PYONGYANG,
North Korea — By 8:30 a.m. Sunday, 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 police officers 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.
As
we flew in by the hundreds on Saturday, 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
Sunday, 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 coats 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.
Muted Logos
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, in March, 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
United Nations report, included secret prison camps, torture, forced
starvation and a paucity of free thought.
“Many
people see our country as military development and poor people,” said O
Ryong-jong, an official in the North Korean sports ministry who was a
guide on my marathon tour bus. “We want them to come and see for
themselves.”
North
Korean runners mixed briefly with foreigners before Sunday’s races.
Some posed for photographs while others shyly looked away. One young
local runner held up his arms in Rocky-style determination; another
hugged a teammate from behind and flashed the peace sign.
The
international runners started first, dressed in our casual
fluorescence, while the North Koreans followed an hour later, the
fastest of them in singlets and racing flats, some of the women and
girls with white ribbons around their waists. As many as 800 would run
the race, according to a generous estimate by state-run news media, some
competing unofficially without racing bibs.
Another
guide on my tour bus, Pak Un-gyong, had carefully examined each of our
running outfits. It was forbidden to depict flags of the United States,
South Korea or Japan. And the logos of the apparel companies had to be
muted. Last year, one runner was reported to have run in jeans because
of a violation.
If
the logos were obtrusive, Ms. Pak said the day before, “You must pay
some money to the I.A.A.F.” This was a reference to track and field’s
world governing body, which sanctioned the race, officially known as the
Marathon Amateurs’ Running Race Celebrating the Day of the Sun.
Everybody
in our group seemed to have passed sartorial muster. And with a roar we
headed out of the stadium and past the 197-foot Arch of Triumph, a
symbol of resistance to the Japanese occupation of the Korean Peninsula
from 1910 to 1945.
“Have you been to France?” Ms. Pak had asked on a prerace tour of the course. “I hear this one is 11 meters taller.”
Stopwatches and Bathrooms
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, where Kim Jong-il was said to have 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 police officer 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
6.2-mile 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 five kilometers, or 3.1 miles.
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, Mr. 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.”
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.”
On
the first of two laps of the half-marathon, Richard Friedman, 67, of
Manhattan, patted his heart when he passed one of the austere women who
direct traffic in Pyongyang. On the second lap, he patted his heart
again.
“I
swear she winked at me,” Friedman said later. A friend, Martin Rojahn,
57, of Tasmania, remained unconvinced, suggesting with a laugh that “she
probably had something in her eye.”
Just
after I reached 13.1 miles, the elite North Koreans began to pass me in
swift groups. I could barely hear their whispering strides. Meanwhile, I
was stuck in a kind of no-man’s land, no amateur runner visible in
front or behind. A man in a suit must have sensed the heaviness in my
legs or the struggle in my face. He clapped softly on the sidewalk and
said, “Very good.”
A Four-Hour Cutoff
Looming
above the other monuments to the Kim cult of personality was a
triangular building on the gauzy horizon, the 105-story Ryugyong Hotel,
under construction since 1987 but never opened.
In
2013, Kim ordered that North Korea increase its yearly total of foreign
tourists to a million from 200,000 within three years, Andrei Lankov, a
North Korea expert at Kookmin University in Seoul, South Korea, wrote
in “The Real North Korea: Life and Politics in the Failed Stalinist
Utopia.”
To
that end, North Korea is building a new airport terminal, inviting
foreigners to Pyongyang’s marathon and international film festival and
trying to entice jet-setters with a ski resort, perhaps a reflection of
Kim Jong-un’s school years in Switzerland.
“It
appears,” Mr. Lankov wrote, that Kim “hopes to make his realm into an
East Asian Switzerland, where crowds of rich Westerners will rush with
pockets full of cash. This dream is highly unrealistic, especially given
the sorry state of tourist infrastructure in the country.”
Of
more immediate concern late Sunday morning was the sorry state of my
running. I am 60, and this was my fourth marathon in 12 months. My body
was rebelling. I needed a cortisone shot in my left hip. My left knee
crackled like a wood fire. I reached 30 kilometers, 18.6 miles, in 3
hours 5 minutes, feeling exhausted with seven and a half miles
remaining, facing a four-hour cutoff when the doors to Kim Il-sung
Stadium would be closed.
“If you can’t finish in four hours, there’s no punishment, right?” Lucy Guo, 36, of China, had asked nervously before the race.
No, Richard Beal, a guide, assured her. Race officials would pick her up.
“They’re not going to make you keep going,” he said.
I
would never have another chance to take a lap around a full stadium, so
I called it quits, pausing outside to see the top two North Korean
professionals, Ri Yong-ho and Ra Hyon-ho, push each other toward the
finish in about 2:14.
A
match involving the North Korean soccer league was underway as I
entered the stadium. The crowd was cheering, prompted by yell leaders. I
waved but did not see anyone waving back. Later, at dinner, I laughed
to myself when I overheard another runner say of the victory lap: “Sure,
it was staged, but who cares? It was great.”
After
the marathon, medalists at various distances were celebrated at a
closing ceremony. Sitting in the stands, Mr. Mannen, the Dutch runner
who had been blown a kiss, 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 U.S. and Europe, we’re as brainwashed as they are here,” Mr. Loof said.
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 Mr.
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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