First of all, and the examine that many population ask me when I tell them about a trip I made back in '05: Why the hell did you go to North Korea?! The rejoinder is simple: I like to do things a exiguous differently. Most population think a great holiday is sitting on a beach in Thailand for a week, burning themselves and getting hammered every night, waking up colse to midday etc. I would much prefer to see places and do things so that when I come back from my holiday I've got a feeling of accomplishment. I wasn't precisely finding at holiday destinations when I was browsing the Bbc news website and a story about Dprk's nuclear ambitions when I saw a link entitled, Holidays in North Korea. In that description I read about a business called Koryo Tours and from then my interest rose hugely. This company, run out of a Beijing office by 2 British guys, arranged visas and did quarterly tours to Dprk throughout the year, while which you had the chance of visiting and finding things most of the world will never see. This was right up my street, and I exchanged a bunch of emails with one of the guys, getting more facts on the trips and what was inherent (unfortunately no diving was allowed, by I did ask and they did enquire!). In the end, I settled for a 6-day May Day Stadium tour of the country, flying into Pyongyang and advent back by train to Beijing. Not only would this tour include finding some spectacular and rare sights, but there was also the anticipation of going to see the World Cup Qualifying match in the middle of Dprk and Japan, to be played at the country's May Day Stadium. This is the biggest stadium in the world, seating over 150,000 people. To put it into perspective a little, it is over twice the size of the Olympic Stadium in Seoul, South Korea.
I did a exiguous study about the country, and although facts is fairly limited, I managed to pick up an exquisite voyage guide and Dvd documentary about the country. First of all, the Bradt voyage Guide to North Korea was an exquisite resource, both before my trip and while my Travel Tours Thailand) because of crowd trouble in a former game. Some population were unhappy with this, but there precisely was nothing we could do. We could complain and be grumpy Straight through the whole trip, or we could make the most of what we would see. Even though the Kumsusan Memorial Palace of Kim Il Sung could not be visited due to renovations, I still knew this would be an unforgettable journey. With that in mind, 2 days later we boarded the twice-weekly Beijing-Pyongyang flight, courtesy of Air Koryo.
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Now, when you voyage somewhere, there are clear signs that your trip is going to be an eventful one. Being on an flight to one of the most secretive countries in the world, sat in in the middle of a guy from the World Food Programme an an Ethiopian arms dealer is one such sign! But this was the situation in which I found myself, sat in this plane right out of the 70s. But to their credit, both guys were very friendly, although the Ethiopian did bend the truth slightly, saying he was visiting Dprk on holiday. It was only later I found out he travels there almost every month, and all the time says to population he's going on holiday. I wonder how big the North Korean tourism business is in Ethiopia. The mind boggles. There was also a Spanish guy on the flight in a communist-style suit with a big medal, who told us he was connected to the Dprk government. We were told by one of the tour business guys to steer clear though, so I kept my distance.
The first thing you see when you get off the plane in Pyongyang is a huge photo of Kim Il Sung on the roof of the airport. As I looked back at the plane, I noticed the air crews pouring water on the smoking plane tyres! Think person might have landed a exiguous too quickly! Other than that, the flight was great. Every person was slightly confused as to why the landing gear was lowered at about 20,000ft, but who are we to tell the pilot what to do! In the airport, bags were collected and items such as Mp3 players and mobile phones were handed in to customs officials as they are not allowed in the country. Contrary to beloved thought though, camera and video cameras were fine to bring in.
The guides introduced themselves to us, and our main guide was a woman with exquisite English, called Mrs Lee. She was an awesome guide... Very friendly and knowledgeable about everything. She was one of the government-appointed guides, but talked about all things with the minimum of bias and the top number of information. She'd obviously met quite a few tour groups, and was full of questions about our families and what we did in our home countries. A few population brought photos of our photos and lives from home, and it was a nice feeling to introduce them to her. There were precisely 2 guides appointed to our tour group of 20 people. There were 2 reasons for this I think, neither of which was that they could spy on us better! Firstly, the group was quite big and they wanted to carry on Every person in the best way. The second reckon could be (and I compel to add that I don't know this for sure) that the 2 guides could censor each other. If there was only one, then it is inherent that they could say something negative about the country or its politics; with 2 population there is all the time person else listening. We also had a cameraman walking colse to with our group, who would make a Vcd of our trip that we could purchase at the end of our trip. That was a nifty exiguous idea, and I said I would definitely like a copy of that.
