Democratic People’s Republic of Korea
Day 1: Minneapolis ✈️ Seattle ✈️ Beijing
Up at 3:30 AM to catch a 4 AM taxi to MSP. My flight took off in 3 hours and it was not one I planned on being late for. I packed two carry-on bags because I don’t trust checked in luggage making it half way across the world.
My flight to Seattle went fine, not much to do since I wiped all my devices for this trip. I read a little on my kindle, making sure to verify there were no remotely religious texts on the device. Once I landed in SEA and navigated their airport, and after an hour long negotiation about North Korean visas with the Chinese airline, I was ready to head to Beijing.
My flight from Seattle left at 12 PM on Sunday and 12 hours later it landed in Beijing at 4 PM local time on Monday. I stumbled my way through immigration half awake and found my way to the hotel after falling asleep on the airport bus. I got some wifi at the hotel and told my parents I was alive. I then slept for 12 hours.
Day 2: Beijing ✈️ Pyongyang
Up at 5:30 AM after having the best sleep I’ve had in years. I splurged a little and had a very nice hotel room in the Beijing Hilton, so the shower and shave were extremely welcome. I went down for breakfast at 7 AM and was greeted with a pretty tame American breakfast. Having the taste palette of a 5-year-old, I was fine with that. After breakfast I went back to the hotel room and watched some coverage of the earthquake that occurred near Fukushima while I was in the air.
At 9 AM I left on the airport bus, managing to stay awake this time, and met up with part of my tour group at 10. Americans are required to fly into North Korea via Air Koryo, while everybody else was allowed to take an overnight train. There were 4 Americans in our plane group, along with 3 others who didn’t want to take the overnight train.
Here’s where my first experience with North Korea began. What I assumed to be Chinese tourists coming to North Korea with us ended up being real life North Koreans. And they had a. shit. load. of. stuff. Each of them were pushing 2-3 trolley carts full of electronics, furnishings, and half of a Chinese supermarket. The guide explained to us that only the elite of the elite are allowed to leave the country, and when they do, they stock up. They were buying everything not available in their country and bringing it back.
Okay, so some of them are allowed to leave the country, that’s weird. That’s not something you exactly hear in the news in America. I don’t have pictures of this moment, because we aren’t in a zoo and you don’t just take pictures of people.
The flight to Pyongyang was on Air Koryo, the world’s lowest rated airline. Their airline consists of old Soviet-era jets, some pretty wicked turbulence, and the most interesting “burger” you’ll ever eat.
I’m still not sure what animal that food was supposed to mimic, but I got about half of it down until I realized it wasn’t worth it.
On landing we were greeted by our local Korean guides while going through customs and immigration.
“This is it, they’re going to touch my butt, go through my phone, and detain me for being American”, I thought assuringly.
Except they didn’t.
They asked for any electronics or books, made sure the books weren’t bibles, and didn’t even give my phone a chance glance. I left my shoes on, belt on, winter coat on, and only got wanded with a metal detector. The fuck America, how come it’s easier to get into the most closed nation in the world, than it is to get through TSA? Don’t get me wrong, some people did have their bags looked through, but that’s because there was a misplaced battery pack, or a camera they forgot to take out.
It was about 4 PM and we got on a surprisingly nice greyhound-style bus.
Once on the bus we headed to the train station where we picked up the other ~10 members of our group and our Western guide. I won’t talk about the people from this trip very much, to respect their privacy, but they are amazing people. They were all incredibly well-traveled and taught me a lot about different parts of the world, as well as how to properly say “snooker” (it’s snookah).
After picking up the rest of the group we headed to the hotel. We were staying at the Yanggakdo hotel, which is conveniently positioned on an island.
The hotel is 47 stories with a rotating restaurant on the top floor and a host of activities to make foreigners forget we aren’t allowed to leave and go to the city alone.
What was hard to forget was that it was us and one other tour group, < 30 people total, staying in this hotel. There are 30 stories of hotel rooms, each person could have had their own floor in this behemoth. This was the first glimpse into that weird feeling that I experienced a few times, making it obvious that we were treated separately than the local population.
I don’t have any pictures from the rest of the night as it was spent eating dinner in the rotating restaurant, getting drunk downstairs, getting to know the other travelers, and getting my ass kicked in billiards (snookah). There is a lot of drinking in North Korea, that I did not expect.
