N. Korea, Eccentricity Well Off the Scale Nothing Seems Too Big When the Kims, Father and Son, Celebrate Themselves Billboards in Pyongyang show the orchid Kimilsungia, left, and a second national flower, a red begonia called Kimjongilia, right, named for the two leaders. (Photos By Blaine Harden -- The Washington Post) Washington Post Foreign Service Friday, February 29, 2008; Page A14 PYONGYANG, North Korea -- In closed communist dictatorships, land-use planning often edges toward the far side of eccentricity. In Albania under Enver Hoxha, the countryside was pimpled with more than 700,000 concrete bunkers. Built to ward off invaders, most became outhouses. In Romania under Nicolae Ceausescu, a historic quarter of old Bucharest was bulldozed to build a Parisian-style boulevard, an artificial river and a 13-story neo-Stalinist palace that was used for, well, nothing. Before Ceausescu could move in, he was overthrown, lined up against a wall and shot. Here in North Korea, with a father-and-son dictatorship ruling the roost, eccentricity in land planning has gone unchecked for 60 years. It has gone to the far side, and beyond. Kim Il Sung, who founded North Korea in 1948, built stupendously large structures to honor himself. So has his son, Kim Jong Il, who took over when his father died in 1994. And so this week, when the New York Philharmonic flew into Pyongyang for a first-of-its-kind concert, the government offered bus tours to show musicians and attending journalists what the two Kims have wrought. To explain it in English, the government provided intense men with worried faces. They called themselves "guides." The musicians called them "minders." Their job was to answer questions and prevent foreign visitors from wandering off to see a city that, from a moving bus, appeared to be poor, dark and cold. The tour buses stopped only in front of the gleaming edifices that are the pride of the personality cult of the two Kims. First on the tour was a statue of Kim Il Sung, known here as the Great Leader. The statue is shockingly big and commands a vast concrete plaza on a hill overlooking the capital. Large speakers broadcast martial music. When North Koreans visit, as they often do in sizable, highly organized groups, they bow to the statue. For foreign visitors, snapping pictures of what may well be the world's tallest statue of a dead dictator, the first question that comes to mind is: "How tall is it?" This reporter's minder seemed tormented by the question. He took a long time to formulate an answer. "We respect our Great Leader," he said. "We don't measure the height." The minder paused, then began again. "We measure the size of the statue by the size of hearts of the Korean people." Another pause. Then the minder asked, rather sheepishly, if he might go off the record. Bottom line: He didn't know. When showing off other Kim-created structures, however, statistics about size and cost and wonderfulness spill unbidden from the mouths of minders. At the Grand People's Study House, a wedding-cake-shaped confection of concrete that occupies much of a city block, visitors were repeatedly told these facts: The building has 600 rooms, 30 million books (including "Gone With Wind," as one guide put it) and 20 kinds of rare gemstones inlaid in the floor of a reception room dominated by a white marble statue of Kim Jong Il. Planted liberally among the monstrous buildings honoring the revolutionary achievements of the Kims are billboards bearing photographs of a red perennial begonia called Kimjongilia. It supposedly blooms on his birthday. Other billboards display North Korea's second national flower, an orchid called Kimilsungia. Perhaps because of chronic power outages, Pyongyang does not seem to have stoplights. What the capital does have -- at least when the New York Philharmonic is in town -- is female traffic cops. They were all gorgeous -- and they were all gorgeous in exactly the same way. They wore powder-blue uniforms with fur-lined hats. With bright red lipstick and dramatic eyebrows, they looked as if they had been made up for the stage. They directed the city's sparse traffic with robotic arm movements. They looked fit and happy and often smiled at the traffic. "They are the faces of the road, and they are chosen for their beauty and their height," a minder explained. "They cheer us up and clarify our minds."