The Mangyongdae Children’s Palace was by far the weirdest destination on my trip to North Korea. Not the weirdest experience in my life, but it turned out to be a very, very close second…
Located right across the KITC restaurant on Kwangbok Street (down the road turning into the Youth Hero Highway leading to Nampo) the biggest of many children’s palaces in North Korea features 650 rooms on 6 floors, including a gymnasium, a swimming pool and a 2000 seat theater; its shape symbolizing a parent hugging their children. (Or Kim Il-sung / Kim Jong-il hugging children. Kim Jong-un still was a kid himself when the building was erected in the late 1980s and officially opened on May 2nd 1989.) Palaces were always popular in communist countries. Not to live in, but for education and leisure. Pretty much every city in the former Eastern bloc had at least one Palace of Culture (*here I visited the one in Pripyat near Chernobyl*) where people could watch movies, rehearse theater plays, practice on musical instruments, do sports, … Children’s Palaces are basically the DPRK version for juniors – I’ve never heard of them in the context of Soviet Russia or the German Democratic Republic, so they might be a North Korean invention. But while Palaces of Culture were open for everybody the Children’s Palaces are only for the most talented kids in the DPRK. Here they learn foreign languages, do sports, perfection their computer skills or practice instruments as extra-curricular activities – reportedly up to 5400 children at a time!
When writing about the *Workers Party Foundation Monument* I mentioned how much monument planners love symbolism – hardly anybody knows that it backfired in this case. In front of the Mangyongdae Children’s Palace is a huge sculpture called Chariot of Joy, depicting a chariot drawn by two winged horses, manned by eleven children – symbolizing the number of school years in the DPRK… raised to twelve in 2012. 🙂
As I mentioned in the *previous article*, my tour group was running late and so we were eagerly awaited by our local guide (most places actually had local guides that guided our Korean guides who guided our western guide who guided us; the DPRK clearly is a communist state…) – a young girl, early teenager, with astonishingly good English. So we rushed through the corridors, stopping here and there for some short presentations. Ballet / dancing, piano, drawing. Most of those presentations were hard to watch, for different reasons.
The main dancing girl, maybe 8 years old, was excellent, but she slammed her knees to the ground so hard and so often that it would really surprise me if she would be able to walk pain free when she’s a teenager… or now, for that matter.
The drawing / painting room I call fake. About 20 kids were sitting in front of busts, but everybody had a different drawing in front of them. Faces, geometrical structure, ears – it was not only not a consistent class, in the five minutes we spent in that room hardly any of the kids were touching their drawings, some of which looked amazing. I’m not saying those kids are not talented, but I am not really buying their “presentation”. Same for the two painting girls. It took me forever to take a photo where one of them put the brush to the paper…
And then the weirdness meter exploded. I have to say in advance that I am not a big fan of singing and dancing… or overacting… or children performing – and what happened next combined all three (four…) and brought it to a level I hardly thought was possible.
My group, along with some other tourist, were lead to the already mentioned auditorium, filled about half with North Korean kids. When I asked Ms. Park before, if she went to the Schoolchildren’s Palace as a child, she told me no, only as a visitor; but that she loved it and admired the children performing. I guess it was a blast from the past for her. I felt more and more uncomfortable by the minute while taking one of the honorary seats all foreign visitor got in the center of the first three rows. Row number 2 in my case, which turned out to be a piece of luck a couple of minutes later.
The show started and I have to admit that it was as good as it gets when it comes to kids performing – if you like singing, dancing and overacting. Sadly I don’t, so it wasn’t my cup of tea. Nevertheless I recorded about 20 minutes of it for your viewing pleasure, though you probably might have seen similar performances in reports about the DPRK. I had – and to be honest with you, I don’t get why people always claim that those overacting kids are kind of proof for how North Korea brainwashes its children. Look for example at the child beauty pageant circus in the States – those kids act exactly the same as the kids performing in the video… In Germany we had a TV show called “Mini Playback Show” where kids dressed as stars were lip-synching – terribly, since hardly any of them spoke a word of English, them being German; one of the worst TV shows ever. Interestingly enough both the child beauty pageants as well as the TV show raised public concerns about the sexualization of pre-teen children. At least least none of the Western bashers ever brought up that when criticizing the North Korean child performances.
BTW: Whenever there is a “performance” in North Korea, be prepared that you might be included. The one at the Mangyongdae Schoolchildren’s Palace was our first demonstration of North Korea singing and dancing, so everybody went in without suspecting anything – with the result that two rollerblading girls dragged two tourists on stage to first hula hoop themselves and then throw some of those oversized rings at an amazingly talented young boy (see the second video of this article, it’s kinda heartwarming…). Some of us got caught by surprise a second time at a school – but when a couple of women started singing and playing accordion after lunch on the third to last day you could see how people were trying to hide behind others or even getting more distance to the performers… 🙂
Anyway, the Mangyongdae Schoolchildren’s Palace was a place people either hated or loved. At first sight those kids indeed looked like crazy brainwashed maniacs – but so do professional ballroom dancers, at least to me. I am pretty sure most of them enjoy what they are doing and they are actually absolutely fantastic at it, at least those allowed to perform on stage. And I am sure spending the afternoon at the Children’s Palace beats working in the fields – because from the looks of it that’s how most children outside of Pyongyang spend their afternoons…
(Please *click here to get to Abandoned Kansai’s North Korea Special* and *here for a map about the tour at GoogleMaps*. If you don’t want to miss the latest article you can *follow Abandoned Kansai on Twitter* and *like this blog on Facebook* – and of course there is the *video channel on Youtube*…)
Wow. How interesting. I remember seeing a group of North Korean children playing the guitar together. Everything was perfectly in sync. Flawless. And the kids were only about five years old and none of them so much as made a face while they played. It was like they were puppets! But I totally see what you mean about beauty pageants and other parallels in different cultures. There are a lot of things people do that, from the outside, seems nuts!
Really interesting stuff!
Yeah, this was the first of many performances. I just think Korean people have a different attitude towards that kind of performance, towards singing and dancing in general. People there love it. Those kids performers come across as brainwashed puppets, but nobody seems to consider that it just might be a style, part of the show; like an opera. Average people we met in park love singing and dancing, too – and there it’s a lot more like to what we are used to.
Very interesting.
Thanks! 🙂
Completely bizarre.
It was indeed. Nevertheless I am glad that I went to the schoolchildren’s palace – it wasn’t something I enjoyed experiencing, but something I enjoy having experienced.
A fascinating insight – thanks 🙂
Cheers! 🙂
They’re definitely not a North Korean invention. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneers_Palace
Hi Oleg,
I doubt the North Koreans invented much since their state was created. Everything seems to be taken over from the country’s past, including Japanese factories. The rest is Russian and China based…