I can, however, tell you my experience of that basement full of night activities (the list in the image above). In each room was 1 to 2 female Korean staff members, just waiting for us. This was probably 20ish staff, sitting alone in rooms presumably all day, until we came down to get drunk and play games. I imagine it’s a better job than most Koreans have, but it’s still that weird feeling I was talking about. Either way, they were all very polite to us, and even joked around. I had a 5 RMB beer, and went to bed around 10:30.
Day 3: Pyongyang 🚌 DMZ 🚌 Kaesong 🚌 Sariwon 🚌 Pyongyang
Up at 4 AM to some alarm going off in our room. I figured it was a fire alarm, and I’m not going down 42 flights of stairs in a pitch black stairwell. I began accepting my forthcoming death until I realized it was an alarm clock built into the bedside table. Most likely left on from the last travelers in this room, I went back to bed and woke up for real at 6.
The breakfast was bread, plain yogurt, half a bottle of water, some jam, a weird gelatin-y pancake, and an egg. Not the worst breakfast I’ve had, and I was thankful to get normal-ish food.
We left for the DMZ at 7 AM.
We drove along constantly bumpy roads for 1 1/2 hours and then stopped at a tea house that straddled the highway. It was cold, empty, and the bathroom had a smell that you would exactly expect. We were greeted by a Korean woman who was eager to serve us tea and coffee for 10 RMB.
After 10 minutes we were back on the road to the DMZ. I think this was one of the things I was most excited about for this trip. In the West you hear so much about this area, how hostile and tense it is, and how at any moment all out war could break out.
Although there are political tensions between the governments, the rest was absolute bullshit. At the DMZ we laughed and joked with the guard who showed us around, he joked with the Americans after telling us how brutally defeated we were in the Korean war, and was just a normal guy. The weirdest part was not a single human being could be seen on the South Korean side, not a single one. I expected a full army.
The other travelers informed me how rigorous the security on the South Korean side was, and how intense and dangerous the South Koreans tried to make it seem. We all experienced the exact opposite on the North side, and had quite a fun and safe time.
But when leaving the DMZ you could see some of the marks that they were prepared for war. The below image shows a bridge with concrete cubes on it. These cubes are held up by a steel wire, and when cut, they fall down to block the bridge. There’s also lines of boulders to prevent tanks from getting through on land.
After this we went to Koryo Museum, a museum of Korea’s first university. These propaganda parts weren’t the part of the trip I found entertaining, so I didn’t take many pictures. Here you can see a current Korean University outside of the museum.
We then went to lunch in Kaesong city. Kaesong was once the Capital when Korea was united and is now the 9th largest city in North Korea.
The food was interesting to say the least, and the soup lacked any taste. I gave everything a shot but definitely didn’t finish it all. Some of the other people in the group opted to try the Dog Soup which is, yes, Dog Soup. I didn’t try it, and I still don’t know where I stand on eating dog, but maybe someday in the future.
After lunch we went to look at Kaesong City from outside the restaurant. When you’re in the DPRK, the signs of the dictatorship are never far away.
Can you see it?
This translates to something like “Long live the party, forever powerful”. You will see this on at least one mountain in every city. And directly behind us are the statues of the leaders, which can also be found in every city.
We hit the road again to head towards Sariwon City and see it from a nearby mountain top.
Here are some photos from along the way.
When we got to Sariwon City they showed us the largest cooperative farm in the country from right outside the city limits.
We then headed into the city to get a view from the top of a big hill.
After this we drove back to Pyongyang for the night to get some dinner, but not before stopping once more to bask in the country’s glory.
After basking we went to a restaurant in Pyongyang for BBQ duck. This was actually a good meal, so I was happy to fill up with some real meat (and lots of beer and soju).
After dinner was straight to the bar for some more beer.
This is where I got to experience the worst pour of beer I’ve ever seen.
After this we went back to the hotel and I passed out immediately around 11 due to the beer and soju.
Here are some pictures I grabbed of our hotel room the next morning. It wasn’t the worst place I’ve ever stayed.
Day 4: Pyongyang 🚌 Nampo
Up at 6:10 for a shower and the same breakfast as yesterday. I really started to miss milk at this point, as well as normal sized glasses of water.
