Free My Holiday in North Korea by Wendy E. Simmons Page B

have running water on demand.
    Later in the week we would visit two additional Children’s Palaces—a second, larger one in Pyongyang and one in Kaesong. Like the first one, these two were large, elaborate buildings; in the case of Kaesong, the largest and most beautiful building in town. And as with their predecessor, my visits to both were a sad yet weirdly entertaining reminder of what “all work and no fun” can do.
    I remarked to Older Handler at one point how “funny” it was that the students we’d seen at the Kim Jong-suk High School seemed so authentically jubilant and exultant, whereas all the children in the Children’s Palace seemed so dour and grim (unless they were “on” and performing; then there were giant smiles plastered on faces). Wouldn’t one expect students in school to be sullen and bored, I asked, and children at play to be high spirited and irrepressible, not the other way around?
    “The children can learn what they choose” was all she would say.
    Not content with her answer, I let my standard baby-talk, Martian-style interrogation roll, “So if I was a student, you’re saying I could decide to play guitar if I wanted to?”
OLDER HANDLER: Yes, of course!
ME: And then, if after a few months I decide I no longer like the guitar and I want to switch and be a singer instead, then I can just switch? Just like that?
OLDER HANDLER: Yes! Of course!
    I had my doubts.
ME: So if children are free to choose any activity they want, why would anyone choose to play the accordion? The accordion has to be for, like, the kids who can’t sing or dance, right?
FRESH HANDLER, speaking playfully, but looking a little hurt : Hey! I played the accordion!
    Whoops. So much for diplomacy, thanks to my big mouth.
ME, futilely trying to recover : Really? The accordion is great!
    I try to imagine adorable, pretty, smart, and I’m guessing popular Fresh Handler back in the day, stuck sitting on her chair, all smiles, legs spread, protective shoe covers with bows on, swaying back and forth as she pressed this key, then that key, of her giant squeeze box.
FRESH HANDLER: Oh, they are very popular here. All teachers must play them.
    This sort of made sense, because Fresh Handler had at some point told me her mother or father was a schoolteacher.
    I asked Older Handler what activity she’d participated in while growing up. She, too, had played the accordion. Nothing ever made sense.
    Later in the week we visited an orphanage in Nampo. After putting on our filthy operating-theater safety-gear shoe covers, we walked through the hallways, peeking into rooms that were filled with children of different ages—from newborn to maybe three years old. It all seemed so natural and so right, in as much as any orphanage anywhere can be. There were nurses attentively watching over children as they slept or ate snacks or played freely.
    But then I was led to the end of the hall and into the main playroom, where Older Handler pointed out groups of triplets and twins who I’m guessing couldn’t have been more than three. I sat on the floor to say hello, but most of the kids were too reticent to even acknowledge me. Older Handler was eager to translate for the local guide how happy they were that their Great Dear Leader had come to visit and selected the children’s uniforms all by himself. This was one on-the-spot guidance visit where pointing had seemed to make a difference, as the orphans’ uniforms were super cute.

    As I sat there trying to make eye contact and convince any of the children to engage, I wondered what their daily lives must be like for them to be so completely disinterested in me, an American Imperialist.
    And as so often in the perfectly orchestrated musical North Korea had time and again proven itself to be, my question was answered, as if on cue, when the budding young thespians broke into a perfectly choreographed “spontaneous” song-and-dance routine, its grand finale a NoKo Bellamy Nazi