The last American to run in North Korea
North Korea is a no-go zone for Americans - we haven’t been allowed to visit the country since late 2017. I speak to Jay Nunn, who ran the last Pyongyang Marathon before the travel ban.
It was 1st September 2017 when the United States banned its citizens from traveling to North Korea. People from other countries were still welcome to visit as part of a very strictly organized tour, but not Americans.
Upon the ban being announced, the North Korean government cried foul1, claiming that it was now clear that the U.S. saw them as an enemy, but what other option was there after Otto Warmbier’s untimely demise? The college student may well have tried to steal a poster, but his descent into an unexplained coma and resultant death is undoubtedly the act of a foe, rather than a friend.
After closing its borders completely in 2020, when COVID-19 began ravaging the world, North Korea started welcoming tourists again in February2. Still no Americans. Indeed the Pyongyang Marathon was meant to be held this past Sunday, but was cancelled - probably due to a lack of time to organize the event3.
I spoke to Jay Nunn about running the Pyongyang Marathon in April 2017 - the last one before that travel ban.
Why North Korea?
“I love running as this conduit to travel. It's a fun way to see a city because even if you're doing a running tour, it's not the normal tour. You see people in a different element than you normally would.”
“I had some good experiences traveling to other places, so I literally googled ‘interesting half marathon.’ There was the Great Wall of China, the Faroe Islands, and then Pyongyang. It had always been a place where I was casually curious.”
Jay even lived in South Korea for a year in his 20s, teaching English, but never felt compelled to take on the logistical obstacle course to gain entry across the DMZ.
He ran track in high school but it was only when he landed back in the USA in his late 20s that Jay started running again regularly. He joined friends for both the social element and giving him a reason to get out there (“The accountability part is a huge reason why I love run clubs.”), and duly progressed to running marathons, continuing to travel the world in search of new experiences.
Jay and I spoke not long after I became an American citizen last year (yes, this interview has been in the queue for a while). There was a moment after the ceremony when I realized that having officially signed up as a member of the Most Free Country in the World™, whose army dispatches freedom worldwide, I had actually given up some freedoms - the ability to visit countries like North Korea and Cuba4, for instance.
Incidentally, the two nations I have passports for, the UK and the USA, are tied at 17th in the 2023 Human Freedom Index5. They’re bastions of the developed world; the most powerful countries in the world, and if you ignore the rampant homelessness and ever-increasing reliance on food banks in both countries, you can convince yourself of that.
How can I move this from geopolitics and the choices of our democratically-elected governments back to running? Well, this week we had the Boston Marathon - the world’s most exclusive marathon - and this coming weekend is the London Marathon. Both races are part of the Abbott World Marathon Majors. New York, Tokyo, Berlin, Chicago make up the six, with Sydney rumored to soon become the seventh.
They’re all either in America or in an American-friendly country. (The fact that the USA dropped two nuclear bombs on Japan and they’re friends now is proof enough that there is a way back for North Korea and Cuba.) Anyway! A fun thought crossed my mind about who might join them as the six naughtiest countries to run a marathon in.
The World Marathon… Naughties
Saudi Arabia - the Riyadh Marathon had over 500 participants in February
Iran - I ran in Iran (US pronunciation) would be a good t-shirt
Russia - Moscow is lovely in October (during peacetime)
China - is Beijing’s smog that much worse than LA’s?
Some very naughty countries there. What countries would be in your 6? Venezuela, maybe? Yemen? One from the bad end of the UN Human Development Index6, perhaps? Somewhere like Chad or Niger, perhaps. Back to Jay’s time in North Korea, anyway…
Jay’s North Korean takeaways
Understanding freedom
“I still feel mildly problematic. It's weird that as a free people there are restrictions on where we can go, and there is no doubt that your money that you spend there is directly funding whatever nefarious stuff they're getting up to.”
“I can understand if I go to Singapore and litter or throw gum on the floor, my white privilege doesn’t apply there - I’m going to prison and getting the cane. There's an element there of ‘Well, you knew better.’ North Korea… I don't think it matters what the actual infraction is. They don't need a reason.”
The propaganda machine
“The biggest thing that still sticks with me is that I never knew where on the reality spectrum I was.”
“You spend three or four days in constant contact with your tour guides and your official minders, so you want to feel like you have some rapport, and that the things that they're telling you about their family lives are true, but I have no clue. They're telling you about how they grew up in the city. Is that true?”
“Because Pyongyang is its own beast - that's where the party elites live. The streets are clean, there are no homeless people. It's a very different experience in the country, where you’re just a dirt farmer.”
The problems
“Just by virtue of being there, you could be causing diplomatic issues, but at the same time maybe our diplomatic relations are the problem. The fact that we've forced them into this corner of being isolationist, that's how they get attention.”
“There's a bigger question about people that you disagree with. Do you engage with them or do you put up a wall?” It's like crazy relatives that have different views than you. It's countries that have different views from your country. What's the right way to engage?”
I find this all fascinating because while I do want the veneer of freedom that allows me to travel to North Korea to run a marathon if I so wish, I also want the freedom to not do that, because I am afraid of what might go wrong - whether that’s being arrested or twisting an ankle on Mile 2.
Sports and tourism are two time-tested ways of promoting diplomacy. Many meetings and conversations occur at international tournaments, like the Olympics, for instance. Civilians traveling the world to attend events like the Pyongyang Marathon is a way of increasing knowledge and understanding between cultures. Removing that interaction leads to fear instead.
It makes me think about the sentiment towards China - the country you must connect through to get to North Korea. I can name (almost) all 50 of America’s states and dozens of German cities (maybe via fußball) but struggle to name 10 cities in a country of 1.4 billion people? And I have a post-graduate degree in Geography!
There are at least six Chinese cities with over 10 million inhabitants.
How many can you name?
Where does this lack of knowledge come from? Maybe it’s deep-seated institutional bias. I learned plenty about America while studying History at school but nothing about China. I learned about McCarthyism, for instance. I talked about how absurd it was with my staunchly socialist history teacher - an American man I will only ever know as Mr. Clark. No doubt he was labelled a Pinko by some compatriots, but even he didn’t teach too far beyond the Western-oriented curriculum.
Is our worldview really any broader than Jay’s North Korean guide’s?
What’s the solution then? I don’t know, but however you approach any of this, we will only understand more about these countries if we talk about them, visit them, get to know them, and understand that the people there really aren’t any different than those wherever you are.
Ways to make running suck less covered today
See a new city by running around it
Run with your friends (it’s fun, I promise)
Find accountability with a run club
Quiz yourself on how many Chinese cities you can name during your morning run
Running Sucks Haiku of the Week
I’m back to running
Back, as in my back is healed
IT FEELS GREAT TO RUN
It’s been a quite miserable six weeks but I’m finally pain free. It feels glorious. Now the goal is to never take my good health for granted again.
Housekeeping
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Links & further reading
Pyongyang Marathon [LINK]
Thank you Raz!
This seems to be the one to do - meet you there?
https://z-adventures.org/socotra-challenge.html