I had to put on my dress clothes this morning. We were heading to the Kumsusan Palace of the Sun, where President Kim Il-sung and General Kim Jung-il lay in state. This is arguably one of the most sacred places in the country, and if there was a single place that was too easy to get in trouble it was here. We were told to keep our hands directly at our sides the entire time and we weren’t allowed to walk on the escalators, nor on the 10 minute travelator rides.
After the long rides and security, we enter into a grand palace, which at this point doesn’t surprise me very much. When you make all of your tourist spots try to look grand it loses its appeal. Nonetheless it’s covered in marble and huge chandeliers. What did impress me was the 25 foot tall wax figure of Kim Il-sung at the end of a grand hallway with 10-foot chandeliers. We lined up in groups of 4 and bowed at the base of this giant figure. We were then escorted through a small but powerful wind tunnel.
What came next was nothing I expected. We walked into a dimly lit room, and laying beneath a casket of glass was President Kim Il-sung, founder of the DPRK. What the fuck. I did not expect to be seeing his “actual” body. We lined up in groups of 4 again and bowed at the feet and both sides of his body. Bowing at the head is disrespectful and would lead to a very uncomfortable situation with the guards. The next room was more propaganda and full of the medals he was awarded, that was boring. I thought that was it and was looking forward to getting out of there and putting my cold hands (which have been directly at my sides for 30 minutes now) in my pockets.
Nope.
We turn a corner and into another wind tunnel we go.
“Oh shit”, I think, “There’s no way we’re going to see him”. As I enter the room, the man who I first learned of from Team America: World Police was laying dead in front of me. Kim Jung-il is 5 feet away from me. We had to do the 3 bows again, but I couldn’t get over how real he looked. An unbelievable amount of embalming and makeup has to have been done, if this is even the real body. As we leave there is a group of North Koreans entering, dressed in their best, with tears in their eyes. I liken this to Christians seeing the body of Christ, or Mormons trying coffee or some shit. It must be a very emotional situation for them.
Obviously we weren’t allowed to bring anything in and were only allowed to take pictures after being escorted directly to the front of the building.
After this we headed back to the bus to go visit Mansudae Grand Monument to do some more bowing to huge statues of the leaders. We did see some interesting things on the way.
I asked the guide about some trees I had been seeing; all of the trees along any road were painted white at the bottom. One of the local guides said it was to make them look pretty, she didn’t seem to fully understand my question though. The western guide came up to me and said most communist countries do this. It prevents insects from eating the trees and helps preserve the perfect image of trees along nice streets.
At the large monuments there were many wedding parties, it is customary that on their wedding day Koreans go and lay flowers and bow to this monument. This along with many other crazy things that make wedding days about the leaders, and not the wedding party. I bought some flowers with other members from our group and we headed to go do our bows.
I bowed, trying not to crack a smile at how ridiculous this all is, but I let one break when my face is facing the ground. Once again, no hands in pockets either. That lead to this awkward picture where my hands don’t know what to do.
After the monuments it was time to head to Kim Il-sung square, this is where you see those grand parades with all of the missiles driving down the road.
If you look closely at the ground you see the painted white marks, this is so that everyone can find their place during performances in the parade.
We walked down the street passing by local North Koreans and a group of kindergarten age students, then stopped at a bookstore to buy some souvenirs.
It’s surreal to walk down the streets seeing the North Koreans acting like normal people. They are laughing, joking, and holding hands. A lot of the time online you hear this bullshit about how everyone you see are actors for the state. That’s ridiculous, I saw thousands, if not tens of thousands of people during my time there. I can honestly say I do not think a single one was there under the direction of “stay here so tourists see you in a fancy dress”. There were also no conveniently placed fat children in grocery stores, like in The Interview.
After the bookstore and the parade route, we went to what ended up being my favorite experience. We went to the largest grocery store in Pyongyang, a 3 story building filled with everything you could need. Our guides openly told us it was the nicest one in the city, they weren’t pretending that all stores were like this. We weren’t allowed to take pictures inside because it’s filled with normal people doing everyday things. But we were allowed to exchange our Chinese Yuan for DPRK Yuan, which we had to exchange back afterwards. I converted 100 CNY ➡ ️100,000 DPRK Yuan. That’s the equivalent of $15USD. I ended up spending $5USD and had a grocery bag full of snacks, beer, and water.