One of the first things that hit me as we entered Pyongyang on our tour bus was how clean it was. There were lots of people, both adults & children, who were pulling up weeds along the streets and paths by hand. Technologically-advanced, this city is not, but it looked friendly adequate so far. None of the soldiery parades of huge missiles clear so far, that you commonly see in the western media. Our first stop on the tour was Fountain Park. This was a wide open space (Pyongyang has a lot of these) with many very large water fountains, along with some gorgeous statues of women dancing. There were a few kids walking colse to and we managed to get some friendly acknowledgements from them by smiling and waving. The power of a smile, even in the so-called Axis of Evil, is immense. A small group of girls were walking across the park and they came over. One of the girls proceeded to give us a 2-minute jamming session on her guitar-like thing (can you tell I don't play music?!) while her friends looked on. As advised, we asked for permission to take some photos of the girls and the surroundings, and then started snapping away. To be honest, there were not the restrictions on taking photos that you might expect. Of course, nobody tried to take photos of soldiery installations or personnel, but whenever we asked to take shots, the rejoinder was all the time "Yes".
From the park, we headed to our next stop (and the most prominent stop on the tour): the bronze statue of Kim Il Sung at Mansudae. For those of you unfamiliar with Dprk's history & politics, Kim Il Sung was the leader of the country from 1948 (when the country was founded) until his death in 1994. Following his death, there were 3 years of valid mourning. This period of Kim Il Sung statue at Mansudaetime with Kim Il Sung's mourning, coupled with bad harvests and declining living conditions, became known as the oppressive March. The statue was said by our guide to weigh as much as all the hearts of the Korean people. Note that the word "Korean" was used to signify both Koreas. In Dprk they still say that Korea is one country, and that they will reunify in time. colse to the statue are 2 other monuments, both depicting population fighting in the Korean War (called in Dprk The victorious Fatherland Liberation War) from 1950 to 1953. As the statue, a few of us bought flowers and laid them at the front of the statue, before walking back and paying our respects by bowing. This was the first chance I realised that some population might not be considerable to a trip to Dprk. You have to go Straight through the bowing to Kim Il Sung, and just accept it, even if you don't approve of the leadership of the country. It is all about showing respect and politeness for a foreign country in which you are a rare guest. It's a similar deal with the stories that you are told. Sometimes they seem far fetched, the guides know they sound far fetched, you know they do, and the guides know that you know. But the key is just to play along with it, take it in with interest and use your head a little. A couple on our tour tried to ask questions that were pushy or embarrassing, and all that did was make the guide flustered and upset at us. Nobody benefited and, most likely, Every person lost out. So if you do consider a trip to this spellbinding country, bear that in mind.
The hotel we stayed at was the Yanggakdo Hotel in central Pyongyang. If you go to Dprk, you will most likely whether stay here or in the Koryo Hotel. This hotel is exquisite and is on its own island! It has a 9-hole golf course, cinema, football stadium, casino, rotating bistro at the top of the hotel (this is a recurring theme), and pretty much all things else you could want in the hotel grounds (so tourists wouldn't be tempted to cross the bridge into the capital itself?).
The hotel also has 47 floors and colse to 1,000 rooms. But the thing is, there were only colse to 25 population staying at the hotel, and in our tour group population were sharing rooms so at the most, 20 rooms would have been occupied. All our group were settled on the 25th floor, and population were development frequent comments about what could maybe be on the other floors. As far as I know, nobody was brave/foolish adequate to try and find out. Although the hotel was much akin to a ghost town, the rooms were nice and clean, and offered a great view of the city, together with the Juche Tower.
