Into the Inferno Page #6

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building up cones above them

with fire fountains rising into the air.

And after a few months,

the fissure opened up in this direction,

again, another 13, 14 kilometers or so.

And another few dozen vents open up,

and they spewed out lava

to the northeast of us.

Everything we see now

has been set in stone.

The lava has solidified and frozen.

But if we'd been here at the time,

we would've seen jets of fire,

fountains of fire,

rising a kilometer-and-a-half

into the air

and then cascading down

to the ground again.

And that built up the cones,

like the one that we're standing on now.

And from the bases of these cones,

lava gushed out

at a phenomenal rate.

This is very, very hot lava,

very, very fluid,

and it poured down the valleys,

filling them to depths

of 100, 150 meters.

These primordial occurrences

influenced the sense of mythical poetry

of the Icelanders.

There is a text that defines

the spirit of the people.

It exists only in a single manuscript.

For Iceland, it is as important

as the Dead Sea Scrolls are for Israel.

The codex was given as a present

to the king of Denmark

by an Icelandic bishop

in the 17th century.

The Royal Codex, or Codex Regius.

In 1971,

Denmark returned it to Iceland.

Knowing that it constituted

the soul of the country,

the codex was put

on Denmark's largest battleship

and escorted by a whole fleet.

No amount of money in the world

would be enough

to purchase this manuscript

from Iceland,

although it is battered and crumpled

and filled with holes.

In the opening passage, called

"The Prophecy of the Seeress,"

there is an apocalyptic vision

of the end of the pagan gods.

This seems to describe

a huge volcanic event.

"'Neath the sea the land sinketh,

the sun dimmeth,

from the heavens

fall the fair, bright stars;

gusheth forth steam and gutting fire,

to very heaven soar

the hurtling flames.

The fates I fathom,

yet farther I see:

of the mighty gods

the engulfing doom.

Comes the darksome dragon flying,

Nthhogg,

upward from the Nitha Fells.

He bears in his pinions

as the plains he o'erflies,

now he will sink. "

Right on the border with China

lies a volcano

in the Democratic People's Republic

of Korea,

better known in the West

as North Korea.

It has been inactive

for more than 1,000 years,

but it plays a huge role

in the imagination of the people.

For millennia, it was considered

the mythical birthplace

of the Korean nation.

Today, the socialist government

co-opts this myth.

This is the site of pilgrimages.

Out of the mist, we saw a formation

of uniformed men with a flag emerging.

We believed they were soldiers,

but it turned out

they were university students

come to rejoice in the power

that emanates from this place.

And now they are singing

in praise of Mount Paektu.

Everything is different in North Korea.

Imagine if these were students

at a campus in California.

A unique opportunity

presented itself to us.

The near-impervious country

opened its doors

to a joint scientific program

between the University of Cambridge

and North Korean volcanologists.

And so we were invited to film there.

But everything we saw

was an act of presentation,

and we went for it.

There is no other way

to see this enigmatic country

other than how it wants

to present itself.

In propaganda films seen frequently

on North Korean television,

the images display monumental unity

and fervent emotion,

all dedicated to the leadership.

One thing that's remarkable

and I'm very aware of as I work here

is the sanctity of this mountain.

This has a very long history,

going back 5,000 years,

as the mythical birthplace

of the Korean people from this volcano.

And through the medieval period

and to the more modern period,

this is the sacred mountain

of the revolution,

where the struggle was fought

against Japanese occupation

70 years ago.

And the spirit of the mountain

is in all the Korean people,

and this is something very, very special

about this place.

It seems like we're on a tranquil

boat trip on a Norwegian fjord,

but actually we're at ground zero

of what was a most monumental

volcanic eruption

nearly 1,100 years ago,

the so-called Millennium eruption.

The crater here

is about three miles across.

And actually these cliffs are all part

of the crater rim,

all around us, 360 degrees.

The amount of pumice

that came out in the eruption

would be enough to bury

the whole of New York City.

Only the highest buildings

would poke out of the top.

In a way, if you look at the crater

surrounding us

and imagine that once there was a cone

built over our heads,

that missing volume alone

accounts for a huge amount of rock

and pumice and lava.

So, this has been spewed out

over the Korean peninsula,

it's in parts of China,

it's in parts of Russia,

and there's even

about three inches of ash

that fell over parts of Japan

that you can still find today.

Around ten years ago,

there was a swarm of earthquakes

that were detected

by sensitive instruments

around the mountain,

and that really ignited

the scientific interest in the volcano

and whether there might be

signs of reawakening.

Over the last few years,

we've built a really strong

and unique collaboration

with scientists from Pyongyang

who've worked here for 10, 20 years,

so they have very detailed knowledge

of the structure of the volcano.

So, we've learnt a lot from them.

It's very difficult for scientists here

to attend international conferences,

so we've really shared our experiences

and expertise

to better understand this volcano.

So, two years of data.

Yeah, we've collected

two years of seismic data.

Uh, which is pretty incredible. Um...

And the seismometer sitting here

will record all the earthquakes.

It looks just like a paint pot

linked to a laptop,

and yet that's recorded

this unique data service,

so that's really something.

Looks can be deceptive.

It's an incredibly sensitive instrument

in there.

So, it records, you know,

um, just minor movements.

Even us walking around here

will be creating noise.

So, this is Mr. Yun Yong-Gun.

He's the vice-director

of the Earthquake Administration

and kind of leads the DPRK side

of the project.

The Earthquake Administration of

the Democratic People's Republic of Korea

pays special attention to this project

of international joint research.

Great importance is given to this mountain

just because around this mountain,

our great leader President Kim Il-sung

fought against the Japanese imperialists.

Kim Il-sung, the founding father

of the communist North Korean state,

appropriated the myth of the volcano.

He established his secret

military headquarters

in a forest right here

at the foot of the mountain,

thus transferring its power and dynamic

into his revolution.

This monument is a gateway

to the sacred ground.

This group sculpture

is about the camping life of the guerillas

in Chongbong Camp.

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