By 8:30am on April 12, the 50,000 seats in Kim Il-sung Stadium were nearly filled with men in Mao suits and coats and ties, women in dresses and heels, and soldiers in olive-drab hats with crowns as wide as a discus.
Students carried paper megaphones and silver wooden clappers that flashed like flag semaphores and magnified the rhythmic applause, a sound of both welcoming and required exuberance.
In the hazy chill, I stood on the track with about 650 runners from about 30 countries who had come to challenge their preconceptions as well as their endurance.
We awaited the start of the Pyongyang Marathon, a brief opening into one of the world’s most closed and enigmatic countries and surely the only distance race with a promotional video featuring an all-accordion boy band doing a cover of Norwegian synth-pop music.
For the second year, foreign amateur runners were allowed to participate in a 10K race, a half-marathon or a full marathon in Pyongyang, the capital. The races were a part of the April 15 birthday celebration of Kim Il-sung, the former leader of North Korea and father of his successors: Kim Jong-il, a son, and Kim Jong-un, a grandson and the current ruler.
As we flew in by the hundreds on April 11, the arrival hall at Sunan International Airport grew cramped and cold. After examining countless laptops, smartphones and passports, a security official gave the international smile of exasperation, caught my eye and said, “Tourists.”
By April 12, the mood at Kim Il Sung Stadium was one of throbbing, if rehearsed, enthusiasm. I warmed up along a curve of the track where backboards had been set up on an outdoor basketball court. Others jogged on the artificial surface of the soccer field inside the track. Almost everyone seemed to take photographs of the crowd, a huge one for the start of a marathon outside the Olympics.
A tone sounded, and race officials in red hats and white suits marshaled us for the start. There was some confusion about whether to exit the stadium down the backstretch or the homestretch. We faced one direction, then the other.
“If this was easy, it wouldn’t be North Korea,” the runner next to me said. The white coats of the officials suggested some sort of athletic and social experiment. In February, Sunday’s races were abruptly closed to foreigners as North Korea cited continuing concerns about the spread of Ebola. Then, last month, with little explanation, the door opened again.
Tour operators and Korean guides offered several possible explanations: North Korea desperately needed hard currency from expanded tourism. It was attempting to generate mass interest in recreation. It was using sport to try to rehabilitate an “axis of evil” image of nuclear antagonism and widespread human rights abuse that, according to a 2013 UN report, included secret prison camps, torture, forced starvation and a paucity of free thought.
STOPWATCHES AND BATHROOM TOURISM
We could not leave the loop course, but we could leave our minders for an hour or two or four. Maybe we could make a personal connection that seemed less scripted than the opening ceremony: a brief smile, a wave, a hello, a thank you, a small encouragement.
Or would it all be staged, a Potemkin race in an authoritarian capital for the elite and loyal, our perceptions influenced by stories in the West, true or not, that Kim Jong-il scored a perfect 300 in his first bowling match and five holes in one on his maiden round of golf?
An early uphill stretch carried us past modest but encouraging crowds along a wide street of apricot blossoms. A soldier high-fived a few runners. A woman waved from the window of her apartment building. Other women in red jackets poured water into cups at small hydration tables.
The 10km loop brought us back and forth across the Taedong River via bridge and tunnel, the roads decorated with clusters of North Korean flags, their red star and red field meant to symbolize the spilled blood of liberation in a military-first nation.
Because Ebola concerns had disrupted planning of the race, only the Korean runners were issued computer chips for timing. The rest of us were timed with stopwatches every 5km.
The portable toilets familiar at most marathons were also absent. Discreet signs directed runners to bathrooms near the course. One was on the second floor of a building, another through a sundry shop, a restaurant and a karaoke bar.
“Last year, we had a guy who went to all the bathrooms because he couldn’t get into the buildings otherwise,” said Tori Cook, a guide with Koryo Tours, a British-run company in Beijing that brought 270 foreign runners to Sunday’s race.
Cameras were officially off-limits to runners on the course, but the rule essentially seemed unenforced. No one rushed to confiscate them or seemed to object to being photographed.
“It feels looser, less controlled,” said Zahlen Titcomb, 32, of Seattle, who traveled to Pyongyang in 2011 for an ultimate Frisbee competition.
Tourists bowed to their guides then, Titcomb said, and it would have been all but unthinkable to take a photograph without permission or to whoop and holler while running through a tunnel or to jump in the air to take a silly picture in front of a stadium or a monument.
“Nobody at the Vatican takes a photo pretending to hold Jesus in your hand,” he said.
AN AIR KISS AND A SLY WINK
On my second lap of Sunday’s race, the crowd seemed to thin. For stretches, the only sounds came from bells on passing bicycles, martial music or a helicopter dropping parachutists to entertain the spectators in Kim Il-sung Stadium. Women in traditional dresses appeared as bright as lanterns against a backdrop of drab Stalinist apartment blocks that were as drained of color as some of the runners.
Children along the course seemed to grow bolder. Dressed in tracksuit jackets, or the red scarves and blue uniforms of young pioneers, they eagerly slapped hands with passing runners and often called out in English:
“Nice to meet you.”
“Welcome to Korea.”
“What is your name?”
“How old are you?”
During his half-marathon, Hank Mannen, 36, of the Netherlands, was startled to see a young woman blow him a kiss. He said he reciprocated, then thought for a moment, “She’s in big trouble now.”
After the marathon, medalists at various distances were celebrated at a closing ceremony. Sitting in the stands, Mannen considered what he would tell his friends at home. Some would insist it had all been a fake.
Not everyone’s reaction could have been staged on the course, said Roeland Loof, 33, a fellow Dutch runner. Especially the children. Children do what they want.
“In the US and Europe, we’re as brainwashed” about North Korea, Loof said, “as they are here.”
After finishing third in the half-marathon for international amateurs, Filippo Nicosia, a diplomat at the Italian Embassy in Beijing, spoke in Korean to a group of female students. He tossed them his bouquet of flowers. The woman who caught it seemed surprised. Everyone laughed.
“This is just a slight opening up, not a structural change,” said Nicosia, 39, who was formerly based in Seoul. “Like when the New York Philharmonic came in 2008. A small drop in an ocean. It doesn’t really change anything, but it gives curiosity a chance to turn into warmth.”
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