The finale from the 2005 Arirang show. That whole backdrop is one big stunt card section made up of schoolchildren, mostly ages 10-14.
Perhaps the most stunning element is the atmospheric backdrop provided by between 15,000 and 20,000 schoolchildren positioned in the seats along one grandstand, facing the audience. They all hold chest-sized booklets of colored cards, which they flip to different pages on cue to create different mosaics. The kids are in effect the light bulbs in a human Jumbotron, and they produce shimmering landscapes of mountains and rivers, raging battlefields, and Korean faces that express emotions from ferocity to joy…Critics say Arirang's wow factor in choreography is achieved on the back of ruthless training--several months of 10-hour-a-day practice drills that turn children as young as 4 or 5 into performing robots.
“They conduct it every year as a method to reinforce and remind people of the ideology,” says Kwak Tae Jung, a human rights activist based in Seoul who has interviewed 10 North Korean defectors who participated in previous mass games. The defectors describe practicing for hours without food or bathroom breaks. They recall being assigned to classes called “platoons” and say the children of Pyongyang's elite families were exempt from being conscripted into singing and dancing for the regime.
“People are not paid;” says Kwak, though “once every four or five years, the government would give TV sets or wristwatches as gifts to those who participated. They've been doing it for decades,” he says. “They consider it natural.”
More same old, same old. At the end of the 2011 Arirang Games, there were rumors that those extravaganzas would finally be retired—but only to be replaced in 2012 by what else? Something even grander, more bombastic and the show to end all communist kitsch shows—a new edition devoted to the beloved Supreme godhead of North Korea, Kim il-Sung. But with the sudden passing of son Kim Jong-Il in December 2011, that might throw the new plans into chaos. However, it seems that the North Koreans, deprived and starved as they were, are really secret grand showmen at heart.
Busting Certain Olympic Ceremonial Myths
Certain ceremonial Olympic traditions and fixtures that have appeared sacrosanct through the years are NOT at all such. Various behind-the-scene stories have appeared as of late to place these ‘revered’ Olympic institutions in proper historical context.
1. The Purloined “Antwerp” Flag. For a regular watcher of Olympic ceremonies, one will be familiar with what is referred to as the “Antwerp” flag–the first flag that supposedly featured the five Olympic rings and which is handed over from the mayor of the finishing host city at Closing to the next city mayor. In 1914, the IOC formally adopted the five-rings as its official emblem. The interlocking five rings were actually designed by IOC founder Baron Pierre de Coubertin himself, not the ancient Greeks (see story #3 following). The new flag made its official world debut at the opening ceremony of Antwerp 1920. However, come the closing ceremony when it was time for the handover to Paris 1924, the new flag was nowhere to be found. The original had simply vanished and there wasn’t enough time to create a replacement.
In 1997, at a banquet of the USOC, the mystery was solved seventy-seven years later. A reporter was interviewing Hal Haig Prieste, a platform diver and bronze medalist on the 1920 U.S. team. The reporter mentioned that the original flag from those Games was still missing. Without batting an eyelash, Prieste said: "I can help you with that. It's in my suitcase." He explained that before the 1920 Games drew to a close, he had filched the flag in question from its flagpole at the urging of his teammate, swimmer Duke Kahanamuka of Hawaii, as a prank. Since then, he had totally forgotten about the flag, lying undisturbed in his suitcase all that time. Come Sydney 2000, the historic artifact was returned to the IOC. Prieste, then 103 years old, traveled to Sydney and turned the flag over to the IOC in a special ceremony. The original flag is now on display at the Olympic Museum in Lausanne, inscribed with a plaque thanking Prieste for “donating” the pristine banner.
So no handover took place at the close of the 1920 Games. Instead, four years later, a new 5-ring flag appeared again in Paris and that has been mistakenly referred to as the ‘Antwerp’ flag all these years. Also, the 1924 flag was passed on from Paris to the next games, St. Moritz 1928, then to Amsterdam 1928, to Lake Placid 1932, etc.; so summer-winter, etc., and so on. It was not until 1952 when Oslo created a new “hand-over” flag which was to be used only for the winter games’ handovers. The 1924 Paris flag did not reappear again until Melbourne 1956, but still known as the “Antwerp” flag and became a Summer Games-only flag.
