I have been to North Korea!
Not a lot of people can say that – probably not a lot of people want to say that. I am actually pretty sure that I scared away a couple of dozen readers just with the headline; and I probably will again during this upcoming series of articles about my recent trip to North Korea from April 27th to May 4th – most likely including the few North Koreans with internet access. I know I already pissed them off by continuously referring to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) as North Korea, a term not much liked in North Korea… North Korea, North Korea, North Korea – Jehova… Jehova… Jehova…
Growing up in a divided Germany I’ve been interested in Korea as long as I can think, and that curiosity continued to grow step by step. Reading George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, going to *Pripyat & Chernobyl*, exploring an *abandoned North Korean School* in Gifu prefecture. Nevertheless I was hesitant going there for years, mainly because of two reasons:
1.) I didn’t want to support the system with foreign currencies.
2.) I didn’t want to travel a country struck by famines.
The economic situation in the DPRK is rather dull due to lack of useable land (most of Korea is rather mountainous), skilled labor, energy and means of transportation – and of course the international sanctions don’t help at all… Even if the government is able to scoop up some oil they have to pay in advance in US Dollars, so the country is desperate for foreign currencies – and I was hesitant to support the system with mine. Which only makes sense if you don’t think much about it, because tourism doesn’t keep the country running. About 3500 Westerners a year visit North Korea, but even if each one of them ends up spending 1000 Euros (which is way too high as some tours don’t even cost that much!) it would mean that the DPRK would have a tourism revenue of 3.5 million a year; minus their costs. Most ski villages in the Alps make more money than that! I highly doubt that you’ll be able to finance 1.2 million soldiers and a nuclear weapons program with that amount of money – with the *200 billion Yen Japanese pachinko players transfer indirectly every year* on the other hand though… (That’s 2 billion US Dollars or 1.5 billion Euros!)
The food situation though was harder to dismiss and I still kind of have a bad feeling about it. According to international statistics the food supply situation in the DPRK improved massively since the mid-90s when hundreds of thousands of North Koreans died due to famines, but the country is still depending on food imports (so is Japan, which is lucky to be able to pay for the high quality deliveries and doesn’t have to rely on handouts). I don’t know exactly where the food we were given came from, but I hope it was specifically imported with the money we paid for the trip, *like the meals that I had in Chernobyl*. But even if not 3500 tourists a year won’t make much of a difference – the amount of food thrown away in restaurants in Dandong right across the border between China and North Korea (and all over the industrialized world for that matter…) actually disgusts and worries me much more by now.
Western media paint a pretty clear and consistent picture of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea – and it’s not a positive one, so I had certain expectations before travelling the country. I expected the Korean tour guides to be party principle hardasses, I expected to be spied on all the time, I expected to be not allowed to take many photos / hardly any video, I expected to have no contact with the locals at all – and I expected the tour to be one big scripted event. To my surprise hardly any of this came true…
I booked the “May Day Long Tour” of *Koryo Tours* like any other vacation via the internet, barely 4 weeks before departure; easy as booking a flight. On April 26th there was a pre-meeting at the Koryo office in Beijing to receive last minute instructions and get any open questions answered, on April 27th we met early in the morning to go to Beijing Capital International Airport to catch our *Air Koryo* plane to Pyongyang. The group consisted of 11 people from all over the world plus Sarah, our guide from Britain; all of them very well-traveled and highly educated – the DPRK isn’t exactly a destination for all-inclusive beach tourists…
Upon arrival in Pyongyang we were welcomed by two of our three Korean guides, Mr. Yu and Mr. Kim, who were joined by Ms. Pak the next day, a 21 year old tourism student in her 4th year at university. A friend of mine who has been to Korea three times told me that the first 24 hours are crucial for the relationship with the guides – and he was right. A bit stiff at the beginning of the tour our Korean guides clearly loosened up after we behaved commendably at the *Arch of Triumph* the same night, dressed up with shirt and tie as requested the next morning and paid our respect by bowing according to local customs when *visiting the mausoleum of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il*. We showed the guides that we came to Korea out of genuine interest and they instantly rewarded us with their trust. Don’t get me wrong, all of them were convinced socialists and wouldn’t even think of criticizing the system – but they didn’t try to impose their views on us and they were very interested