to China and were told some Americans from San Francisco, a well known Korean Dance group, would be boarding the plane at the stop-over in California. They were asked to look for us on the plane and agreed to assist us along the way since they’d been to the DPRK several times in the past.
The flight from NY to San Francisco was eventless, perfect. We touched down and awaited the next part of our journey. I don’t remember how we met them, or maybe they found us, but we were introduced to the Korean American dance troupe who immediately took us under their wings as though they’d known us forever. Honestly, it was a bit of a relief to know we would have a few friends along for the ride. And I must admit, I’d actually seen several of the girls before in an old Chuck Norris movie, which was confirmed for me by one of the dancers. During the flight when the dancers found out we performed
magic, they twisted our arms (yeah right) … the result is we wound up doing some tricks for our new found friends which certainly made the flight go a bit faster.
Quite a few hours later we touched down in Beijing. Of course the first thing that happened, as our equipment was unloaded, my birds caused a stir with the Chinese of-ficials. Luckily it was very late and they had no idea what to do. A couple of card tricks later, a signed paper and with a little help from our KA “friends” we left the airport, eve-rything was intact and we arrived at our Beijing hotel.
The next morning, when we woke up it was a bit overcast but the scen-ery outside our window was vscen-ery cool … very grey, very Chinese. With several hours to hang out before departing for the DPRK we went downstairs, found our friends and left the hotel for a bite to eat. Re-turning a short time later we quickly
View from hotel in China
gathered our belongings as we made our way to the airport for the flight to North Korea.
Before I go any further, I travelled with one extended travelling salesman’s fiber case 44” x 18” x 10” and one smaller anvil like case 30” x 24” x 14” - both on extra heavy casters - along with a full length garment bag to carry my performance garb and a separate - smaller - case for my everyday clothing. Oh, and a medium sized kennel that held the doves I required for my show (7 + an extra).
Mundaka, also had his luggage for clothing and a rather large, very heavy, case on wheels - 22” x 22” x 40” - to carry all his props, which included a magnificent spar-kling urn held upright on golden outstretched dragon arms that Mundaka designed and constructed himself, completely rigged with the obligatory smoke and pyro-technics devices.
The reason I brought up the luggage was to preface the next part of our journey. Once at the airport our lug-gage, cases and birds were taken by the flight person-nel. As we walked from the departure waiting area to the plane, Mundaka and I looked at each other, it was a prop plane, very old, a little newer than the one’s
found in Indiana Jones movies, but not by many years.
Entering the small cabin was like stepping back in time.
The interior was a dull brown color, the seats in rows of
“twos” looked faded and worn. They did however have seat belts so I was slightly relieved.
We took our seats and at that moment Mundaka and I had concerns about them getting his case on the plane, we didn’t know if it would fit in the cargo hold.
However, they managed because it arrived in North Korea when we did. But let me get back to the flight. I don’t remember the take off, but I do vividly remember the literature in the pocket on the seat in front of me.
I reached for it just as we were taking off and at the instant my hand touched the paper a “march like” music permeated the cabin.
This music continued for the duration of the two hour flight. I opened the literature, more like a small newspa-per and the very first thing I read was, “The Imnewspa-perialist American Pigs … “ blah, blah blah. I grimaced and took a deep breath, then looked a little further in the paper and there was more of the same spread throughout. I showed it to Mundaka who was in a seat in front of me.
We both looked at each other and smiled.
Baggage Declaration form
MUNDAKA WITH JONG WHO LOOKED AFTER HAL AND MUNDAKA DURING THEIR STAY IN NORTH KOREA
Then …
An attractive flight attendant, dressed like a stewardess from the late 1960’s, complete with neck scarf walked directly over to me, smiled, and in very broken, extremely hard to understand English, asked if she could sit beside me. I nodded yes, and for the remainder of the flight she proceeded to practice her Eng-lish. It was delightful. She was tre-mendously excited and I didn’t have a clue what she was saying, but the flight seemed to go quickly. Before you knew it, we landed in Pyong Yang, the capital of the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea.
All was good …
It was very dark on the tarmac when we exited the aircraft so we couldn’t see much of the airport.
At the moment our feet touched the ground we were greeted by a slender gentlemen of average height, wearing glasses and a dark jacket. He had a huge smile on his face and spoke English proficiently as he introduced himself; he was Jong, assigned to escort us as our personal guide for the duration of our stay in the DPRK.He then asked us an interesting question, at least to our ears, “which one of you is the American Delegation leader?”
Mundaka and I looked at each other
and I explained to him that neither one of us was the leader, we were co-workers travelling together and performing individual “magic acts”
at the circus arena. He looked at us, said he understood and then again asked, “who was the leader?” We quickly realized one of us needed to be the leader. Mundaka said, “Hal, you be the leader now and when you get tired I’ll take over.” It was settled. I was the leader.
Jong brought us over to the “greet-ing committee” stand“greet-ing in a line outside but close to the plane.
A distinguished group of older gentlemen bundled up with thick dark coats and warm looking hats.
They shook hands with everyone who exited the plane. Now that the
“leader” thing was cleared up we were the last one’s to shake their hands. And, in all honesty, they did not seem very pleased to see us, none of them smiled nor did they look directly at us … after all … we were in their minds, the “imperialist American pigs.”
Jong smiled after we shook eve-ryone’s hands, he would do that a lot on this trip, and walked us over to our assigned car with driver, an older model, faded green-ish mer-cedes sedan, we got in. Jong asked us to wait a minute while he made sure our luggage was headed to the
proper location. As it turned out we were going to the hotel housing the circus entertainers. Our official designation throughout the event.
Jong got into the car with us and we headed to our hotel.
It was very dark when we arrived at the Pelonggang Hotel, bamboo scaffolding covered the front of the structure and lined the front en-trance way and lobby corridor. We went to the front desk where Jong checked us in, then we were es-corted to our rooms to drop off our luggage. We agreed to meet back in the lobby in a couple of minutes to get something to eat. As I entered my room I was surprised at how big it was, huge in fact, complete with a mini-kitchen, sitting/living room,
Official badge for Hal