The Two Koreas_ A Contemporary History - Don Oberdorfer [18]
On the roadsides leading to the center of Seoul, hundreds of thousands, perhaps a million people turned out to stare and wave at the visitors from across the lines. Streets and roadways along the route had been washed and swept, new shrubs had been planted and anticommunist signs taken down or painted over. Very few of the 43,000 American troops who were then in Korea were in evidence; only ten, many fewer than usual, were on duty at Panmunjom, and the rest had been instructed to stay out of sight.
The first exchange of North-South Red Cross delegations had had taken place two weeks earlier in the North. There everything had been meticulously prepared: People along the route to Pyongyang had lined up to greet the visitors dressed in their Sunday best; shops in the capital had been specially stocked for the occasion, and public buildings illuminated. It was all too perfect for Chung Hee Kyung, the principal of Ehwa Girls High School in Seoul, and the only woman among the southern delegates. The North Koreans she saw and met seemed to her dolls who had been programmed to say and do as they were told. When she returned to a large, loud, and unruly welcome in the South, to her own surprise she began weeping uncontrollably with relief and joy to be among familiar human beings with human reactions. "It was my most genuine experience of patriotism," Chung recalled.
The North Koreans who came to Seoul, following an afternoon of leisure, were taken to an elaborate reception at historic Kyongbok Palace, the seat of the Choson dynasty, the country's long-lasting and final royal kingdom. With an eye to history, the ROK government staged the reception in the Pavilion of Joyous Meeting, first built in 1412 as a greeting place for diplomatic delegations and royal visitors to the Korean court.
Inside the historic two-story pavilion, which is anchored in a pond near the former quarters of the Korean queens, were banks of colorful flowers, a sumptuous buffet, and several dozen gorgeous young women, many wearing filmy dresses, miniskirts, or other alluring modern garb. I walked up to one of the beautiful hostesses and asked who she was and why she was there. "I'm a Red Cross volunteer," she replied firmly, refusing to answer further questions. After receiving the same answer from another hostess of stunning beauty, I turned to a South Korean journalist familiar with the preparations. From him I learned that the KCIA, which had devised the program of the North Koreans, had asked for and received the services of some of the country's most beautiful young women from the national airline, modeling firms, and television companies and provided each one with a substantial sum of money to buy whatever dress she thought showed off her features best. In return, she was to show up as a hostess for the North Korean visitors, without revealing how this had come about.
The communist visitors professed to be unimpressed by the glamor of the hostesses or the symbolism of the reception in the historical surroundings. An austere man wearing a Mao jacket and a Lenin cap to complement his Kim Il Sung button, Yuri Ki Bok, who was the chief political adviser of the North Korean delegation, observed sourly that the palace buildings were "outright testimony that the ruling class in the past exploited the people." The following night, the visitors were guests at a risque display of bikini-clad, high-kicking South Korean dancers at Walker Hill, which had been built as a restand-recreation center for American troops. Some of the North Koreans, whose society was officially prudish, covered their faces or averted their eyes. They complained that the show was "the result of American imperialism" and lodged an official protest about the sexy display.
The visitors were lodged in the Tower Hotel, located on a mountain overlooking the capital city. Businesses in the city's tall buildings were asked to leave their lights on all night to present a more impressive view and, not incidentally, to prove that Seoul had electricity to spare. At the time of the