in what we had to say; about politics, history, technology, pop-culture… everything. Their English was astonishingly articulate, especially considering them not being able to travel abroad, and their kind of humor was surprisingly compatible with the groups’; something I miss at times here in Japan… Overall all three of them were just fun and easy to talk to. (Mr. Yu actually appears in the recent “undercover” BBC documentary with the sappy and overly dramatic music (John Sweeny is not only good at reporting about manipulations, he is also a great manipulator himself…), where he is portrayed as a guard, not a guide – my experience with the man was completely different, and he never told me not to take photos. Whenever I asked in case of doubt I was given permission by him – though I saw people being refused by the staff of Air Koryo and shops; which I find perfectly normal as I wouldn’t want to be photographed without permission either…)
The guides were not only easy to talk to, they were also easy on us. At the meeting in Beijing we were asked not to take photos of random people, not to take photos of construction or poverty. None of that was enforced on us by the local guides. We even got permission to take photos / videos from the bus – not just in Pyongyang, but also in Nampo and Kaesong as well as on the overland drives between cities; a privilege not given to another Koryo Tours group arriving with us on the same day. Different guides and different behavior by the group results in different rules… Off limit for everybody: military, except at the DMZ.)
Of course there were certain restrictions though. In Nampo we were not allowed to leave the hotel, in Kaesong we were not allowed to leave bungalow resort and in Pyongyang we were only allowed to roam freely half of the island the *Yanggakdo Hotel* was on (which is half an island more than most reports on North Korea state…). One night I told Mr. Kim that I wanted to go to the tip of the island to take some night shots and he was totally fine with that. I found my way through the darkness outside with a flashlight and enjoyed the breathtaking view – when I did the same thing on the same route the next night without telling anybody beforehand I triggered an alarm twice, on the way there and on the way back; sound, light and a guard with a flashlight who saw me, but ignored me. I’m still not sure if that was a coincidence or not – because the rest of the time I didn’t feel spied on at all.
Despite those limitations we had several opportunities to make contact with the locals; in my case thanks to group member Jeff, who was fluent in Korean. When we visited the Pyongyang subway we were on the platform for several trains arriving and leaving – and when we finally entered one our group split spontaneously to board different wagons. At no point we were kept from making contact, sometimes a brave Korean kid even made use of an English word or two they learned at school.
On May 1st I participated in the Fun Run, the first charity run in North Korea (for an orphanage in Nampo). Basically a 5k along Taedong River up to Kim Il-sung Square in the city center of Pyongyang. While some participants were taking the run rather seriously I decided to use the opportunity to make it a relaxed photo walk with a snapshot camera (for weight reasons, others brought their DSLRs). There were track marshals every couple of hundred meters to show us the way, but other than that we were on our own – since my Korean is basically non-existent I wasn’t able to talk to anybody, but I could have if I wanted to.
My favorite stop of the tour was at the Taesongsan park and fun fair in the outskirts of Pyongyang. It was right before lunch time when we had a little bit more than an hour to roam freely, an opportunity we put to use extensively. I will go into more detail with the help of a separate article later this month, but the trip’s absolute highlight without the shadow of a doubt was when Jeff randomly approached one of countless families sitting on blankets, having a BBQ under cherry trees – a regular hanami party Japan is famous for. They invited not only the big guy without hesitation, but also the three foreigners in his tow. So we sat down and enjoyed some regular local food and alcohol, which was absolutely delicious. When more people of our group passed by and saw us, our temporary Korean hosts invited them, too. We were chatting (with gestures and Jeff translating), laughing, sharing photos and just had a great time – 3 generations of Koreans and foreigners from the States, Canada, Great Britain, Austria and Germany. I’ve never felt more welcome anywhere in my life! (And of course we contributed some bottles of local alcohol and snacks we brought from home, too – it was just a regular BBQ in a park…)
Believe me, I am very well aware that throughout the tour we were in a privileged position and that North Korea has more than its share of problems. It’s an incredibly poor country, the political situation is more than dubious and the human rights situation is atrocious. Every information given had to be taken with a grain of salt (our guides definitely got some numbers wrong…) and sometimes they clearly put on a show (like at the Pyongyang Schoolchildren’s Palace where they showed us some young kids drawing – though they were clearly not; more about that later, too).
