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Wednesday 2006-09-06 - P’yŏngyang, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea
Korean culture
Next on our program for today is a visit to the Folklore Museum in P'yŏngyang which turns out to be very interesting. As at every tourist site in North Korea, we get a local guide - a good thing since all the explanatory texts with the well-presented exhibits are in Korean. Many murals, paintings and schematics explain the use of containers, agricultural instruments and fishing gear -- from prehistoric times to the present.
The section on clothing is also very interesting, showing how the traditional style we see now evolved from simple tunics worn over trousers or a long skirt. When a child turns one, it's dressed up in new clothes with rainbow colors, and presented with a table with various toys and implements; what the child chooses to play with (say, a brush) is supposed to predict what the child will grow up to be (a brush would represent an intellectual). This custom is still alive -- the rainbow colors worn on every birthday, not just the first -- and later on we actually see a little boy proudly skipping around dressed up in rainbow colors.
