the train to another section of town and came back to the surface. The green spaces in Pyongyang were immense and many in number, but not as immense as the monuments.
There was the Arch of Triumph, a copy of the one in Paris, but far bigger. It commemorated the Korean resistance to Japan from the 1920s to the 1940s. There was the Washington Monument lookalike Juche Tower, which was one hundred and seventy meters tall and stood for the Korean philosophy of self-reliance.
As she passed it Chung-Cha nodded silently. She relied only on herself. She trusted only herself. No one here had to tell her that. She didn’t need a monument shooting into the sky to make her believe that.
There was the also the Arch of Reunification, one of the few that featured Korean women. Dressed in traditional Korean garb, they held between them the map of a united Korea. The arch straddled the Reunification Highway, which went from the capital city all the way to the DMZ.
Symbolism again, she knew.
Chung-Cha had two notions on reunification. First, it would never happen, and second, she didn’t care if it did or not. She would not be unified with anyone, north or south.
Later, she passed the Mansudae Grand Monument, which was an enormous tribute to the memory of North Korea’s founder, Il Sung, and also to his son, Jong Il.
Chung-Cha passed by this monolithic structure without looking at it. This was a bit dicey on her part. All North Koreans paid tribute here by standing and gazing lovingly at the statues of the two men. All brought flowers. Even foreign tourists were required to lay floral offerings here or else be arrested and/or deported.
Yet Chung-Cha walked on, almost daring a nearby policeman to stop her. There were limits to her patriotism.
Towering over the entire city was the white elephant of Pyongyang, the Ryugyong Hotel. It was begun in 1987, but construction funds ran out in 1992. Although construction had restarted in 2008, no one knew if it would ever be completed or whether even one guest would sleep there. For now it was a 330-meter-high monstrosity with nearly four million square feet of space in the shape of a pyramid.
Interesting central planning there, she thought.
Her belly grumbling, Chung-Cha entered a restaurant. North Koreans typically did not eat out because it was a luxury most could not afford. If a group did go out, it was usually on state business with the government footing the bill. At times like that the workers would eat and drink prodigious amounts, going home drunk on soju, or rice liquor.
She had passed other restaurants offering typical Korean fare like kimchi—spicy pickled vegetables that every Korean woman knew how to make—boiled chicken, fish, and squid, as well as the luxury of white rice. She kept going past all of these and entered the Samtaesung Hamburger Restaurant, which served burgers, fries, and shakes. Chung-Cha had often tried to reconcile in her mind how a restaurant serving what would be recognized around the world as American food could exist here when there was not even a U.S. embassy located in Pyongyang because the two countries did not have official diplomatic relations. An American citizen in trouble here had to go crawling to the Swedish embassy, and even then only for medical emergencies.
She was one of the few patrons here, and all the others were westerners.
She ordered a hamburger rare, fries, and a vanilla milk shake.
The waiter looked at her severely as though silently admonishing her for eating this Western garbage. When she showed him her government ID he bowed perfunctorily and hurried away to fill her order.
She had chosen a seat with her back against the wall. She knew where the entrances and exits were. She noted anyone moving in the space, whether it was toward or away from her. She didn’t expect trouble, but she also anticipated that anything could happen at any time.
She ate her meal slowly, chewing her food thoroughly before swallowing. She had endured starvation for well over a decade. That hollow feeling in your belly never left you, even if you had ample food the rest of your life. Her diet at Yodok had consisted of whatever she could find to eat, but mostly corn, cabbage, salt, and rats. At least the rats had given her protein and helped to stave off diseases that had killed many other prisoners. She had become quite adept at catching the rodents. But she liked the taste of the