For some students this summer, getting away from the bustle of the academic year meant finding an off-road beach house or a hammock in a tropical paradise somewhere. During the first week of June, a group of Jumbos took "getting away" a couple steps further, instead traveling to one of the most isolated countries in the world, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
In a rare — but increasingly manageable — opportunity for Americans to visit North Korea, six current and former Tufts students spent eight days learning and observing their way through the country on what they called a fascinating trip.
"The most surreal moment of my life was driving through the North Korean countryside listening to country music," Emily Roston, a senior, said. There followed many more surreal moments for the students, but it all began here in Medford during last year's Institute for Global Leadership (IGL)-sponsored Education for Public Inquiry and International Citizenship (EPIIC) colloquium.
"During EPIIC you're given the opportunity to do research, and the idea was thrown around that we could possibly go to North and South Korea," Alexa Petersen, a junior, said. IGL Director Sherman Teichman directed the group -- which eventually expanded to include alumni and other students not involved in EPIIC -- to the Pyongyang Project.
A Canadian non-profit, the organization focuses on facilitating exchange programs for both North Koreans and foreigners with the aim of encouraging academic and cultural interactions between citizens of North Korea and the rest of the world. It is able to host groups of tourists, or "academic delegations," in the Tufts group's case, because of partnerships and personal connections its leaders have developed with various institutions and officials in the country since the project's founding in 2009.
"The whole idea of the organization is to have cross-cultural exchanges, so they're trying to get Westerners to places that Westerners have never seen, and where [the people there] have never seen Westerners," Bradley Harris, a junior who went on the trip, said.
The IGL funded around half of the Pyongyang Project's fees for the trip, which also included visits to China and South Korea, under the condition that the participants complete a research paper before leaving and conduct research during their time in the region for another research project to be written upon their return.
After a briefing from Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy Dean Stephen Bosworth, who is also the Obama administration's special envoy on North Korea"He essentially just said ‘have fun, be careful. He was excited about the trip," Roston said the travelers made their way to Shenyang, China for a brief orientation. Then, after a briefing on the restrictions surrounding their travel, the six students and alumni boarded a plane to Pyongyang.
This, Roston said, was the time she most acutely felt the magnitude of the uncertainty she faced in traveling to a country that has cultivated an aura of secretiveness and isolation from outsiders.
"A lot of people ask if you're afraid going into the DPRK, or when you were there if it was scary," Roston said. "Honestly, as far as I'm concerned, the most terrifying moment of the entire trip was getting on the plane to go there just because you didn't know what to expect."
Once in the country, however, any fears were replaced by a sense of calm and security. "It was very oddly peaceful the entire journey," Roston said. "I was very relaxed…there was no point at which I was truly afraid."
The Tufts group, like all other tourist groups that enter North Korea, was accompanied at all times by two English-speaking North Korean guides and transported to each destination on a bus by a single driver. Pyongyang Project Korean Programs DirectorMichaelSpavor led the students as they visited Pyongyang and several smaller towns surrounding the capital. Along the way they stopped at the typical sites visited by foreigners extravagant subway stops, monuments and, notably, the "International Friendship Exhibition Hall" in the Mount Myohyang biosphere reserve, which houses every gift ever presented to a member of North Korea's leading Kim family.
"There was a whole desk set from France, a beautiful post-modern desk set in a glass case," Petersen said, also listing off a roster of donations including a stuffed crocodile and a basketball signed by Michael Jordan, a gift of former U.S. Secretary of State Madeline Albright.
"We a saw a lot of very happy, colorfully dressed children, playing around with smiles," Roston said. "That was the first thing that hit me, it wasn't monochromatic."
"You think it's all grey" Petersen said, "in your mind it's like in black and white. And then you get there, and it's probably the most beautiful place I've ever seen. Driving through the mountains, it's just gorgeous."
Contrary to reports from many foreigners in North Korea that their visits appear staged to portray the country in a specific light, Petersen felt that that her experiences were largely genuine. The students were lucky to see what they did, she said.
"It's true that we were taken to the ‘touristy' sites, but touristy sites in North Korea are wonders in their own," she said. "They're not…casual and boring. They're, for us, a country that we otherwise would never have the chance to get a glimpse in, let alone be in. And so whatever site we were brought to we were fascinated by it."
Harris and Roston agreed. "We drove all around the city, and we changed the places we were going on the fly," Harris said. "We went to one restaurant and didn't like it so we went to a different one. It wasn't like they were constructing the city in front of us."
"Some of the quotes…talk about it being a huge puppet show—it wasn't," Roston said. "We drove across the countryside, we went to four or five different cities, we got lost once when we were on our bus, and we were literally driving through back roads. You can't play-act an entire country."
In addition to conversations about the situation in Libya and the finer details of Hanukkah between the students and their two Korean guides—"they were both very well educated men," Harris said—it was their interactions with the country's citizens that largely formed the students' views of the country.
"I think what we saw is what we saw," Roston said. "When we went bowling as a group, we actually ended up…talking to some of the other people…who were bowling there with their teens and family and friends and work groups. And so I think that the experiences that we had were as genuine as you can expect them to be.
"A lot of people do say ‘Oh, I saw only what they wanted me to see,' but we made very genuine interactions with our two North Korean guides and our bus driver, who went with us everywhere," Petersen said. "I think something that we all definitely took away from the trip is that it was kind of crazy how our countries could be so incredibly different but we could still make a really genuine connection among people."
These connections, the trip's participants agreed, were facilitated by their unique mindset as students.
"We went in with very deliberately open minds, and I think it completely changed our entire trip," Petersen said. "I think that just having that openness, and being students and being friendly and well-mannered for the most part…opened the most doors for us out of anything we could have done," she added.
"Just to go in with this attitude that we were students and we were not there to fight for our country, we were just there to learn. When we talked to our guides or occasionally met someone else who spoke English…they would tell us their opinion or ask us our opinion, and would explain it to us. Whether that's from nuclear weapons possession to the way they run their country, the fact that we went into the country with an open mind just humbled us to say that maybe before passing judgments we should get to know it," Petersen said.
According to the students, the combination of this openness and the extensive research they did before arriving in North Korea helped them to absorb all that they saw and extract enough information to add to what they already knew.
"Basically, we're smart students, and we went in very educated in a very specific type of knowledge," Roston said. "We're not naïve, and I think we got an incredible amount out of this trip. For all that it was a beautiful country and we ate incredible food, and met some really fantastically interesting people, we also came away from it with a much greater understanding of how the entire DPRKworks."
"We were only there for eight days and I wouldn't begin to presume that by me going there I understand North Korea," Harris said. "But we do understand it fundamentally better."
Editor's note— due to the nature of the Pyongyang Project's relationship with North Korea and restrictions from the Tufts Institutional Review Board, the subjects of this article were hesitant to fully disclose to the Daily some of the details of their trip.
