Old Man Sundae

I plopped down at a beach café and ordered an Old Man sundae. North Korea was sticky hot and clogged with tourists. Hawkers shouted from doorways, urging people out of the sun and into their restaurants. At the table beside me, a couple drank chilled rice liquor while their son attacked his sundae with chopsticks.

It wasn’t really ice cream, but that was ok. It wasn’t really North Korea, either. It had been once, when the border sliced along the 38th parallel. Then came the war. Refugees fled the fighting, setting up temporary camps on a sandbar near Sokcho. Then the DMZ went up, and temporary became something else.

Their island was called Abai Maeul: the Old Man Village.

It was a slum until the tourists came. Now it was ‘nostalgic’—airless streets, sagging houses, a photogenic mix of poverty and tradition. Visitors came to see the outpost of marooned North Koreans. But mostly they stayed along the shore. From my table, I could see a beach full of young couples and sandy, splashing children. Only a single, bent figure walked the crumbling neighborhood.

That old man was a child when the war began. North Korea was new then; before, he had simply been Korean. Yet most of his memories came from the South: his first kiss, finding work on a fishing boat, having children, losing friends.

For most tourists, the war was unlived history. It existed only in black and white still frames. We came to Abai Maeul expecting an image of tragedy, preserved in sharp focus. But these people stopped being refugees a long time ago.

The smell of hot oil pulled me back. My sundae arrived, still sizzling. The village’s signature dish was pig intestine stuffed with vegetables, noodles, and blood. There were dozens of ways to make traditional Korean sausage (pronounced soon-day). But this recipe was unique to the Old Man Village, a flavor from the past. It was the closest I’d get to a taste of North Korea.