Friendship

Crumbling from end to end and punctured by gaping holes, Pyongyang’s massive 12-lane Youth Hero Highway is a free-for-all for the few dozen vehicles that actually use it. Trucks, buses and the occasional sedan weave in and out of oncoming traffic in order to avoid the sickly workers stooping to repair the road, a symbol of the mindless excess and abject failure of North Korea’s infrastructure. The road was built, James Bond Villain explained, by students and people under the age of 30. It is a point of national pride.

70 miles away, 50,000 North Korean citizens are reportedly imprisoned in the concrete walls of Yodok Camp. Some are there because a family member escaped across the northern border into China, an offense whose punishment extends to the refugee’s entire family. Others are there for crimes they themselves committed—treason, theft, or the grave failure to report every detail of the week’s activities. Still others are there for the crime of thinking the wrong thing—or not thinking the right thing. The threat of labor camps helps ensure that they do. According to reports, there are as many as 200,000 Koreans living in labor camps. How many of those nameless prisoners once traveled down this decrepit highway?

Just as we hit the first of three checkpoints, the porcelain face asked me a question I will never forget.

“How many friends do you have?”

Her question was genuine and unnerving. She really wanted to know. The figure 1,400 appeared in my head—the number of friends I have on Facebook. That would sound absurd to someone who’s never contemplated the social graph.

“Best friends,” she clarified.

“And what is a best friend?” I asked.

“Best friend is a person you share your sorrow with.”

I had never contemplated the definition. I looked around the bus at my co-conspirators on this wild trip, now dear friends, and my mind wandered back to that bright, busy world I had left when I handed my phone to the guard at the airport.

“Four,” I finally said.

It was a question only someone in the DPRK would ask with such interest. She would like Facebook.

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