Bischoff on North Korea

[Guest ISportsFan]

On April 28 and 29, 1995 – exactly eight years ago – WCW teamed up with New Japan Pro Wrestling and participated in the International Sports and Cultural Festival for Peace in Pyongyang, the capital of communist North Korea. The two-day event, which featured wrestling as its centerpiece, was attended by more than 150,000 people each day, the largest gatherings to ever witness wrestling shows.

 

Five Superstars on the current WWE roster – Eric Bischoff, Chris Benoit, Scott Steiner, Ric Flair and Dean Malenko – were there. With tensions between the U.S. and North Korea rising, WWE.com asked Eric Bischoff to tell us about the trip, which he did below. For more on this unprecedented tour, pick up a copy of the May edition of Raw Magazine, which goes on sale April 29, featuring Triple H on the cover.

 

 

It is and was one of the most surreal experiences I’ve ever had. It’s beyond anything that you can imagine when you read about or hear about third-world countries. I’m sure there are countries that are more desolate in some respects than North Korea. But when you combine the desolation and the poverty with the cultural divide between the rest of the world and the North Korean government and people, it’s amazing. I’ll never forget when I was in grade school in the early and mid-1960s, we were taught how evil communism was, and how the population was brainwashed, and how the government controls the media and controls what people think. You never really understand or appreciate what that means until you experience it firsthand. And being in North Korea, I experienced it very firsthand.

 

There were only two television stations, for example, both of them 24-hour propaganda. There were only two or three radio stations, all of them totally government-controled propaganda. And the population in North Korea is fed an entirely different base of knowledge in terms of world history. They live in 1952. I’m not being funny; I’m not exaggerating. They still believe and make their population believe that the Korean War is essentially continuing to take place; although it may not be an armed conflict, the population believes that North Korea is still at war with the West in many ways.

 

I bought a book that was written by Kim Il Sung, the “Great Leader” as they refer to him, and it was translated into English, for Westerners. In it, I read about the North Korean version of history, as it relates to World War II.

 

According to the North Korean doctrine, the North Koreans won World War II, and defeated Japan. There’s no reference to American involvement. There’s no reference to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. According to the North Korean government, that never happened; it was North Korea that defeated Japan and ended World War II. That’ll give you an idea of just how brainwashed North Koreans are. That’s what they’re taught in schools.

 

Once we touched down at the airport, we were broken up into groups of two and were assigned what was described to us as our “cultural liaison,” which was nothing more than the North Korean version of a CIA agent who was to shadow that group of two 24 hours a day. The first thing we did was go on a tour, and pay homage to the “Great Leader,” who had died the year before we got there, and the country was still in a state of political mourning, if you will. Of course, the North Korean cameras were rolling there, and it was a big news event.

 

On the way over to pay homage to the “Great Leader,” we were informed by our “cultural attaché” in no uncertain terms that we were not to “molest” any of the North Korean women. It sounds funny until you realize that that was their fear, because they’re taught that Westerners are barbarians – that we’re there to rape, kill, burn, destroy. That’s their view of who Americans are -- Westerners in general, but specifically Americans. It wasn’t meant as an insult, it was meant as a warning, because they really thought that that was what we were there to do. So that’s how the trip started. And it got more interesting from there.

 

They never said you couldn’t go out on your own, but you never really had the opportunity to do anything because they made sure that you were part of a tour, or an event -- something all the time. When you got to your hotel, there was really no form of transportation other than that which the government provided, so it wasn’t like you were going to go get in a rental car and drive around the countryside. You were pretty much landlocked in your hotel.

 

Coincidentally, at that time, I was doing a lot of jogging, and I liked to get up in the morning and run. One morning I got up at about 6 a.m., and just for the fun of it, I decided, “You know what? I’m not going to wait for that cultural attaché of mine.” I put on a pair of bright red sweatpants and a yellow T-shirt, and went jogging through the streets of Pyongyang, North Korea, during rush hour.

 

North Korean rush hour is all foot traffic; there are no cars. Just foot traffic and bicycles. The only cars are government or police. It was bizarre. And by the way, my cultural attaché didn’t see me leave the hotel. Evidently, he didn’t expect me to get up quite that early.

 

All of the North Koreans were going to work. One of the things I found very interesting is that, no matter what your job is in North Korea, you walk to work in a suit. Whether you work in a factory, a dairy or a post office, you walk to work in a suit, and then when you get to work, you change into whatever work clothes you wear. When you’re done, you take your work clothes off, put your suit on and walk back home. So everyone was walking around in a suit – either dark blue or black.

