generation does not understand what I am talking about. We are  
evolving, and give us another ten years, and we will be like everybody  
else. Just one more group of people who, for various reasons, travel:  
some very bad, some not so bad (I am joking, there are good reasons  
too). May be, next time I am in Moscow, they will not let me out. But  
who cares? It has all already happened. In this short life of mine the  
point was never to leave. I was never one of those who wanted to  
leave. But the point is to leave when one wants to, or needs to, to be  
able come and go, be here and there, to not be that person who knows  
that it’s simply never ever going to happen.

  But how I feel for North Koreans today! I do. And now they scored  
one goal against Brazil’s two goals. I am very proud for them, for the  
ones who watch it at home.

  Irina Aristarkhova