BUT: That applies for every source of information, also and especially for Western mass media. The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is definitely not a great place to live in and how conflicted it is shows by its name – as the country is everything but democratic. But the situation, judging by the superficial observations I was able to make spending 8 days / 7 nights in the country, is not nearly as bad as we are made believe by the sensationalistic mass media business where stories sell better the more dramatic they are. I was able to talk to North Koreans without having to rely on indoctrinated guides, I was able to see locals in three different cities and on hours of overland drives – and to be honest, I didn’t get the impression that they were overly fanatic or unbelievably unhappy, especially given that North Korea is one of the poorest countries in the world, a fact they seem to be very well aware of. Of course they are trying to masquerade that by showing flagship factories and stores to foreign visitors – but at the same time it’s more than obvious that most of the farming is done without any modern equipment, that some roads are in abysmal condition and that people are comparatively small and skinny due the sharp supply situation that is having a grip on the country for decades.
While in North Korea I was engaged in countless conversations with my fellow travelers about the country’s situation, especially since we went there in times of rather high political tensions. It became obvious pretty quickly that there is no easy solution for this incredibly complex struggle. As you know I am not a journalist and I don’t have a political or economical agenda, so I am basically writing this article to show you what I experienced and to make you aware that the situation isn’t black and white, but very, very grey. When I hear voices saying that North Korea should be leveled and that the Americans should just bomb the shit out of the country it makes me sick to the stomach, because I was able to get a glimpse at the unstaged, human side of North Korea. Or maybe I am just a gullible idiot and I fell for the greatest show that was ever put up, involving thousands of extras…
In the following days and weeks I’ll write a couple more articles about my trip to the DPRK to go into further details and to show you plenty of additional photos and videos – *you can find an overview here*. Until then please have a look at my *GoogleMap about tourist spots in North Korea* and enjoy the media published with this article.
(If you don’t want to miss the latest article you can *follow Abandoned Kansai on Twitter* and *like this blog on Facebook* – and of course there is the*video channel on Youtube*…)
Addendum 2013-11-19: I just posted a general article about my second trip to North Korea in October 2013 – quite a different experiece. *Please click here to read all about it!*)
Your posts have been landing in my spam but happily I discovered this. Wonderful!
Oh, that’s bad! I hope no more e-mails will be lost in the future, especially since I have many articles about North Korea planned. The next one will be published on Thursday.
Sounds like a fabulous trip through a spot that not many tourists go. I was surprised that you could. For some reason I thought of North Korea as a no mans land.
North Korea isn’t a tourist paradise for many, many reasons – but if you are willing to accept the situation and roll with the punches it can be a wonderful experience.
What a fantastic balanced report. Thank you for this perspective!
Peace.
Thanks! I was lucky to experience the DPRK in a way more positive way than most tourists and all of the media, so I owe it to myself and to the lovely guides and my wonderful fellow travelers to report things how they were for me instead of jumping on the sensationalist bandwagon.
Very interesting post, I look forward to reading more…
Thanks a lot, I can’t wait to write more!
Great post. It is also refreshing to read the other side of this country besides what the western media is saying about it.
Thanks, I am really happy that I can contribute something new and not have to repeat the usual “everything is so bad” reports most people write about North Korea.
Well you are 100% correct, not a lot people can say they have been to North Korea.
This was a very informative and interesting commentary on a country that few have visited, thanks for the post.
Thanks for reading and leaving such a nice comment!
The tour was nothing like I expected, but pretty much everything I was hoping for.
Fascinating report! I do look forward to hearing more – shades of gray, indeed!
Thanks a lot – there are so many more stories, positive and negative ones…
Thanks for sharing such an interesting report. Nice photos!
Thanks a lot, much appreciated!
That tour company offers cycling tours in the DPRK!!!! Awesome! Thanks for the info & interesting post!
