North Koreans are flocking to Pyongyang for a massive festival ostensibly marking Korea's Aug. 15 Liberation Day and the 60th anniversary of the Workers Party of Korea. Every day, tens of thousands are taking buses, trains, subways and even walking to the Rungnado May First Stadium, a rare occurrence in North Korea, where the movement of residents is tightly controlled. A similar mass migration took place during the first Arirang Festival in 2002.
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Commemorative performances have been taking place nearly every day in Pyongyang since the August 15 Liberation Day. North Korean dancers perform at Pyongyang's May First Stadium on Saturday./Reuters
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The festival events, which started on Aug. 16, take place every evening except Sundays from 7-8:30 at the 150,000-seat stadium. Each performance features over 100,000 performers, including 20,000 performing mass-choreographed gymnastics and 50,000 in the stands holding up colored cards in unison. The display centers on politics, extolling North Korea's ¡°Songun¡± or "military-first" ideology. Kim Jong-il attended the opening performance, and the show will go on until Oct. 31.
Pyongyang says this year's event is an upgrade of its 2002 extravaganza. A South Korean Democratic Labor Party lawmaker Shim Sang-jeung, who attended the performance on Wednesday as part of a visiting party delegation, said, "The size and content are, in a word, shocking." South Korean journalists who went to Pyongyang to follow South Korean singer Cho Yong-pil's concert were also stunned by the spectacle.
North Koreans in Hwanghae Province and other regions close to Pyongyang take the bus, while those further away take special "Arirang trains" to the festival. The [North] Korea Central News Agency said, "Gen. Kim Jong-il has added special passenger cars on trains from Pyongyang to Shinuiju, Manpo, Hyesan and Cheongjin so people in the provinces can see the performance, and in nearby provinces like South Pyongan and Hwanghae, he has guaranteed spectator demand through the use of overland routes." Because there is no accommodation in Pyongyang, visitors reportedly return home the same day.
"Each performance gets 40,000-50,000 spectators, with 100,000 at the most,¡± a South Korean official said. One week after it began, the spectacle had drawn an estimated 300,000 spectators, rising to an expected 2-3 million by the time it ends. That is more than 10 percent of North Korea's population.
In 2002, North Korea held about 90 performances from the time they began on April 29 to mark the 90th birthday of the late North Korean leader Kim Il-sung (April 15) to August 15. A South Korean Unification Ministry official said, "The North Korean authorities announced that 4 million North Korean residents and spectators saw the Arirang Festival in 2002."
North Korea experts are curious why Pyongyang has decided to restart the festival three years on when it can ill afford the resources given its troubled economy.
Many say something is afoot, though few agree what it may be. Former deputy unification minister Kim Hyung-ki said, "I was curious as to the result of the 2002 performance, and it turned out to be the July 1 economic reforms... I wonder if the North Korean authorities are preparing something big, something requiring special resolve." A government official said it was not impossible that Kim Jong-il could adopt a new ruling slogan, or reveal his system of succession.
Je Seong-ho of Chung-ang University said there had been no congress of the Korean Workers' Party since 1985, but with this year marks the 60th anniversary of the party, so the festival could be aimed at creating the atmosphere for a party congress.
But one North Korea specialist said the performance was merely ¡°an opiate to make the people forget about their tiresome lives." A government official said, "It's an event that seeks to show North Korea's internal unity in the current domestic and international situation."
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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