PYONGYANG: On a grey stone column in Pyongyang, a mural shows Chinese and North Korean soldiers rushing into battle against US-led forces in the Korean War. Decades later, the monument is a regular stop for new waves of Chinese going to the North, this time as tourists.
Hundreds of soldiers and workers have been sprucing up the obelisk and its grounds in recent days ahead of a state visit to Pyongyang by Chinese President Xi Jinping this week.
An inscription on it lauds “the Chinese People’s Volunteer Army, who fought with us on this land and smashed down the common enemy.”
Their “immortal exploits” will “last forever,” it proclaims, as will “the friendship forged in blood between the peoples of the People’s Republic of China and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.”
Nearly 70 years after Mao Zedong sent millions of soldiers to save Kim Il Sung’s troops from defeat as General Douglas MacArthur’s men marched up the peninsula, China remains the isolated, nuclear-armed North’s key diplomatic backer and main provider of trade and aid.
Now the Friendship Tower, as the monument is known, attracts growing hordes of Chinese tourists — and the renovations suggest it may also be on Xi’s itinerary.
Ordinary Chinese pay travel companies around 2,500 yuan ($360) for a standard three-day trip, arriving overland by train in Pyongyang to tour the capital’s highlights, from the Arch of Triumph to Kim Il Sung Square.
The following day they head south to the Demilitarized Zone that has divided the peninsula since the two sides fought each other to a stalemate in 1953, before returning home.
“I’m very interested in North Korea and wanted to come to see what North Korea looks like,” said Yu Zhi, a retiree from Anhui province visiting Pyongyang, telling AFP that she had a “special feeling” for the country.
“China is very friendly with North Korea,” added her fellow traveler, a woman surnamed Jin. “We have been friends for generations.”
It was not always so. Mao — whose eldest son Mao Anying was among those killed in what China still calls the “War to Resist US Aggression and Aid the DPRK” — described the neighbors as “as close as lips and teeth.”
Ties then waxed and waned during the Cold War, when founder Kim Il Sung was adept at playing his Soviet and Chinese allies off against each other, and his grandson, the current leader Kim Jong Un, did not visit Beijing to pay his respects for more than six years after inheriting power.
But as he embarked on a flurry of diplomacy last year, he made sure that Chinese President Xi Jinping was the first foreign head of state he met, and he has since done so three more times — more often than Kim has seen any other leader.
Now Xi is going to reciprocate.
At the same time Chinese tourism to the North has reached record highs, according to travel industry sources — so much so that Pyongyang has imposed a limit on arrivals.
No official figures are available from authorities on either side, but Simon Cockerell, general manager of Koryo Tours, the market leader for Western visitors, said there had been “a huge increase in Chinese tourists.”
At peak times 2,000 people a day had been arriving in Pyongyang, he said. “That’s far too many because there is no infrastructure to accommodate that many tourists, so problems with train tickets, with plane tickets, hotel space.”
As a result, North Korean authorities had themselves set a 1,000-a-day cap, he added, although it was unclear whether this applied across the industry or solely to Chinese, who make up the vast majority of arrivals.
“There are issues with just hundreds of people showing up at the same time.”
China has a proven willingness to use tourism as a geopolitical negotiating weapon — it banned group tours to South Korea after it deployed a US anti-missile system, THAAD.
With nuclear negotiations at a stalemate the North remains subject to multiple UN Security Council sanctions, and the US imposed a travel ban on its own citizens visiting following the death of student Otto Warmbier, who had been jailed after trying to steal a propaganda poster.
But tourism is not among the sectors targeted by the UN, potentially enabling Beijing to use it as an incentive for its sometimes-wayward ally.
The Chinese travel phenomenon is market-driven, rather than prompted by state order — as well as the market offered by China’s huge population, the two countries’ border enables cheap overland journeys.
But simply enabling it to take place, said John Delury of Yonsei University in Seoul, meant “We can infer some choices are being made” by Beijing.
“We know it’s a lever they can turn on and off,” he said.
Even with the diplomatic process at a standstill, he added, “The Chinese think you have to use this window of opportunity to move things forward. There has to be a path on both sides and so something like opening up tourism is a good way to enable that.”
At the Monument to the Three Charters for Reunification on the edge of Pyongyang, where two giant stone women form an arch over a road, a secondary school teacher from Shanghai called Peng said: “We are both socialist countries. I feel there are more Chinese coming to visit.”