Yeah, they offer a huge variety of trips and they are always trying to push the envelope – more about that in the Fun Run article.
Cool that you went there! ^^
However I must say that I have a weird feeling about that hanami moment you had. As you know, I traveled only with my (ex) girlfriend, and we were very free to go wherever at anytime by asking our driver and our two guides. Since nothing was planned, we always “surprised” people by our presence, and really everyone was always looking away. Only the kids were looking at us and smiling. The only friendly grown-ups that we met were in special spots, such as the (fake) shops, restaurants, hospital, farm, etc…
The only time we got the chance to have a premium long moment with North-Koreans was in the train that we took from Beijing to Pyongyang (very loonnnnnng and sloooooow train). We were only two foreigners aboard, and the people in there were quite friendly; most of them were working in China and going back to see their family for Chinese New Year. I remember one 18 years old guy was really annoyed by the fact that he couldn’t get his iPhone 😉 What I also remember is that all those people were not so excited about going back to North Korea, even though it was for a special event.
That said, I can’t wait to read the article about that hanami moment 🙂
I took the train from Pyongyang to Beijing and I was really happy to do the 24 hour layover in Dandong. Next time I’ll fly both ways…
The big difference between our tours was that you had more freedom what to see – but I was able to shake the guides while at the same time I was with somebody who spoke Korean fluently. That’s why I would prefer a group tour over a private tour at any time. (We met a couple of private tours at restaurants once in a while – they didn’t seem to have such a great time…) It’s just way easier to get away and shake things up a bit. I was also lucky with the guides, who were willing to roll with the punches when we had special requests. Like talking to an English class in the Grand People’s Study House. Like I said in the article: Different guides and different behavior by the group results in different rules… Not fair, but fact. Also: I went there on May 1st, one of the biggest holidays in the DPRK – so the parks were full of random people and the hanami moment definitely wasn’t staged. 🙂
I’ve read many accounts of people visiting the DPRK and I think my group had the best time ever. And we all were aware of it, which turned into a positive spiral. We followed the rules and had a good time, the guides realized that and lightened up, so we had an even better time which made the guides more relaxed and they enjoyed themselves more, which resulted us in having a blast… and so on.
Thanks for posting this! I hope people will soon understand that the world is made of many many grays!
First the mass media have to understand as they influence the thinking of so many people – but grey doesn’t sell as well as black and white… I really hope politics will find a peaceful solution for the situation on the Korean Peninsula!
I see huge buildings… but are there people working there? Are they actually being used or is it just for show. You’d think that for such tall, huge buildings, there would be at least a few dozens coming to and fro…. but they look terribly empty.
Most of those buildings are apartment buildings and most of the photos I took during daytime – when people were supposed to be at work. Pyongyang isn’t exactly a buzzing city in general, except for national holidays. May 1st was crazy! People everywhere and public transportation was way more crowded than usual. Future articles will contain night shots, so you’ll see that Pyongyang actually is inhabited and has electricity.
I enjoy reading your articles and look forward to reading about your experience if North Korea.
Thanks for the info and interesting post.
Very interesting post!
Thanks a lot! Please tell a friend… or all of them… 🙂
Very interesting. I watched the BBC doc you refer to; I thought that was interesting too although it didn’t seem to tell us anything we didn’t already know.
Look forward to reading more about your trip!
I saw the BBC documentary after my return and some things were hard for me to swallow. I really liked the interviews he did, but the parts he shot in the DPRK and how he presented them were… questionable. For example people washing their clothes in a river – yeah, that never happens in other poor countries! Or his paranoid attitude towards the cameraman from KITC.
Oh, I’m jealous! Sounds like a fascinating trip.
It was a fascinating trip indeed! And I hope I’ll be able to present as much as possible about it, so you almost feel like you’ve been part of the group.
Thanks for visiting my blog, which allowed me to come across this comprehensive piece on North Korea which I would have otherwise missed.
A lot of the photos I see of N. Korea have this surreal saturated technicolor vibe about them.
Well, might be my camera settings. But the color palette in the DPRK is a bit different, too…
nothing as creepily great as abandoned fun parks. The still-going (or it was when I saw it) fun park near the DMZ is wonderfully horribly banal – as is the amusement park near Mt Fuji.