While we were going to evening meal on the first night, we were told that there wouldn't be few, if any shows or festivals on at the moment, due to Every person working in the fields. At that time, the university had complete and a number of government offices had been complete as population were mobilised to plant rice due to fears over food shortages. Having seen similar stories about China, this seems to be the communist way of dealing with problems like that; throw Every person you can at it. It might not be so productive and is precisely not productive or economical, but it is what they do. It also shows the Juche, or self-reliance, ideology advent to the fore. Our venue for evening meal was the National Restaurant, and we were the only guests there. This was also a tasteless theme - we were the only population dining out. Although this isn't hugely surprising, and I doubt if we were not visiting the bistro would even be open. The food was pretty good actually, and it was clear they were trying to showcase Dprk's fine dining. It made me think and reflect a exiguous though. They were serving up some of the best food they could offer in the country to us, and yet so many population in other parts of the city are coping on tiny rations of rice and vegetables each month. Again, it's one of the things you just have to accept while you're here. with evening meal was live music, by a group of women in former Korean dress. The songs were revolutionary songs, and the music had a definite Russian feel to it. I looked colse to for copies of "The Best Songs Dedicated To The Great Leader and The general Album... Ever!!!", but alas it was nowhere to be found. We did quit that the drummer constantly looked like she wanted to just start thrashing the drums, rather than stick to the quarterly tapping of the cymbal. Not sure what the state of heavy metal music is in Dprk, but she'd fit right in.
Going back to the hotel, I had a couple of beers before heading back to my room. Once there though, I was able to turn the lights out, open the window and gaze out into the night skyline. If you do that in most cities, and especially capital cities, you can hear road works, traffic going past, loud music etc. In Pyongyang it was almost silent. You could hear a couple of voices drifting over the water to the hotel, but other than that it was quiet. There were relatively few lights advent from the large number of structure that were a kilometre or two away. For some reckon I woke up at about 4am in the night, and once again went to the window which we'd left open. finding out, you could see nothing - there wasn't a particular light illustrated and the only sound was a dog barking somewhere in the city. Very eerie, but a spellbinding experience.
Woke up early and switched on the Tv in our room to get a fuzzy Bbc World transmission (Dprk don't pay for any Tv rights, so they have to unscramble the signals as best they can themselves I believe). There was an proclamation that it was International Environment Day, which was suitable as I was probably in the cleanest capital city in the world. Pyongyang makes Tokyo look like a trashy dump, and I didn't see a particular piece of litter on the road throughout my whole trip. someone else thing Pyongyang has is vast open spaces. It is reported that according to Un environmental statistics, Pyongyang has the largest number of green and parkland per person of any capital city in the world. The skies were blue, but it was pretty hazy and you could only just see over the Taedong River and into Pyongyang. But after breakfast, that was our destination and first up was the Juche Tower.
An offspring of communism, Juche is summed up quite well by Wikipedia: "The core principle of the Juche ideology since the 1970s has been that "man is the specialist of all things and decides everything"". The most spellbinding features of this structure are all to do with numbers. The tower was created in celebration of Kim Il Sung's 70th birthday, and the construction has 25,550 blocks (one for each day of Kis's life). The tower is precisely made up of tiers: on the north and south side there are 18 tiers and on the east and west side, 17 tiers. Add those up and you get the magical 70. Also, at the base of the tower there are flowers carved (the Kimilsungia) into the stone. 35 flowers on the east and west sides gives you... You guessed it, 70.
The views from the bottom were pretty good, but the panoramic views from the platform at the top of the tower were breathtaking. You could see the whole city, although there you could see virtually no cars on the roads. There were a couple of bicycles, but almost no motorised transport. Following the Juche Tower, our next stop was the closeby Korean Workers Party Monument. This was erected to celebrate 50 years of the Korean Workers Party, and again the numbers play an prominent role. The top of the hammer, sickle and brush (denoting the 3 classes of population in society) are 50m high, and the diameter of the monument is also 50m. The history of the Party is written in bronze letters on the wall of the monument, and the size of the things has to be seen first-hand to be appreciated. The population built this in one year, which goes to show how productive they can be when given the resources to play with.
After finding a exiguous our of the city, we headed out of town, past Kim Il Sung University, and went to Mt Taesong and the Revolutionary Martyrs Cemetery. Here, colse to 200 martyrs of revolutionary fighting against Japanese Imperialists are buried and remembered. Each martyr has a statue made from copper and all the busts face Pyongyang, positioned so that each one has a clear view of the capital. Pride of place at the top of the cemetery goes to Kim Il Sung's wife. In the cemetery, sombre revolutionary music player (I'm sure, solely because we were there), which gave a strange feeling to the whole event.