In 1988, Seoul presented a new hand-over flag and the fake “Antwerp”/real “Paris” flag was retired. Barcelona was the first recipient of the new “Seoul” flag. And thanks to Hal Prieste for mucking up another piece of Olympic history.
And then at St. Moritz 1948, two Olympic flags flying at Olympic Stadium—neither of which was the ‘Paris’ flag which would be handed over to the mayor of London 1948--were likewise stolen before closing. A third flag had to be hurriedly hoisted and then walked out at Closing.
2. The Zamperini Caper. A more celebrated flag theft case—although not ceremonially important--was that of Louis Zamperini of Torrance, California. Perhaps he was bolder or more foolish, but when Zamperini, a U.S. runner, was in Berlin for the 1936 Games, off-track, he set his eyes on a Nazi flag which was flying at the Reichstag building. He did not get very far with the prank. He was quickly captured by the Gestapo but he talked his way out if it. After he ran the 5,000m final (he finished eighth), Adolf Hitler asked to meet the prankster personally. So even though he did not win a medal, Zamperini did Jesse Owens one better: he got to shake Hitler’s hand, live to brag about it--and got to keep his Nazi flag as a souvenir. After the war, Zamperini become a motivational speaker, ran in the LA 1984 and Nagano 1998 torch relays, and had his life story told in the 2010 best seller, Unbroken.
3. The Deceptive “Diem” Stone at Delphi. There sits in ancient Delphi, Greece today a “historic” stone supposedly linking Delphi to the Olympic Games. This, of course, is pure nonsense.
Ancient Delphi had its own set of sports and artistic competition, the Pythian Games, dedicated to Apollo. However, historic accuracy was farthest from the intentions of the Nazi Riefenstahl film crew when they filmed in Delphi in 1936. In another bit of historic deception, Riefenstahl set the start of the first Olympic Torch Relay in Delphi rather than in Olympia. In an attempt to mingle their National Socialist ideals with the classical ones of ancient Greece, and to provide graphic evidence that the five-ringed symbol of the modern era Olympics could indeed be “traced” back to ancient Greece, the Nazi film crew created a new film prop. They found an ancient block of stone on the premises, carved out the five rings on two sides and made sure it looked properly ‘ancient.’ This bit of ‘artistic’ deception stayed in the film’s final cut and on site. Today, the ‘Diem’ stone sits just outside the turnstile area of Delphi, bearing that ravages of some 60 years.
The Riefensthal-faux stone episode has often been called an act of cultural desecration of the ancient site. However, it should be viewed in its proper context. The whole oracular draw of Delphi to the ancients was in itself a whole gypsy, palm-reading act anyway. The “oracle” was supposedly inhaling sulphuric fumes from a crevice in the earth—so she was ‘high’—and the ‘priests’ in the next room interpreted her ravings in totally ambiguous ways that made the pronouncements appear inscrutable and ‘divine.’ The low and the mighty traveled far and wide just to come to this very steep place to get their fortunes told. So the Nazi film prop does not seem anymore out of place in Delphi than unofficial scribblings at the site. It is merely another addition to all the other graffiti inflicted on the ruins by others through the centuries. If anything, it was the calling card of Riefenstahl and crew for “Olympia”: Berlin Leni filmed here, 1936. Surely, the succeeding horrific actions of the regime she served were not her creation.
4. Gold Medals or Just Plain Bling? The Olympic gold medals awarded today are not what they seem. The 3rd, 4th and 5th modern Summer Games (St. Louis 1904, London 1908, and Stockholm 1912, respectively) issued pure gold (14k) medals. However, because World War I intervened in 1914, a lot of metals, including gold, became even scarcer after 1917. So by Antwerp 1920, the "gold" medals awarded