We were on a pretty tight schedule, so I guess we weren’t able to see the amusement park near the DMZ, but when it comes to abandoned theme parks the holy grail is in Japan anyway: *Nara Dreamland*!
Great article, but be wary of being duped by pros – remember Jane Fonda.
Oh, I am aware that we’ve been fed bullshit on a daily basis – and I will write about that plenty in future articles. But there were also plenty of honest moments without filtering, and I didn’t expect those. Probably because most visitors don’t have them. The tour was more what I was hoping for, not so much what I was expecting – there’s nothing like positive surprises!
Thanks for the like! Glad to have found your blog–it’s a very interesting concept. This post was honest, informative, insightful, and eye-opening. I’m hoping to travel to North Korea someday.
I really wish more (respectful) people would travel to the DPRK. It might lead to small, but consistant change…
Wow, thanks so much for stopping by my blog, because it led me to this! I didn’t even know it was possible for a westerner to travel to DPRK. I will look forward to future posts.
There are some restrictions for Americans (for example they are not allowed to use trains), but pretty much everybody else is welcome. 🙂
Interesting adventure. I’m struck by the lack of people depicted by your photographs of North Korea. Were these areas where North Koreans just didn’t congregate, or was it just the timing of your shots?
Usually it was the timing of my shots. On work days most people have to be at their places of work, whether there is something to do or not. Freelance jobs or being unemployed is extremely rare, so there are not many people on the streets. But I will post photos with lots of people and rather heavy traffic, too.
Will read these posts with interest as North Korea is an ambitious destination on my to do list. Excellent to hear you weren’t as ‘locked down’ as could easily have been the case.
I was really lucky with the guides and my fellow travelers, but I hope everybody going to the DPRK will have such a positive experience I had. There were plenty of show elements, but it wasn’t nearly as restrictive as many people claim or experience.
I just don’t understand. SK and the rest of SE Asia would welcome an opened society and NK would just explode in rise standard of living for all. So is this a government of weapons pedaling dope dealing self serving oligarchic gangsters?
It basically is. North Korea is very backwards in many ways and the power Kim Jong-il had and Kim Jong-un has is based on their (grand)dad Kim Il-sung, who actually seemed to be a decent guy. Don’t get me wrong, far from perfect, but way better than his offsprings. Being a communist state with an insane personal cult the DPRK was never popular in the West, but most of NK’s current bad image (famine, nuclear crisis) falls into the reigns of Kim Jong-il and Kim Jong-un. (And what most people forget is that South Korea was a military dictatorship for decades, far from being the country it is today.)
Fascinating comments,all brilliantly written and objective. As the set up in South Korea’s pretty ugly, too, I’d be interested in reading you on that as well.
I’ve never been to South Korea, except for changing planes in Incheon Airport. But after living in East Korea (= Japan) for almost seven years I am pretty sure overall all three Koreas are pretty similar by heart… 😉
I hope you don’t mind but I shared this on our Facebook page. I thought it was interesting. I do know from a job an ex-husband had that even the most seemingly spontaneous things experienced in dictatorships are usually perfectly choreographed but I can’t speak to what you experienced. I feel so sorry for all of the people there who don’t get to live in the modern world and are starving. Did you happen to see 60 Minutes last Sunday? There was a fascinating interview with a young man born in a prison camp there and his escape. Heartbreaking but amazing that he managed to get out!
Please feel free to share any link to Abandoned Kansai on Facebook, online forums or via e-mail with family and friends. I am happy about everybody stopping by – and even happier about anybody leaving nice comments! 🙂
Since I live in Japan I wasn’t able to see 60 Minutes, but maybe I’ll find it online somewhere. Over the past decade I’ve watched / read several reports about North Korean prison camps and I think it’s one of the biggest scandals of our time that the topic doesn’t get more media attention! (Though I actually don’t know what to do about them as I mentioned in a comment in the *North Korea Special* – the situation on the Korean peninsula is really, really complicated and I wish there was an easy solution…)
Here is the 60 Minutes segment online: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-57584912/north-korean-prisoner-escaped-after-23-brutal-years/
The former prisoner also wrote a book that was a NYTimes bestseller: Escape from Camp 14: One Man’s Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West
Thanks for your reply and interesting writing!