Lunch was taken in the (rotating) bistro at the 230m tall Television Tower. A rickety old lift got us up to the top but it must have been the slowest lift I've ever been in! It took about 3 agonising minutes to get to the top, with the constant fear that the string that was pulling us up could snap and sent us plummeting to our clear doom at any time! But we made it to the top and the views were spectacular. The food was, once again, the best that Dprk had to offer, and our after lunch entertainment was karaoke courtesy of the 2 waitresses who'd been serving us. A smile towards one of them ended up in her keeping my hand while she sang her song (I'm sure talking about the greatness and wonderfullness of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il)! I was slightly distressed that I might have unknowingly just joined the Workers Party of Korea, and wouldn't be allowed to leave!
First stop after lunch was the Arch of Triumph in the middle of Pyongyang. Sound familiar? Well, you might think of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, and when you look at this arch you'd be forgiven for mistaking it for the Parisian landmark. This arch was modelled on the one in France, but built bigger so that the claim can be made that this is the largest stone arch in the world.
You'll notice that Dprk likes its world records. The arch was pretty impressive, as was standing in the middle of a 3-lane road for minutes while taking pictures of it, without the slightest fear of a car coming. Try doing that in London! On the photo to the right you can see the Arch of Triumph in the foreground, but I expect many of you are wondering what the triangular-shaped construction is in the background. Well that is a secret for now, and all will be revealed in part 3 of this travelogue. Rest assured, it is definately worth waiting for! Near the Arch of Triumph is someone else stadium in Pyongyang, and exterior the stadium were some population preparation their gymnastic disposition for the Mass Games.
We headed back out into the sticks after finding the arch, and towards a Buddhist temple. On the way, we saw loads of population working in the fields, even on a Sunday (their supposed day off while the week). This was real subsistence agriculture though; you saw oxen pulling makeshift ploughs Straight through the soil and in some places it just looked so dry and barren that anyone would struggle to grow there. The temple itself was quite interesting, although not as much as the sights I'd seen previously in the day. Apparently, Buddhism was the main religion in Dprk before the Juche idea was put forward. I have read conflicting evidence about this though, & there are many reports that religion is banned in Dprk, despite what we were told by the guides. I can't description whether way though - I'm just stating what I saw and keeping unbiased about everything. After the temple trip we headed back into Pyongyang and it got a exiguous surreal. We were taken to a clothing export exhibition, which showed examples of the garments that they had exported to other countries (mainly sportswear). They gave us examples of the countries they exported to (e.g. Uk, Hong Kong, China), and we were then taken to a shop where we could buy some Dprk authentic clothing! Other were sceptical but I just jumped right in and guy myself a T-shirt! The whole trip here was as if they were saying, "Look at us! We furnish things that other countries want and need!".
A 30 exiguous bus journey led us back into the country and over to King Tongmyong's tomb. The guide at this site wasn't an English-speaker, but our resident guide translated all things for us. We were shown colse to the tomb on King Tongmyong, who lived colse to 5,000 years ago. It was apparently he who set up the nation of Korea, and who founded the first capital city in the country. In the grounds of the temple, there were 3 artists painting the scenery (by chance, or told to be there?). I wanted to think it was the former, and the pictures were pretty good so I bought one. Hopefully not all of that money would go right to the government. I got the artist's name on the photo and had it dated, and I gave a gift to the guide for showing us around. The result: I had someone else Dprk girl keeping and stroking my arm as we walked back to the bus! So much for being told we would have very exiguous contact with the locals.
In the south of Pyongyang is the Mangyongdae Shrine, which is where Kim Il Sung was born and where he spent his early years. The house he was born in was fairly humble and it sounded like his house was quite poor. The house's setting was now in a park and was precisely nice to walk colse to in; the walk to the viewing area was interrupted only by a couple of squirrels and chipmunks crossing our path. We were told that Koreans didn't visit the house after Kis's death because they wanted to keep it in a pristine state. Not sure if that is strictly true, but I just nodded and smiled and took it all in.
I'm out of words just about for this article, but once it is live here I will submit the next part. Thanks for taking the time to read it.
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