North Korea: The land frozen in time — part 1

Day 1 — Sep 7, 2013

It finally sunk in that we were going to the DPRK when we got to the airport and saw “Pyongyang” and “Air Koryo” at the check-in counter. There was a bit of trepidation at this point! Like I said before, Air Koryo is the only one-star airline in the world…

Service was very spartan aboard Air Koryo. The only entertainment was videos of propaganda songs. We would eventually discover these videos were ubiquitous throughout the DPRK — every place we dined in would be sure to have a tv set playing propaganda songs.

There was an anemic mystery chicken burger served on board which I didn’t eat and forgot to take pictures of — google “air koryo burger” if you want a look though.

Took this picture after arriving at Pyongyang Airport. It was actually pretty smooth la no issues with the plane!

We were ushered into our tour bus and introduced to our local guides. This is Kim our head guide. She appeared very prim and proper but would gradually loosen up as the days went by.

She explained the most imprtant rules to us: no pictures of military people or equipment, and to listen up whenever they told us not to take pictures.

Pretty standard actually. There’s a misconception that it’s hard to bring iphones/cameras/etc in, but that isn’t true.

They usually don’t really care what you bring in but rather that you don’t leave anything behind, e.g leaving books from the West or religious tracts. Otherwise we were never questioned or assaulted when taking pictures during our time there. You just need to pay attention to when they tell you not to take pictures.

This was our first taste of North Korean food.

I still remember when I was telling a friend who wasn’t very familiar with the DPRK about my upcoming trip.

Oh not goin South Korea ar? What’s the difference ah? The cuisine?

Well I had a good laugh then but it actually IS pretty true. North Korean cuisine is very minimalist. There is very little salt, oil, or spice used — and there were no condiments like soy sauce, salt, sugar or pepper nearly everywhere we went!

This was probably the most difficult part of the trip for Malaysian me :(

This is Yanggakdo Hotel which is where foreigners usually stay. It’s located on a little island isolated from the rest of Pyongyang.

@davienne is posing like this because we were supposed to do a “What am I thinking” series but we lost interest halfway. So I guess she’s just thinking she is funny 😉

This is the interior of the hotel. There was a distinct 80s feel to it, with high ceilings, a lot of marble, revolving doors and see-through elevators.

It always seemed a bit too… Dark though. Like the bulbs weren’t at full power or something. This was a recurring theme — DPRK had some of the grandest buildings I’d ever seen but there would be things that were “off”.

The view from our floor which was very high up. You can see how Yanggakdo is isolated from the rest of Pyongyang.

Our first sightseeing stop was to the Grand People’s Study House (I guess they thought “Library” didn’t sound nice enough).

The place is open for the public and houses tens of thousands of books and other media — not the most up-to-date books though. It was built to celebrate Kim Il-Sung’s 70th birthday.

“Grand” was pretty apt. Tall, tall ceilings and massive wooden doors.

The first thing you see when you enter is a gigantic statue of Kim Il Sung.

We would later get pretty used to statues like this but this was our first stop so we were very impressed.

The revolution and the Korean War is referred to a lot in North Korea, almost like a current event.

The main concourse. Marble marble ceilings you get the idea

We were shown into a lecture hall where talks are given for any member of the public to attend.

Here I am thinking about whether studying under the watchful eyes of Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-Il is more effective

This is a computer lab. The director of the Study House challenged us to name the country we were from.

“Singapore!!” said @davienne, and he proudly pulled out a list articles from the intranet published in Singapore.. From the 80s… 20 of them. We politely nodded and smiled.

There was also a “music appreciation room” where they had rows of old cassette radios. They played a Western tune for us to prove how progressive they were.

The Study House overlooks the vast Kim Il-Sung Square, which is used for parades. In the distance is Juche tower, the tallest stone tower in the world — more about that another day!

This is Kum, one of our tour guides. He was relatively new to the whole tour thing and the most quiet and awkward of the guides, which is why @davienneand I would bug and tease him often. I’ll be mentioning him more later :).