Waves of Chinese tourists invade North Korea
Waves of Chinese tourists invade North Korea
- China remains the isolated, nuclear-armed North’s key diplomatic backer and main provider of trade and aid
- China has a proven willingness to use tourism as a geopolitical negotiating weapon
Japan’s traditional kimonos are being repurposed in creative and sustainable ways
- A genuine silk kimono, which literally means ‘worn thing,’ lasts a hundred years or more
- In a Japanese family, it’s handed down over generations like heirloom jewelry, artworks and military medals
TOKYO: The kimono, that elaborate, delicate wrap-around garment worn by geisha and samurai from centuries back, is getting a vibrant remake, appreciated these days for a virtue that’s more relevant than ever: sustainability.
A genuine silk kimono, which literally means “worn thing,” lasts a hundred years or more. In a Japanese family, it’s handed down over generations like heirloom jewelry, artworks and military medals.
It never goes out of style.
The design of the kimono and accompanying “obi” sash has remained basically the same since the 17th century Edo period depicted in Akira Kurosawa samurai movies.
But today, some people are taking a different creative approach, refashioning the traditional kimono, and also taking apart and resewing them as jackets, dresses and pants.
“I noticed that a lot of beautiful kimono is just sleeping in people’s closets. That’s such a waste,” said Mari Kubo, who heads a kimono-remake business called K’Forward, pronounced “K dash forward.”
Hers is among a recent surge in such services, which also turn old kimono into tote bags and dolls.
The most popular among Kubo’s products are “tomesode,” a type of formal kimono that is black with colorful, embroidered flowers, birds or foliage at the bottom.
She also creates matching sets, or what she calls “set-ups.” A tomesode is turned into a jacket with its long, flowing sleeves intact, and its intricate patterns placed at the center in the back. She then takes a kimono with a matching pattern to create a skirt or pants to go with the top. Sometimes, an obi is used at the collar to add a pop of color.
Kubo said many of her customers are young people who want to enjoy a kimono without the fuss.
A remade kimono at K’Forward can cost as much as 160,000 yen ($1,000) for a “furisode,” a colorful kimono with long sleeves meant for young unmarried women, while a black tomesode goes for about 25,000 yen ($160).
Reuse and recycle
What Tomoko Ohkata loves most about the products she designs using old kimonos is that she doesn’t have to live with a guilty conscience, and instead feels she is helping solve an ecological problem.
“I feel the answer was right there, being handed down from our ancestors,” she said.
Recycling venues in Japan get thousands of old kimonos a day as people find them stashed away in closets by parents and grandparents. These days, Japanese generally wear kimonos just for special occasions like weddings. Many women prefer to wear a Western-style white wedding dress rather than the kimono, or they wear both.
Many of Ohkata’s clientele are people who have found a kimono at home and want to give it new life. They care about the story behind the kimono, she added.
Her small store in downtown Tokyo displays various dolls, including a figure of an emperor paired with his wife, who are traditionally brought out for display in Japanese homes for the Girls’ Day festival every March 3. Her dolls, however, are exquisitely dressed in recycled kimonos, tailored in tiny sizes to fit the dolls. They sell for 245,000 yen ($1,600) a pair.
The art of putting on a kimono
The original old-style kimono is also getting rediscovered.
“Unlike the dress, you can arrange it,” says Nao Shimizu, who heads a school in Japan’s ancient capital of Kyoto that teaches people how to wear a kimono and how to carry oneself while wearing it.
“In half a year, you can learn how to do it all by yourself,” she said, briskly demonstrating several ways to tie the obi to express different moods, from playful to understated.
Besides its durability, said Shimizu, that versatility also makes the kimono sustainable.
Younger Japanese are taking a more relaxed view, wearing a kimono with boots, for instance, she laughed. Traditionally, kimono is worn with sandals called “zori.”
Although it requires some skill to put on a kimono in the traditional way, one can take lessons from teachers like Shimizu, like learning a musical instrument. Professional help is also available at beauty parlors, hotels and some shops.
Most Japanese might wear a kimono just a few times in their lives. But wearing one is a memorable experience.
Sumie Kaneko, a singer who plays the traditional Japanese instruments koto and shamisen, often performs wearing flashy dresses made of recycled kimonos. The idea of sustainability is deeply rooted in Japanese culture, she says, noting that the ivory and animal hide used in her musical instruments are now hard to obtain.
She calls it “the recycling of life.”
“The performer breathes new life into them,” says the New York-based Kaneko.
“In the same way, a past moment — and those patterns and colors that were once loved — can come back to life.”
