It's terrible that I haven't been before, as it really is just a five minute drive from English Village, past our local shops and love motels, across the highway. It's so close that from the top of the observatory, we can see our Hollywood-style sign beyond the village.
Odusan was built to promote the idea of reunification of the two Koreas, an idea popular in the media and with politicians, but often scoffed at by southerners more concerned with whether the economy would suffer if combined with the poor North. The observatory looks over the confluence of two rivers, gazing towards North Korea.
The main attraction is an observation deck with bright orange binoculars through which it's possible to make out the Propaganda Village on the other side of the river. Unfortunately, the binoculars were too low even for my short frame, so poor Harry really struggled...
The Propaganda Village was built by the North Koreans for the purpose of showing South Koreans what they were missing out on. It boasts high-rise apartment buildings and enormous signs beseeching southerners to cross over to paradise. There used to be loudspeakers blaring propaganda as well, matched by loudspeakers on the southern side, until the governments agreed to remove them all for the sake of sanity. Unfortunately, the government forgot (or was unable) to fill the village with people. The buildings are grey concrete, and the glass-less windows stare blankly over fields and unused schools. North Koreans are apparently brought in every day to work the rice paddies, and at dusk, they're driven back to their real homes. The buildings visible to us on this slightly hazy day included mansions with such glorious names as "The Anti-South Media Propaganda Base", "Kim Il-Sung Historical Monument Hall" and "People's Cultural Assembly Hall". Small figures worked in the fields, burning rubbish and preparing for spring planting. I made out what seemed to be a primary school, but the courtyard was empty of children and the swings lonely.
The Propaganda Village was built by the North Koreans for the purpose of showing South Koreans what they were missing out on. It boasts high-rise apartment buildings and enormous signs beseeching southerners to cross over to paradise. There used to be loudspeakers blaring propaganda as well, matched by loudspeakers on the southern side, until the governments agreed to remove them all for the sake of sanity. Unfortunately, the government forgot (or was unable) to fill the village with people. The buildings are grey concrete, and the glass-less windows stare blankly over fields and unused schools. North Koreans are apparently brought in every day to work the rice paddies, and at dusk, they're driven back to their real homes. The buildings visible to us on this slightly hazy day included mansions with such glorious names as "The Anti-South Media Propaganda Base", "Kim Il-Sung Historical Monument Hall" and "People's Cultural Assembly Hall". Small figures worked in the fields, burning rubbish and preparing for spring planting. I made out what seemed to be a primary school, but the courtyard was empty of children and the swings lonely.
The river is currently full of ice floating out to sea. A couple of weeks ago it was almost completely frozen over, so it's getting better, but it's still hard to imagine the lives of the people we could see. I recently read a book by a teenager who escaped over the border with China, and his tales of famine and desperation were ringing in my head as I turned my binoculars on the farmers. Without heating or even fuel for a fire, many of the people in North Korea have difficulty in even surviving the winter - returning to my toasty room, I vowed not to complain of the cold again...
The exhibition centre is nicely done. There's no judgement - or at least, there isn't in the small amount of English commentary available. The glass cases full of North Korean products seem to show that life, although permanently stuck in the 1950s, is actually quite similar to the rest of Asia. The little area done up as a regular room might be shows a poor but clean space, with a TV and food on the low table. The only sign that this is not a room in just any third world country is the pictures on the wall: placed high up so that nothing else is above them, the Two Kims gaze benevolently over the scene.
The exhibition centre is nicely done. There's no judgement - or at least, there isn't in the small amount of English commentary available. The glass cases full of North Korean products seem to show that life, although permanently stuck in the 1950s, is actually quite similar to the rest of Asia. The little area done up as a regular room might be shows a poor but clean space, with a TV and food on the low table. The only sign that this is not a room in just any third world country is the pictures on the wall: placed high up so that nothing else is above them, the Two Kims gaze benevolently over the scene.
The display cases show an amazing array of North Korean products, like adder liquor, with a perfectly preserved adder reaching up towards the cap. The money is well designed, with all the reverse sides showing heroic citizens, stoically looking to the future in a heroic manner, as befits the heroic members of an outcast society.
It's stunning how many products are produced. Although I knew of the ideal of self-sufficiency (or "juche"), I didn't realise just how self-sufficient the country is. The clothing is a bit dated, the toys are largely military, the packaging has none of the appeal of Western equivalents (and is that such a bad thing?) but it's all there.
Even guitar strings are available to the workers of DPRK, and should they require a little relaxation at the end of the day, there's "revolutionary opera" - oh how I wish I could listen to that...
The Kims are everywhere. Wearing a badge with one or the other's face on it is compulsory for all North Koreans above a certain age, and in Life In Paradise, the teenage author tells of how all the children fought to have the latest editions, which were, naturally, more expensive, and therefore worn only by the wealthiest. The personality cult is fascinating and I can't help but wonder where Mugabe failed in this - he'd certainly love to have the absolute power that Kim Jong-Il has. Even during the famine, North Koreans were expected to, and did, go and offer food at the base of one of the Kims' enormous statues that are built on hills in every city. The food is left to go to waste as an offering on their birthdays and other holidays.
The Kims are everywhere. Wearing a badge with one or the other's face on it is compulsory for all North Koreans above a certain age, and in Life In Paradise, the teenage author tells of how all the children fought to have the latest editions, which were, naturally, more expensive, and therefore worn only by the wealthiest. The personality cult is fascinating and I can't help but wonder where Mugabe failed in this - he'd certainly love to have the absolute power that Kim Jong-Il has. Even during the famine, North Koreans were expected to, and did, go and offer food at the base of one of the Kims' enormous statues that are built on hills in every city. The food is left to go to waste as an offering on their birthdays and other holidays.
Perhaps one of the saddest points for me was the Hometown Searching Centre. Although this is not necessarily the closest South Koreans can get, it's one of the places that families separated by the war come to burn offerings to ancestors on important days, ancestors who are buried across the border and are inaccessible to their descendants, and to look across the water and wonder about their living relatives who were caught on the other side at the ceasefire. This centre allows South Koreans to search for information about their homes they left so long ago.
Odusan's a fascinating place, full of heartache and suffering, but also of hope, in the walls filled with inter-Korean communication and co-operation. All those people, separated by simple ideology - really, what's the point?
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