Volume 1: The First Battle Chapter 0: introduction
"Woo..." A long whistle pulled me back to reality from my dream, and a sweet North Korean mezzo-soprano voice rang in my ears: "Comrades, the train has arrived in Pyongyang. Welcome to take the No. 191 train again. May the great leader Kim Jong Il and his family live long."
I looked outside the train through the dusty window. The train slowed down gradually and the scenery outside the window became clearer and clearer.
Different from all the cities I have seen, there are slogans of the 21st century, "Long Live the Golden Sun Kim Jong Il" and "Blessings to Kim Jong Il's Family". If I hadn't told myself over and over again, "I am now in Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea", I would have almost thought I was in the Cultural Revolution era.
I am a journalist. The reason I had the opportunity to come to North Korea alone to do an interview was not because I had a lot of experience or was very good. I knew very well that if I didn't know Korean, I would never have been able to come to this mysterious land of North Korea to do an interview with someone who only had one year of work experience.
I pushed my glasses on my nose, and people around me began to take their bags off the luggage racks and lined up in the aisle in an orderly manner. I also stood up, put on my luggage and walked into the crowd...
As soon as I got off the bus, I thought of my notebook and cell phone, which I had handed over when I went through the border crossing in Sinuiju. North Korea does not allow us to carry things like notebooks that could take away their state secrets. Suddenly not having the things I'm used to with me is like breaking up with my girlfriend after two months.
Following the crowd out of the station, the first thing I saw was a tall, majestic and upright bronze statue - the statue of Kim Il-sung. The great leader was seen with one hand on his waist and the other hand raised high, his eyes looking into the distance, as if he saw the future and was firmly guiding the Korean people behind him to move forward.
"Comrade, please give me your camera." A fully armed North Korean soldier stood in front of me and saluted me. When he saw that I didn't respond, he stretched out his hand and repeated in a stronger tone: "Comrade, hand over your camera!"
"Oh..." I was a little confused. I hadn't gotten used to the Korean language yet, so it took me a long time to realize that he was asking me for my camera. I handed the camera over tremblingly, thinking to myself: 'I didn't do anything wrong just now! I just got off the train and saw the statue of Kim Jong Il. I just took a few photos with my camera out of habit. Is taking photos also prohibited? I looked around and didn't see any warning signs prohibiting taking photos, so I couldn't help but breathe a sigh of relief.'
"Comrade!" The soldier took the camera and took out the film without saying a word. Then he said seriously, "Please take a full-body photo of the Chairman. Otherwise, it would be disrespectful to our great leader Chairman Kim. I must confiscate this film!"
"Ah..." I took the camera woodenly, looked at the soldiers who turned and left, and opened my mouth for a long time. It turned out that something went wrong here. It turned out that you can only take a full-body photo of the Chairman. I looked around with some fear, and then I noticed that many fully armed soldiers were staring at the camera in the hands of tourists.
I looked at the camera with the film taken out of it, and then looked at the fully armed soldiers. The atmosphere around me suddenly became tense.
