Pyongyang Marathon

We were feted with a movie not too long ago of 300 naked Spartans poised against the Persians in the Battle of Thermopylae. I did not watch the movie, though I saw the posters all over Saipan with the main character looking like he was showing off his abs after a session at the gym. It reminded me of an earlier historical encounter in the plains of Marathon where the Persians were also defeated but then withdrew to sail to Athens, and a runner named Pheiddipiddes (aka Philippides, a name this guy born in the Philippines remembers) ran the 26-mile distance to warn the city of an impending Persian attack, thus the 26-mile distance of present-day marathons including that of the Olympics!

We could meander down Darius and Xerxes historical paths at the zenith of the Persian Empire, or, more recently, the history of the Olympics run since 1896 in the Games in Athens that needed a popular drawing card and came off with the marathon, or even the odd 26.385 mile measure once held because the King of England was seated exactly at that distance from the starting point, but the marathon itself is not our immediate interest. It is its recent Pyongyang incarnation that caught our fancy, not unlike the one on Saipan, where three events were held: the main one, the half run, and the 10K.

Pyongyang had its run earlier than Saipan and we are not after details of who was first to cross the finishing line as much as we are surprised to discover that the event has been held since 1981; in fact, has already been running for more than two decades (would be three but there were years it did not run). Further, the last one on April 13 this year was open to foreign amateur runners where more than 200 participants entered.

(We shall be forgiven if we mention the first year anniversary of the Boston Marathon, marred last year by explosions at the finishing line allegedly from bombs planted by the Chechen brothers Tsarnaevs, making participants this year on Patriots’ Day more determined—“we own the finish line”—to run the event oblivious to any fear that may have been inflicted by last year’s occurrence, in spite of the ugly prank of a copycat who left backpacks with a rice cooker at the finishing line a few nights before the run that police had to explode just to be sure. We do lament the fact that we kept the young Tsarnaev alive so we can punish him for life!)

Now, back to Pyongyang. I am obviously not too keen on finding out about whose legs got them fastest to the finish line and received the medal at the Mangyongdae Prize International Marathon. OK, what’s with “Mangyongdae”? That’s actually the name of the village where founder of Chosun, Chaoxian in Chinese for “North Korea,” Kim Sung Il was born, sort of like Abe Lincoln’s Kentucky log cabin but with much more patriotic hullabaloo, though not as touristy as Mt. Vernon.

I am only four hours away by regular train to the city of Dandong, China’s shipping port at the mouth of the Yalu River right across from NoKor’s Sin’uiju City with an unfinished bridge standing halfway across the river from the China side. The border traffic is hardly noticeable as the Koreans on the Dandong side, aside from being part of Korea-in-China, previously Kogoryo of old, now formally administered as Yanbian, are undocumented immigrants, or clandestine agents.

There’s a tourist ride on the Dandong side of the Yalu River that gets to the riverbank of the other side, close enough to actually see the bathers turn around and execute a cute “belfie” (butt up front) on camera clickers. The late afternoon ride I took had a young couple perform an X-rated act to the delight of the menfolk and giggled embarrassment of the demure ladies. I was told that such irreverence was not sanctioned but nonetheless tolerated when they occurred, though occasionally it is used as an object lesson to instill discipline on the unruly but nature-loving farm hands.

Compared to Dandong, the largest port facility in the Far East, brightly lit at night against the dark boulevards of Chaoxian’s thoroughfares, Sin’uiju is a sleepy town. In fact, the Internet has a satellite night photo of the Korean peninsula where the South looks like a Chicago Christmas tree and the North a replica of a starless Himalayan night. I was reminded of Dandong when I visited Heihe across the Amur River from the Russian Far East city of Blagoveshchensk where China again burned the midnight oil (a resource it does not have much of) so that its Russian neighbors would be reminded of the difference of public façade, never mind the actual economic realities on the ground.

The Wall Street Journal reported that the Pyongyang marathon is one of NoKor’s tourist attractions to earn valued foreign exchange currency. With a new ski slope and the recent suggestion of joint investigation on SoKor’s three drone attacks that Seoul thinks came from the hermit kingdom, perhaps Chaoxian is inclined to play. Why not indulge them, to keep their skills honed on games rather than on perfecting the refinement of weapons-grade uranium they are determined to attain since we accuse them of doing it anyway?

Yo bosaeyo, Chaoxian!

Jaime Vergara previously taught at SVES in the CNMI. A peripatetic pedagogue, he last taught in China but makes Honolulu, Shenyang, and Saipan home. He can be reached at pinoypanda2031@aol.com.