We weren’t allowed to take pictures of the higher bills, due to worries about counterfeits.
This experience really changed my view of visiting this country, at any moment I could have walked out the front door and my guides wouldn’t have noticed. When I was in the store I was alone and surrounded by only local North Koreans. After I bought everything they told me to go outside and put it all in the bus, then head back inside. Not once was I followed or watched for where I was going. It was an experience I won’t ever forget.
Side note: In the DPRK they don’t bag groceries at the register. They put them back in the cart, security checks it, then they walk to a bagging area outside of the shopping area. Needless to say I bagged my groceries at the register and looked like an idiot.
But there are always reminders that we are in North Korea, we were then escorted into the basement to a restaurant away from the locals.
We had some interesting food, including whatever this was.
We were told it was some kind of intestine, it was delicious. We also had dessert, which was rice wrapped in an egg, with ketchup on it.
It wasn’t terrible, I’ll give it that.
After lunch we headed to a steel mill, which I can only imagine completely complies with OSHA standards.
It seemed like a normal factory, despite some of the usual propaganda at the entrance. Everywhere you go, if you see a plaque with numbers, it’s almost guaranteed to be detailing every time the leaders visited that location. The President once sat on a rock outside this building, and they encased that rock in glass, it’s all pretty ridiculous.
And then there’s the zoo. They have a zoo outside to help the steel workers relax, I’ll let you judge for yourself.
We then went to see the spa where workers can clean up after work.
I highly doubt they are allowed to use this on a daily occasion, but who knows. After this it was back on the road to Nampo, which is on the west coast of the Korean peninsula, and where a lot of fishing is done. We had an opportunity here that I couldn’t pass up.
What they would do is siphon diesel out of the tour bus and pour it over clams caught fresh from the ocean, then light it on fire while pouring more and more diesel on the clams. They tasted great and I didn’t die, so it was a good experience all in all.
The rest of dinner was pretty tame, with some more duck, tofu, and fried sea food/fish.
Half the lights and the heat went out at the end of dinner. Power is far from consistent this far from the city, so we took that as a queue to head back to our villas. On the walk back I realized how absolutely beautiful the sky is here. It’s the most remote place I’ve ever been and it was the first time I’ve truly seen the band of the Milky Way. Shitty pictures wouldn’t do it justice.
Nampo was the only place we slept outside the Yanggakdo hotel. We stayed in villas with 4 rooms per villa, technically I think it’s supposed to be a spa hotel. The floor was heated in our rooms, but the bathroom was freezing, there was no toilet paper, and no running water in our sink. Other rooms didn’t have any lights working at all. We had the option to fill the bathtub from a natural hot spring at night, but we weren’t told it would be our only opportunity for hot water. So there was no showering in the morning unless you love freezing water.
Day 5: Nampo 🚌 Pyongyang
Up at 6 for a tame breakfast.
The poverty was striking when driving out of Nampo that morning. Even on the main road you could see terrible housing that I highly doubt had running water or any form of insulation other than hay.
The windmills were interesting, but I imagine solar and wind is the only semi-reliable power they get out here.
On a lighter note, one of the local guides had enjoyed making someone sing on the first day after they were late to the bus, and decided to spread that joy to all of us. My favorite songs that were sung included:
- God Save the Queen
- Bohemian Rhapsody
- America The Beautiful
- The University of Minnesota Rouser (yours truly)
During all of this singing we were heading to the West Sea Barrage which is a dam they built to keep sea water out of local farm land. It was boring, so I’m going to skip writing about it, but the power did go out again while we were watching their propaganda video.
Back on the bus and to a water bottling factory. Once again, it’s as boring as it sounds. But apparently the water cures cancer or something, so I bought some. No cancer yet.
There was a guy working on a computer in a room there and when we looked at the screen we saw he was editing a wedding video at work. Glad to know they work just like Americans. I won’t post that picture because he’d probably be sent to the Gulag.
We drove back to Pyongyang and after an hour and a half of what seemed like non-stop potholes we headed to the metro. It’s the deepest metro in the world and can be used as a nuclear bunker.
We hopped on the train and took it for a couple stops, it was filled with locals who seemed annoyed at everyone taking pictures. We had the chance to try one of their newer trains, which was nice and of course had TVs playing state-run programming.
