Doing urban exploration in the Democratic Republic of Korea is almost impossible – both in the sense of exploring urban spaces as well as documenting deserted places. When in North Korea your hosts keep you busy, and with about 2.5 to 3 tourists per guide there is always somebody having an eye on. Thanks to hard work and a little bit of luck I was able to do both though… kind of.
If you haven’t yet read my reports about *the May 1st charity run* and *my visit to the Taesongsan Park & Fun Fair, where I had an unsupervised picnic with locals*, I strongly recommend doing so. They are fun stories with some really unique photos – and they kind of cover the exploring urban spaces meaning of urbex.
The more common meaning of exploring and documenting abandoned places is what this article is about. In a poor country pretty much abandoned by the world you have plenty of potentially abandoned places and especially vehicles, like boats and trains. But like everywhere in the world it’s a grey area, and like I’ve said, opportunities are rare… and risky. But more than anything else your mind is busy with not getting yourself and the group into trouble, so the stories and photos of this little piece are a lucky byproduct of my two trips and not the result of strategic planning.
The first location I’ll be talking about is a construction ruin (38.997410, 125.750262) right between two of the most famous places for non-Korean tourist, the *Yanggakdo Hotel* and the Pyongyang International Cinema Hall, home of the Pyongyang International Film Festival. At the time of my visit back in 2013 the place was actually still under construction, at least the heavy machine implied that, so I didn’t pay much attention to what looked like just another hotel – as a result it appears only on two of my photos by chance. You don’t want to get caught by yourself on an active construction site in Japan, let alone in North Korea…
The next couple of photos are of the Seungri Chemical Complex Refinery (승리화학연합기업소; 42.313073, 130.351401), an oil refinery, as you probably guessed correctly when reading the name. I don’t know much about the facility and I had to take the pictures while on a bumpy bus ride, but there are two things worth mentioning: First of all, nothing in North Korea is really abandoned, especially not a large industrial complex like that! (*And let’s not forget about the Komusan Concrete Factory*, built in 1936 during the Japanese occupation and still the biggest concrete factory in the country!) At best things look abandoned, at worst they are really not used anymore. Like the Seungri Refinery, which was definitely closed in 2013 and apparently didn’t open again, despite the fact that back then they had so much hope for the special economic zone Rason… So as soon as the regime vanishes or allows free travel in North Korea, this should be one of the first locations to visit for urban explorers, because even from a distance it looked spectacular in a post-apocalyptic way.
Which brings us to the third and last location, the smallest one, but one with a few close-ups thanks to some of my co-travelers. At our last evening of the trip we were taken to the Emperor Hotel, the DPRK’s only five star hotel with a huge casino. I was bored quickly and headed outside with permission from Mr. Kim, one of the guardguides, but soon was tracked down by Mr. Pak a.k.a. Robocop. *A few minutes later the rest of the group showed up and we headed down to the beach to enjoy the nice sunset – when all of a sudden and without talking to anybody two or three of my fellow travelers bolted down the beach along Changjin Bay towards Pipha Island.* Much to the confusion of all the guideguards, as you can imagine! Two decided to chase after them, one stayed behind – fortunately distracted by the events and the rest of the group, so I snuck away a few dozen meters to take some quick photos of the more or less truly abandoned hotel playground (42.300880, 130.390566), now outside the hotel fence. By no means spectacular photos, but probably the closest to real urban exploration anybody has ever done in North Korea…
*If you like to find out more about my two trips to North Korea please click here!*
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