 

At that time, I was probably only 195 pounds, but at 5 foot 11, 195 pounds, I was a monster. I was like a giant compared to them. And I was probably the first Westerner that any of them had ever seen live. As I was told when I landed, I was probably only the seventh or eighth American to be in North Korea since the end of the Korean conflict that wasn’t either capture or shot down.

 

They’re all wearing black or dark blue, and there is this incarnation of evil, as they’ve been brought up to believe because of brainwashing, jogging down the street in rush hour one Wednesday morning in Pyongyang, North Korea, wearing red sweatpants and a yellow T-shirt. And the people were scared to death. As I’m running down the street, crowds of people were literally parting like the Red Sea. They weren’t rude; they weren’t aggressive in any way. Quite the opposite, they were so taken aback.

 

When I got back to the hotel, my cultural attaché had a few choice words for me. He was pretty well controlled, but it was communicated to me that that wouldn’t happen again, and of course it didn’t. But it was really a bizarre experience. It was like a three or four mile run, but it was the most interesting 30 minutes of my life in many respects.

 

The city of Pyongyang is just one big mass of concrete – very modern in appearance, because it was pretty much leveled in 1952, so it’s been rebuilt since then. One of the amazing things is that the streets are so incredibly wide. They go all the way through the city of Pyongyang. And I actually asked, “Why are these streets so wide? You don’t have any cars.”

 

They were very proud to inform me, “The city of Pyongyang is designed to be an airfield, so that in times of war, fighter jets and bombers can land anywhere that they want to within the city.” So literally, the city is designed as a series of runways, surrounded by buildings.

 

North Korea is so poverty stricken that in the countryside they literally eat their dead. That’s been documented by a number of recent news stories and documentaries. They’re famished. They’ve been in a condition of drought for an extended period of time, probably nearly a decade. So there’s very little of any agriculture. They really have no resources. They’re entire economy is built around their military and weaponry. They really don’t have any infrastructure to feed their culture, which is one of the reasons that they’re in such a desperate condition.

 

But it’s very well hidden. They’re very cognizant of what they let people see, including their own population. They see their population going to work in a suit every day – even though they’re not making any money, and even though they go home to starving families. You would never see the kind of poverty in Pyongyang that you would see in an American city. You’d never see anybody sleeping in the street in Pyongyang. They’d take you away and probably barbecue you.

 

We stayed in a five-star hotel, because that’s where all the government officials stayed. We ate like kings – these unbelievable meals. What we saw as visitors was incredibly extravagant, while their population was literally starving in their sleep.

 

But the shows were amazing. To this day, the shows were some of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen. It was obvious that the North Korean government had spent a tremendous amount of time planning this, because it looked like the World Cup in terms of its presentation. They brought in dancers and traditional forms of Korean entertainment. It was like the greatest halftime show I’ve ever seen in an arena.

 

The wrestling was very Japanese in its presentation because it was essentially produced by New Japan, and they have a different style of wrestling there – more about competition than it is about the characters. The North Koreans weren’t wrestling fans per se,. They certainly don’t get wrestling over there. They certainly didn’t know who a lot of Americans were. They were perplexed by it all. But they responded the way they should have responded. They were polite.

 

I think they were entertained by the spectacle of it all.

 

What do you guys think? Now that North Korea is so hugely on our radar, what about WWE.com running this article from Bischoff? What about some of the things he said (i.e. the runway for wartime comment)?

 

I think this is just unreal. Their experience must have been outstanding, but frightening as well considering how under control the North Koreans kept them. Having a "guide" that is really like an ominous presence that forces you to abide by strict rules must have been intriguing for them, especially since they come from the USA or Canada.

 

Oh well, I assume it was an interesting experience that not many have had the chance (or probably the will) to do.

 

Jason

[Guest Vern Gagne]

Very interesting read. I'd be interested in hearing what the other WWE workers had to say about their trip to North Korea.

[Guest phoenixrising]

That one section where Bischoff describes the book showing that North Korea won World War II was somewhat disturbing. It's amazing how well they have been able to control the flow of information to the point where the entire public believes something that never happened did. Blows the mind.

[Guest Kelly]

I'm just pissed the HGH is on the cover of Raw magazine. But who reads that crap anyway?

[Guest MaxPower27]

I'm just pissed the HGH is on the cover of Raw magazine. But who reads that crap anyway?

I do. Who cares who's on the fucking cover?

 

 

 

 

Anyway, it is a great article in the magazine, it has quotes from Benoit and Flair as well.

[Guest the 1inch punch]

I've read articles likr that before, and Westnerers go through the same treatment. Interesting piece though