Pyongyang's 'Party Founding Museum'
"An endless stream of servicepersons and working people of all strata are visiting the Party Founding Museum on the occasion of the 64th anniversary of the foundation of the Workers' Party of Korea.
The museum which was opened in October Juche 59 (1970) is associated with immortal revolutionary activities of President Kim Il Sung who had founded and led the WPK....The two-storied museum has his two office rooms, reception room and meeting hall which have been arranged as they were and several show rooms where historical materials related to the Party founding are on display. Beyond the main building of the museum are historical mementoes showing his glorious revolutionary history, his residence and the historic monument inscribed with the words "Unforgettable House of History" erected on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the WPK".
The museum which was opened in October Juche 59 (1970) is associated with immortal revolutionary activities of President Kim Il Sung who had founded and led the WPK....The two-storied museum has his two office rooms, reception room and meeting hall which have been arranged as they were and several show rooms where historical materials related to the Party founding are on display. Beyond the main building of the museum are historical mementoes showing his glorious revolutionary history, his residence and the historic monument inscribed with the words "Unforgettable House of History" erected on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the WPK".
However, let us see what others have to say about it:
"The Party Founding Museum is located on the southern slope of Haebang Hill and is one of the least interesting museums".
The Asian Review of Books, reviewing Chris Springer's 'Pyongyang: The hidden history of the North Korean capital:
"....the Party Founding Museum, as Springer points out, is neither the founding place of the Party, [nor] tells the true history of the Party and is somewhat incongruously housed in one of the few remaining examples of Japanese colonial architecture in Pyongyang -- no less than the former Japanese HQ".
And since I might not get an opportunity to note this in the near future without blatant artifice, further extracts:
"...Kim Il-sung once attacked Pyongyang Zoo as being `capitalist' for keeping elephants and other foreign animals and instructed that the zoo keep only those animals native to Korea or that the Three-Revolutions Exhibition contains one of the DPRK's first reengineered tractors (based on Soviet designs) that only worked in reverse".
(If any reader wants to buy me an early Christmas present, that book would be gratefully received.)
Labels: DPRK-watch
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on Thursday, October 08, 2009 at 2:21 pm.
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Can't afford the book - how about a re-engineered tractor?
What a shocking omission! Plainly anti-Juche elements have sabotaged the concept.
I have petitioned the Dear Reader to include, as a matter of extreme urgency, a video installation of Comrade Nick Drew's immortal pæan to Songun 'Pyongyang, Pyongyang'.
It could be housed in the Fingfongbongtongklongmongtwang suite. Or something.
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