We were brought around to a few other places. Unfortunately I can’t seem to remember where this was …

A sports field nearby. When we asked Kum what he did in his free time he rattled off a list of sports he played — swimming, football etc. I guess that makes sense when you don’t have Internet!

Fat people in DPRK are a rarity by the way. We kept count and only saw one or two the entire trip.

Kum did mention that his brother was studying comp science though and was allowed to use the Internet sometimes. He said his brother hogs the laptop. I asked if he used it for porn and he said no quickly.

We went back to the hotel for dinner after a long day. The banquet hall was big but mostly empty with a huge painting spanning the whole back wall.

This was dinner… I wasn’t full :((

It had been a tiring first day but everyone was still pretty gung ho. The hotel had a microbrewery on the ground floor and most of us went there to give it a try.

It tasted ok but boy was it foamy!! I’m not a beer guy but it did look like it was poured properly though.

We had a nice chat with our tourmates. They came from all over the world — Norway, Belgium, Australia, Mongolia, Japan, Canada, etc. As I mentioned they were a pretty jovial and adventurous lot.

That’s all for today! Check in tomorrow for Day 2 ✌️

Day 2— Sep 8, 2013

This is us looking very worried at the start of Day 2 (actually @davienne not doing a good job of that I realize now). We had been told to wear our best clothes this day, but everyone else seemed better dressed than us.

Why were we being asked to dress up? Because we would we spending the morning at the Kumsusan Palace of the Sun. It is a mausoleum for the bodies of Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-Il, which I’m guessing makes it the most revered place in North Korea.

There was a long queue to go in. It was near National Day there so there were quite a few locals there as well to pay their respects. I wish I’d taken pictures of them. They were dressed up in their very best.

Absolutely nothing containing metal was allowed inside, and sadly NO PICTURES. There was a big cloakroom to check-in all our belongings.

The Mausoleum was definitely one of the grandest buildings I’d ever been in. This is a picture from Wikimedia of the giant statue of Kim Il-Sung.

In this chamber. Everyone was lined up in rows of four and took turns to approach the statue and bow. Zen-like music was playing in the background.

It was a unique experience. On one hand it seemed surreal and absurd, on the other it was still quite profound and awing to see the reverence the North Koreans paid to their late Leader.

We were also taken to see the embalmed bodies of Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jung-Il. The halls holding the sarcophagi were huge. Again we were lined up in rows and directed to approach the bodies in three different directions,
bowing each time.

I was snapped at by the guard for whispering a bit too loudly 😔. Our foreign guides from YPT mentioned that women have been told off before for wearing heels that made too much noise clunking on the floor.

Again, a surreal experience.

We were also taken into a few rooms that highlighted the achievements of Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-Il. Every award they had received from a foreign country was on display — IIRC mainly from Malta, Columbia, and other countries that recognized its Juche philosophy.

There were huge maps which marked every location that Kim Il-Sung had travelled to in his career. There was a similar map for Kim Jong-Il but it had markedly fewer points — Kim Jong-Il had become a paranoid recluse in later years

We were also shown the train carriages that the leaders had travelled in, as well as their personal boats and cars.

We were given some time outside after the tour. The mausoleum is surrounded by a large moat.

Doing my best “Great Leader Inspects Things” impression outside the mausoleum

A group of locals dressed to the nines taking a group photo outside

Next up was the Revolutionary Martyr’s Cemetery which is located on Mount Taesong. The bus stopped at the base and then it is a long walk of stairs up.

This is Churpie from ChurpChurp who stowed away with us on this trip. We were actually going to do a series with Churpie but urm haven’t gotten round to it 😁

The cemetery memorializes heroes from the war against the Japanese.

The cemetery is capped with a huge flag of granite. The graves of the most important martyrs are here, including the wife of Kim Il-Sung himself.

Impressive carvings of the Revolution grace the paths up.

