Olympic Zone: Bend writer talks of rare visit to N. Korea

Bend-based freelance journalist Tim Neville is a contributor to many national publications, including Ski Magazine, Outside Magazine and the New York Times. Last year, Neville traveled to PyeongChang on assignment to explore the Olympic host city and take in a few test events. He’s also been to North Korea on assignment, particularly for a story on a luxury ski resort built there.

Tim appeared on our Olympic Zone show Tuesday to ttalk about the Olympic Winter Games.

Here’s the full interview:

Lee Anderson: Let’s talk about PyeongChang. You were there last year, while things were ramping up and they were getting prepared. Tell us about the town and what do the people think about having the Olympics there?

Tim Neville: First of all, I noticed the report on the cold and I have to say that my time there, which was almost exactly this time last year, was the coldest I have ever been. I literally wore everything that I had packed, including my ski boots to go watch some of the the test events, because it was just that cold. But PyeongChang isn’t a town so much as a district, with a lot of little towns in there. And you can go walk around the markets and drink fish soup and have Makgeolli, which is a fermented rice drink, and go have barbecue, and do karaoke. It’s really a fun place to be, actually.

Lee: My second question — and I hate to politicize this thing because the Olympics “aren’t about the politics of the world”, but they are, really. So now, Korea marches in as a unified country, the North Koreans and South Koreans together. You’ve spent some time in North Korea as well. What’s the feeling there like, and is this some ploy by the North to gather some kind of goodwill around the world or are there really sincere sentiments going on?

Neville: I would say, both. You know, I’m not an expert on North Korea, but I would say what we’re seeing is both things are happening. Yes, the Olympics–you know, this is a time to set aside politics and celebrate, “together we can celebrate the bounds of human achievement.” So it’s wonderful to see this coming together, obviously.

At the same time, the North is very aware that this is an opportunity for them also to present themselves on a world stage. And so, with the cheerleaders that they’ve sent and the teams and everyone being quite put together and doing their – you know, they have all these little cheers that they do and everything– but anyway, my point is that this is a chance for them to show the world as well that they’re not this place full of robots and you know, obsessed with destroying everything, that they’re actually people as well.

So you know, you also see that in their airline for instance, you know, when you board North Korean Air, all the flight attendants are very hospitable, and so on, and so I think, both. We’re seeing both going on for sure.

Lee: We’re taking a look at some of the pictures you brought along with you from Korea. Very regimented..All I see is marching military and all this kind of robotic thing you talked about. Is it really like that?

Neville: In some ways, yes, it is. In other ways, no it’s not. I mean they’re people too, they want to feed their families, they want to have meaningful existence and so on, but when it comes to like mass spectacles and times when people are going to be watching them, they’re very very orderly for sure. Now that’s not just the North though, that’s Koreans in general as well. Remember that South Korea 50 years ago was a backwater, and by the time the Olympics came there in 1988 for the first time, you know, even then they were still barely a democracy. So we’re seeing great changes happening there. And in North Korea, I think if they can present themselves as not completely brainwashed but respectable people, then obviously that plays in their favor as well.