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In N. Korea, Eccentricity Well Off the Scale
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This reporter's minder seemed tormented by the question. He took a long time to formulate an answer.
"We respect our Great Leader," he said. "We don't measure the height."
The minder paused, then began again.
"We measure the size of the statue by the size of hearts of the Korean people."
Another pause. Then the minder asked, rather sheepishly, if he might go off the record. Bottom line: He didn't know.
When showing off other Kim-created structures, however, statistics about size and cost and wonderfulness spill unbidden from the mouths of minders.
At the Grand People's Study House, a wedding-cake-shaped confection of concrete that occupies much of a city block, visitors were repeatedly told these facts: The building has 600 rooms, 30 million books (including "Gone With Wind," as one guide put it) and 20 kinds of rare gemstones inlaid in the floor of a reception room dominated by a white marble statue of Kim Jong Il.
Planted liberally among the monstrous buildings honoring the revolutionary achievements of the Kims are billboards bearing photographs of a red perennial begonia called Kimjongilia. It supposedly blooms on his birthday.
Other billboards display North Korea's second national flower, an orchid called Kimilsungia.
Perhaps because of chronic power outages, Pyongyang does not seem to have stoplights.
What the capital does have -- at least when the New York Philharmonic is in town -- is female traffic cops. They were all gorgeous -- and they were all gorgeous in exactly the same way.
They wore powder-blue uniforms with fur-lined hats. With bright red lipstick and dramatic eyebrows, they looked as if they had been made up for the stage. They directed the city's sparse traffic with robotic arm movements. They looked fit and happy and often smiled at the traffic.
"They are the faces of the road, and they are chosen for their beauty and their height," a minder explained. "They cheer us up and clarify our minds."
