Visiting Kim Il Sung, Great Leader and Eternal President of North Korea

How should one dress when visiting the corpse of a dictator/country’s saviour/national lunatic/renowned egomaniac/saint? I’d been warned that jeans were not acceptable and a tie would demonstrate how seriously we were taking the visit. Needless to say formal wear hadn’t made it onto my list of things to cart while travelling.

Having previously visited Ho Chi Min’s mausoleum in Hanoi I had practiced my straight face and overtly earnest look and reckoned that I was an experienced mourner of dictators and thus well prepared for this. How wrong I was.

The first step in the long, imposing journey that eventually brought us face to face with Kim Il Sung himself was onto a machine that cleaned our shoes of contamination from the world’s cleanest city. We then boarded a travelator that transported us, painfully slowly, to a massive, cavernous room which was entirely empty apart from a huge white statue of The Great Leader at the far end. Feeling impossibly small in comparison we approached the statue in lines of four where we bowed in unison before being allowed into the next room – which displayed portraits of DPR Korea’s grief upon hearing the horrific news of the Eternal President’s death.

As we progressed solemnly around the room we were armed with a personal audio guide informing us that the people were ‘so distraught and inconsolable upon hearing the horrendous news that scorching tears fell to earth and fossilised instantly on the traumatised ground below them’. Keeping a respectful face is surely my single greatest travelling achievement to date. I knew I couldn’t look at any of my fellow travellers or I would erupt into hysterics. I was also aware that this really was an almost religious experience for the weeping Koreans around me and the seriousness with which they took it was completely sincere. No matter how ludicrous it all felt to me, they still deserved my respect – or as much of it as I could muster.

After regaining my composure it became apparent that the moment was almost upon us – the Great Leader was only metres away. Before we were allowed into the ultimate room we had to pass through enormous machines which blew wind at us from all angles to ensure not even a speck of dust was smuggled in. Fully primed we then entered the sombre room – completely dark apart from a dramatic red spot light which shone down on the glass coffin below that held the body of Kim Il Sung. We approached meekly and had to bow at his feet and at his right and left sides. Bowing behind his head was sacrilegious.

Finally outside and still in a daze from the experience I loosened my tie and tried to resolve if I had just been in the presence of a god or merely one of the most successful con artists in history. More importantly I found myself hoping that some day the Koreans would be awarded the freedom to decide that conundrum for themselves.