The diction-struggling Caesar from Brian's Life , the stutterer with chips on the nose of A Fish Named Wanda, and the world champion in fish slap fights are the same person: Sir Michael Palin. The member of the Monty Python has a more unknown facet than that of comedian, at least outside the borders of his native England: that of former president of the Royal Geographical Society of the United Kingdom and tireless explorer, whose travels have led him to emulate Phileas Fogg: from the North Pole to the Himalayas, passing through the Sahara desert or the most remote regions of South America.

None of those trips resembles the last one, bound for North Korea, the most airtight and inaccessible country in the world, quite a challenge portrayed in a documentary for Channel 5 and in the subsequent North Korean Journal , now published by Attic of the Books in our country.

Where does that exploratory passion come from? "From an early age as I can remember, I was fascinated by other places. Perhaps it was a reaction to living in a very static world : England in the 1940s, immediately after the war, my heavily bombed birthplace, Sheffield. There seemed to be nowhere to escape except in your imagination. As a child, discovering the opportunities I have had in my life to visit much of the world would have been the wildest, most unlikely and fantastic dream . "

Newly recovered from heart surgery and confined to his London home, Palin answers our questions by email , with the sharp verb and insight of an experienced traveler. Upon arrival in North Korea in April 2018, the situation seemed to have relaxed both between Kim Jong Un and Donald Trump and between the two Koreas. However, the possibility of a sudden military escalation remained in the air . "All sorts of fears crossed my mind before I left, even while we were on the train from Beijing to Pyongyang. Two weeks later, fears and apprehensions had been greatly reduced: we had been well taken care of in a country that, at some level it seemed to work perfectly. "

Despite this, Palin unambiguously assumes that North Korea is "the most controlled society" he has ever known and, at the first exchange, acknowledges having "no reason to doubt that they took us away from what they did not want us to do." let's see . " And yet, his gloomy expectations did not match the final impression: "Instead of a gloomy and militarized society I found myself a world that was like a bubble, protected from the outside, united in devotion to the Great Leaders, but not so enraged with the rest of the planet as I expected. "

Throughout his journey through the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Palin visited Pyongyang and its huge public spaces for military parades, but also rural regions, the militarized border with South Korea or Mount Paektu, the origin of numerous North Korean myths. , including that of Kim Il Sung, the first Supreme Leader and founder of the dynasty that still runs the country with an iron fist. Among the most surprising things about his adventure, Palin recalls the "strange background music that plays at all hours in Pyongyang" or the 15 haircuts allowed at a hair salon. "They all looked exactly the same."

The most notable day of his trip coincided with his 75th birthday: "I spent it on a cooperative farm near Wonsan. To record the sequence, I was asked to kneel on the ground next to a farmer and help her weed her field . They asked her how she had done it, she replied 'it is unnecessary'. That they told me on my 75th birthday was quite annoying! " One of the things that became clearer to him, especially at celebrations like May Day, was that " North Koreans laugh a lot, sing a lot and drink a lot . We shared several jokes, but they were of the universal type. No one was allowed. kind of humor to talk about the country's leaders or politics. " In fact, criticism or sarcasm related to the Kim dynasty is prohibited under severe penalties , as is watching series from South Korea or importing foreign food, small cracks of freedom that the totalitarian regime cannot afford.

Despite everything, a Monty Python cannot pass up the opportunity to make a bit of a goose, like in a school where, between praising the leader and ping-pong games, Palin inflates a globe-shaped ball while doing laugh at the students. Of course, it is clear that if he and his old colleagues made a sketch like those of the Flying Circus it would not be about North Korea directly, "but rather about those who demonize the country and maintain through military threats and personal insults a continuous level of hostility towards this little place in the world. " The thing would end with an undisguised self-tribute to The Life of Brian , "those kinds of people would come out who would tear their clothes to condemn something and then make the wrong name for the country. 'Who do we hate? The Democratic People's Republic of Korea No, you mean the Democratic People's Republic of Korea! The Democratic People's Republic of Korea? Those are dissenters! ' "

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