Thanks a lot for the link – those were the most moving 14 minutes I’ve seen in a long time.
Sadly I don’t think there is a way to solve the problem of the concentration camps without getting rid of the political system. And a lot of people seem to deal with it quite well. Shin says it himself: “It was like heaven. People were laughing and talking as they wanted. They were wearing what they wanted. It was very shocking.”
Also very interesting was Blaine Harden’s “He believed the rules of the camp like gospel.” – not only does he compare the strict rules to religion, he indirectly makes a connection to the three generations punishment rule that is mentioned in the film. “For I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me.” That’s Exodus 20:5, a bible quote…
Wow, thanks for sharing!
Thanks for stopping by!
Wonderful post! Thanks for visiting my blog. 🙂
Thanks a lot! (And you’re welcome!)
hey there~ wow.. it has been a long time since my last visit on your blog. Shame on me.
I´ve been reading a lot about Korea recently. Including the book about camp14 – which I was honestly expecting a bit more from and have been rather dissappointed.
Maybe it is because I refuse to believe that EVERYTHING in North Korea is bad.. and I don´t like american writers who just want to sell their stuff without thinking the people they write about.
That was what I felt about the book. Especially the illustrations pissed me off to no end! Why the hell they had to illustrate how a butchers hook was forced into his stomach?!
I´m not one of those who think everything is allright there either. It is -without any questions – a troubled country with a crumbeling system and I feel deep sorrow when thinking and learning about people like Shin. Definately something has to change there – just the way how the world handles it now, I feel so wrong. It is always the poor who suffer most.
Long post short – it is interesting to get an “other view” of North Korea from you. Looking forward to read the rest of it.
Yeah, it’s a really complicated problem – and a very good reason not to visit North Korea. But like I mentioned to somebody else in a forum: At the end of the day we continue to write on keyboards made by suicidal Foxconn workers, wear clothes sown by children, are angry at the oh so restrictive countries we are living in, eat extremely cheap food harvested by migrant workers, wonder why the name Kony rings a bell, and eat steaks made from animals that were raised under horrible conditions and then transported across all of Europe / America. The world is a bad place and all we can do is trying our best to make it better – or at least try our best to not make it worse. And who knows, maybe travelling to the DPRK is a way to create a spark by showing North Koreans what the “outside world” is like and that the majority of people would welcome the DPRK back as part of the world community?
A great summary, and you really hit upon an important part regarding their agriculture. They have one small stretch of land that is fertile and can feed their population, but when natural disasters come (e.g., flooding which happens every few years), it stresses their system. Unlike the USA or Europe, who have multiple areas of fertile soil they can reply. Being isolated from the world is what causes the damage…when there is a disaster, they suffer.
Getting the DPRK back into the international community is where we begin to heal this country, and I think your report will also turn heads and people will say “hey, let’s visit and see what it is all about…” as in my opinion it certainly is not as bad as what the US media/government has pushed forward.
I totally agree that it is very important to get the DPRK back into the international community – and it seems like Kim Jong-un wants to do it at least to some degree. Sadly the situation is way too complicated to discuss all aspects in a comment on a blog… (This answer was a lot longer originally, but I felt it could have been misunderstood, so I cut it back to two sentences.)
My feeling is the same. To answer such questions even in a blog is difficult as the answers are so multi-tiered and complex. I will leave that to you 🙂
Cheers!
I also grew up in divided Germany and went on a visit with my local church to a church near Erfurt when I was about 13 years old. Did you ever travel to eastern Germany while the wall was still up and if you did, are there any parallels between those two experiences?
Hey Natasha,
Sadly I never had the opportunity to visit the GDR. We didn’t have relatives there, so I guess it never was a topic. I’m actually not sure if it was even possible to go there without a good reason… Sometimes I wish I was 10 years older and 25 years wiser – then I would have been all over eastern Germany in the late 80s, early 90s!