They have to provide the soup, and recently the cards as well - which used to be free. Yet even the Chosun Ilbo, no friend of Pyongyang, admits it's not all bad. Participants are excused being mobilized for farm labor. They even get presents. Cho Sung-gun, now 33, in 1985 performed before visiting Chinese premier Hu Yaobang.
Recent goodies are classier.
For outsiders, such feudal pseudo-largesse is hard to take. The ones who ultimately pay, in every sense, for all this waste of time and money are ordinary North Koreans. Yet I recall an August evening in Pyongyang. All day in the heat, thousands of schoolgirls had been practicing their moves on a square next to my hotel. As night fell they were marching home, unguided, chattering merrily.