Pyongyang’s June 9th Middle School is the showpiece school in North Korea and the reason for that is not really a surprise: Kim Il-sung himself ordered to build a new school in 1969 – on June 9th, hence the name.
Since we started to run behind schedule due to crashing an English lesson at the *Grand People’s Study House* we basically rushed through the June 9th Middle School, even past the painting of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il surrounded by children that decorated the entrance. Almost all the pictures I took made me fall behind the group, luckily my fellow travelers wanted to take photos, too, so there was always somebody else at the rear. Pauses were only made in class rooms. One showed the history of the school, one housed the an exhibit collection (for example taxidermy animals and eggs of more than a dozen birds) and one was clearly the science room, with two microscopes on each table; different models, by the way – and I have no idea why there were pencil cases on each table; one row for boys (blue), one row for girls (pink). Although there were some boys playing soccer outside the place felt strange to me. Well, it was past 5 p.m., so barely any school in Germany would be more lively, especially in the afternoon before a national holiday, but…
We were in for another treat anyway – since the school is proud of their education in the fields of dance, drama and music a couple of students insisted on performing for us. After two tourists were dragged on stage at the *Mangyongdae Schoolchildren’s Palace* I asked Sarah if this would happen again, so she told me about that school we would visit later during the trip… and I decided to place myself in second row again, making sure to have people sitting both to my left and right. A wise decision, because for the grand finale all but a handful of foreign visitors were dragg–… invited by kids to join them for a group dance performance.
(Please *click here to get to Abandoned Kansai’s North Korea Special* and *here for a map about the tour at GoogleMaps*. 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*…)
Thanks for sharing so much of your trip to N. Korea. It’s definitely eye-opening to an American like myself. It is in stark contrast to the image of N. Korea I had in my head (read: rampant poverty and decaying cityscapes).
Thanks a lot Brandon! Pyongyang has a certain charm to it, so did most of the tiny countryside villages. Nampo was more like the image everybody usually has of North Korea – lots of decay, quite a bit of heavy industry, not really colorful.
Love the pictures of the artwork! And yes, thanks for sharing your trip and insight into this hidden place!
Cheers!
I love the aesthetics of those paintings, too. They sell hand-painted posters in some stores for about 50 bucks a piece, though hardly any of them have propaganda themes and none of them show the Kim family.
Interesting… I agree with the above. A dear friend of mine who’s lived in Africa and Hong Kong for a lot of her life though she is American said she’d always wanted to go to North Korea. At the time, I wondered why. Now, I get it.
Hey Jessica,
North Korea obviously isn’t a popular tourist destination, a lot of people actually told me afterwards that they didn’t know it was possible to go there – which is kinda sad, because I really hope more and more people will have an interesting experience like I had. And unlike a lot of countries in Eastern Europe, Africa and South America it’s totally safe to travel to the DPRK. You don’t have much freedom or many choices there, but you won’t get mugged or ripped off…
That’s good to know. I always felt really safe in Hong Kong and Taiwan, too. Much safer than in some cities in the U.S. There are *some* good sides to control, I suppose… I’m really glad you’re chronicling your adventures for us readers. So interesting. Thank you!
Thanks a lot for following so closely – I appreciate the feedback and so far it has been overwhelmingly positive. I really hope that I will inspire a couple of people to visit the DPRK themselves and that their experience will be as positive as mine was.
you make my heart break for n.korea, and i thought i’d already had it broken for them
I think it’s about time that somebody portraits North Korean people other than mindless, fearful puppets. The article on Thursday will blow your mind!