Next stop was the Mansudae Grand Monument. It was originally erected in honour of Kim Il-Sung’s 60th birthday. The statue, which is more than six stories high, was joined by a statue of Kim Jong-Il some years later.

We decided to buy some flowers here to lay at the statue (€2). The people here are very proud and grateful for signs of respect to their leaders.

I took a picture for some friends with local kids who were walking around. Sofie and Tobias from Norway are on a year’s journey around the world. Read from their wordpress blog that they were recently in Iran and Syria.

We visited the USS Pueblo which is an American ship captured by the DPRK during the war. It remains the only captured American ship on foreign soil to this day. Didn’t find this part very interesting but they seemed proud of this

A short break here to promote Pokka. Pokka is actually made in Singapore and is your average canned coffee drink. Not that strong and a bit too sweet for me.

In DPRK however you can’t just walk into a store and expect to find Nescafe or Milo. The hotel mart stocked Pokka drinks though which was definitely a godsend for those who needed something sweet or a caffeine boost. Thank goodness for Pokka in the DPRK is all I can say.

We were brought to visit a local “bookstore” — from the way the tour guides had to make calls to confirm this stop though I think it’s only opened when tourists come.

I bought a couple copies of the Pyongyang Times. It’s published weekly and is about 8 pages thick (thin?).

The Songun Revolution refers to DPRK’s “military first” philosophy.

We were then brought to Kim Il-Sung Square. It is in front of the Grand People’s Study House where we were yesterday. It is usually used for parades — there would be one the next day to celebrate their National Day. You can see the grids marked on the floor for the formations.

An ominous-sounding stentorian voice was booming over the speakers at the Square. It seemed to repeat every now and then. Could it be some Communist mantra?

“What is it saying?” I asked Kum our guide.

“Oh it means ‘Testing Testing 1 2 3’”.

😜

This is Yoshi from Japan. He may look meek (ok he is pretty meek) but he is INCREDIBLY well travelled. He seems to travel to different countries twice a month and racks up airline miles by the thousands.

He also knows an absurd number of languages — including Korean, so we could use him to double check stuff in a pinch.

He prefers Singapore to Malaysia though 😔

We were treated to a BBQ dinner that night. MEATTTTTTT

Saw this car parked outside the restaurant. Anyone recognize the make?

You would think that there would be nothing to do after dinner but you would be wrong. We were brought to — a theme park! Yes you read that right — Pyongyang has a theme park that people go to fairly often.

I’ve never been on the Solero Shot in Malaysia so was actually my first time on a slingshot right. The irony right?

I actually felt very guilty here because the ride was actually full at first. Kim our head guide went in and had a quick conversation with one of the locals who was already buckles in — and told him to give up his seat 😱

@davienne refused to go on the ride after that.

Later on our guides from YPT said that we tourists were paying many times more than what a local would to come to the park, so we should look at it as a Disneyland “Fastpass” kind of thing. That mollified me a little.

This is a rollercoaster which doesnt have conventional seated carriages. You instead lie prone “superman” style in a caged carriage! Had never done that before. So much for North Koreans being jakun eh?

There was also a bumper car ride which some men in military uniform were queueing up for too.

When I went in I beelined for as many of the dudes in uniform as I could. Just doing my bit for democracy 😉

Didn’t manage to get a good video of it though.

After we got back to the hotel some of us decided to try out the karaoke bar.

The passage downstairs was pretty short though. Ronan here from YPT had to really watch his head!

To choose songs, we had to select them from menus, each menu having certain letters of the alphabet. All the menus from J onwards were missing though.

As you can see there was a pretty eclectic selection of songs.

The hostesses there obligingly performed a few folk songs for us. They seemed pretty practiced.

After that everyone let loose though.

@davienne really enjoyed herself and I have a video of her that I will be using as future blackmail 😉

That’s all for today everyone. Thanks for the overwhelming response. Thank goodness I figured how to disable sound for Dayre notifications as I wouldn’t have been able to sleep otherwise.