We exited the metro to the Arch of Triumph depicting the brutal loss of some enemy in some war.
We also walked to a roadside bodega and grabbed some ice cream. Besides the frozen paper that wouldn’t peel off, it tasted great.
Back to the propaganda tour to see some more monuments.
After whatever that was we went to lunch at a hot pot restaurant, to have the blandest food of the entire trip. In the pot was water, which had salt, pepper, msg, and chili pepper flakes to add to it for flavor. I dumped it all in and still didn’t taste much.
After lunch we headed to Juche tower. Juche is the official ideology of the DPRK and this tower is dedicated to that. It is also the tallest stone tower in the world and I didn’t really think about how it was built until we were at the top. That’s not somewhere I would want to be when it’s windy.
For those that don’t know about this pyramid, it’s pretty wacky. It’s supposed to be a hotel and they started construction in the 80’s I believe. It is still unfinished but stands towering over everything around it. And yes, that is a 5-story rotating restaurant at the top.
We then headed to the Grand People’s Study House, which is a huge library and culture center. Many students were there studying or reading books. We went up top and got a great view of the square I mentioned earlier, where the huge parades with bombs driving by happen.
Like I mentioned earlier, the monuments, sculptures, and buildings we saw were not the reason I came to the DPRK. I did have fun visiting them, but I don’t see a point in taking many pictures or talking in-depth about them. I was more interested in the overall experience.
Onward to the Victorious War Museum. This is where us Americans got to see how brutally defeated we were, after us US Imperialists disgracefully attacked the DPRK. It was a bunch of bullshit and propaganda, with some truth sprinkled around, and there’s plenty online about it, so I’ll just show a couple pictures.
We also weren’t allowed to take pictures inside, for whatever reason they have. However, this is one of the very few places in the DPRK that you can take picture with a North Korean soldier, so I had to get one.
We were able to convince our guides to take us to a local micro-brewery after the museum, where we all got plenty drunk before dinner.
Once thoroughly lubricated we went to dinner, but I was too drunk to remember to get pictures. It was pretty normal food and we had a surprise performance by 3 women who sang us some traditional North Korean songs (this might’ve happened at lunch, beer makes memory a little foggy). That was a great performance and the booze made it all the more fun.
That was pretty much it. We all drank some more when we got back to the hotel and then went to bed.
Day 6: Pyongyang ✈️ Beijing ✈️ Seattle ✈️ Minneapolis
Up at 5:30 for a quick breakfast of egg and bread, then headed to the airport. We had to go through immigration again to exit the country.
“This is it”, I thought again, “now they’re definitely going to touch my butt and go through all of my shit”. I had a few questionable photos on my phone, so I password-protected those and hid them, but they could still find them if they were determined. Once again, bags went through xray, I got wanded, and I went right through. It was maybe 30 seconds of security. I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t question it and just kept walking.
We boarded the plane immediately and got treated to some final tastes of propaganda and another lovely “burger”.
We landed in Beijing after a pretty smooth ride.
I found some wifi and kicked on my VPN so I could tell my parents I survived. I found a nice place to sit for the 4 hour layover and played on my phone for the first time in 4 1/2 days.
30 hours and 2 layovers later I would be back in Minneapolis in my bed.
So?
I learned a lot on this trip, both from the country, and from the awesome people on the trip. I also had a lot of my biases about the DPRK confronted and changed. Although they have a shit government, and their country commits outrageous human rights violations, the people are just normal humans. They acted the same as we did, they didn’t march like robots through the streets, or watch us like hawks.
There is still a huge amount of poverty in that country, even in the main tour areas that we visited, and I think that was the largest shock for me. We would be driving in pitch black night, when it is below freezing, and you would see 5 or 6 year old children walking along the street, alone, miles from the nearest town. Coming from a very lucky lifestyle, I can’t imagine the strength these people must have to live in these conditions.
I would highly encourage anybody who has the chance to tour this country to do it. Even though America is “the land of the free” and all that bullshit, our news does have bias, and does not always present the whole truth. This trip really proved that for me.
So that’s it, I survived, and I don’t think I was in danger for even one second during the entire trip.
If you have any questions please feel free to reach out to me, I’d love to chat more about this trip in person, and talk about some of the things I decided to not write about publicly.
To see all of my pictures go here.
