Scenic and political views At Diamond Mountain, North Korean gu

DIAMOND MOUNTAIN, North Korea -- Chun Kyong Ok, a North Korean "environmental monitor," had a ready answer to why the United States does not attack the isolated communist state while "poking its nose into every corner of Iraq, even its president's palace."

"That's because of our mighty military power," Chun said matter-of-factly. "We are different from the Iraqis. Let me tell you a secret. The Americans staged three computer-simulated wars against us, and each time they lost."

Hiking up the Diamond Mountain valley in North Korea is a sojourn to a storied natural site that has inspired generations of Korean scribes with its beauty. But it's also a visit to a place left behind in a Cold War era, where the ideas of a generation ago are everywhere, on granite slabs and on the lips of communist minders.

The minders posted along the trekking route up the mountain's Nine Dragons Valley are called "environmental monitors," but are really part tour guides, part propagandists.

Chun, a woman in her early 20s with a dab of lipstick and crimped hair pulled into a bun, said President Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell "were all war maniacs and that expecting them to love peace is like telling a wolf to give up bloody meat and live on vegetables."

Hard currency for views

The men and women -- wearing clean, padded anoraks and makeup, luxuries in this impoverished, totalitarian state -- mingle freely among the tourists traveling on a cruise ship that has taken a detour around the sealed border between the Koreas.

The trip is run by the South Korean conglomerate Hyundai, which gives visitors -- mostly South Koreans -- a rare view at the fabled Diamond Mountain in the southeast corner of North Korea. In return for opening up to tourists, the Stalinist state gets badly needed hard currency.

On the trip, the Northerners were eager to learn how their communist regime and leader Kim Jong Il were viewed by South Koreans and the United States amid high tensions over Pyongyang's recent moves to reactivate its nuclear programs.

"Everybody is eager to know more about the South Koreans," Chun said.

She and other minders shoveled snow and had no problem chatting freely with the Southern visitors, who trudged up a path cut through thigh-high snow wearing crampons and bright windbreakers.

Enemies 'in old days'

"If you have to choose between the Americans and the fellow Koreans, what will you do?" Hong Young Il, a 28-year-old North Korean, asked a South Korean.

The Southern tourists usually shy away from political debate. Hyundai, which has been running the tour since 1998, asks them not to say anything that might offend North Koreans.

The Northerners seemed carefully educated in international issues concerning their government. They repeated official lines, but on occasion their comments threw rare glimpses into the North Korean thinking.

Asked whether he considered the Americans a "sworn enemy" as North Korea's official media often claim, Hong said, "That was so in old days."

"We are now ready to talk with the United States if they recognize us and treat us as an equal partner," he said. "The problem is the United States wants to subjugate us."

"Do South Koreans still describe North Koreans as monsters with horns?" asked Lee Eun-ha, a female communist guide who bundled a knitted scarf around her cherubic, round face. Before their historic summit in 2000 thawed relations, the two Koreas had vilified each other for decades.

Hur Bok-nam, a 26-year-old North Korean, urged the two Koreas to "live up to their compatriotic spirit and join forces to fight foreign forces" -- a theme all North Korean minders stressed.

'A fist that can punch'

"One finger doesn't do much, but five fingers make a fist that can punch," he said.

Hur looked disappointed but listened to the notion that most South Koreans want 37,000 U.S. troops to stay in the South, a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War, as a deterrent against North Korea and for regional security even after the two Koreas reunify.

"You get tired of a guest who stays more than three days. How can they have U.S. troops for over 50 years?" he said.

Chun, the female guide, said she hoped heavy snow this winter heralded a "plentiful harvest" later in the year in the hunger-stricken country, which is dependent on outside aid to avert famine. She also hoped that "cooperation and reconciliation with the South will thrive to resolve our problem in the North."

Diamond Mountain also serves as a billboard for the personality cult that has dominated the isolated country for half a century. Verses and slogans cut into granite slabs extol the late President Kim Il Sung, father of Kim Jong Il.

The trekking ended at a pagoda that commands a panoramic view of snowcapped peaks glinting in the sun and the frozen Nine Dragons Waterfall. An ancient Korean scribe compared the cascade to "10,000 bushels of pearls falling down."

The stream gurgled around boulders buried in snow. Pine branches sagged with piles of snow, and cameras flashed.