North Korea: Epilogue
On the last night of our visit, we were taken to Pyongyang’s supposedly famous “Number 1 Duck Barbecue“. With one minor problem: the raw meat we were given to grill was not duck, but tasted suspiciously like beef (very surprising, given that beef would be much more expensive to rear).
Duck, duck, goose
Our table raised this to L, our tour guide, who insisted it was duck. “But it’s beef!” I persisted, showing him the fat lines in a particularly obvious piece of beef.
Like he had done at the bowling alley, L paused. For a few seconds I thought he would get angry. But this time he smiled, put his hand on my shoulder, and looked me deep in the eyes.
“Duck,” he said.
This time, I understood.
“Duck,” I repeated.
He smiled.
Outside, a slight drizzle had started, and the vast empty street glistened in the lone light of a single working streetlamp. Weeks later I would see that street again, on television, as the funeral procession of The Great Leader passed through. Yet, for that fleeting moment, there was peace in the city of unflickering lights. The soju flowed freely, the guides got friendly and the ducks exhausted themselves on the grill of our will. The drizzle outside grew into an angry rain, but what did it matter? All was well, and all is well in Pyongyang, the city on the edge of forever.
