All abandoned: Chernobyl / Pripyat, Nara Dreamland, Anti-Zombie Fortress, Japanese Sex Museum – and many, many more! Plus: North Korea Special – 2 trips, 16 days / 14 nights! As seen on CNN…
Korea’s former capital Kaesong was the next major destination on my itinerary, but before reaching the DPRK’s last city with lots of historical buildings surviving the Korean War we had a busy yet unspectacular day; most of the locations visited during that time I will talk about in the other locations article at the end of the series. (I already mentioned the lamb BBQ in the *Food For Tourists* entry the other day.) Since there is no direct highway between Nampo and Kaesong we had to go back to Pyongyang via the Youth Hero Motorway and then take the Reunification Highway (a.k.a. Pyongyang-Kaesong Motorway) south, making a stop at the “tea shop” mentioned in the Vice documentary. Just in case you saw it – the (unspectacular) building is a very basic highway rest, not a tea shop. And the “tea shop girl” has company now as there were two sales stands outside of the building both times we stopped there, although I can’t say for sure if Pun-Yun-Chi a.k.a. the original “tea shop girl” (pitied by countless Youtube comments) is still working there; heck the place was so unspectacular I didn’t even take photos or a video… And unlike claimed in the generally quite outdated documentary they are not waiting for six or ten months for customers! Even during both of our short stops (about 15 minutes each on May 2nd and May 3rd) we saw other tourist groups and local cars stopping there. Sure, only a fraction of customers a highway rest in North America or Europe has – but nothing like the out of thin air assumption made by Shane Smith, who IMHO tended to interpret everything he saw and experienced in the most negative way anyway. While it’s always a bad thing to jump to conclusions based on observations (especially when travelling alone and wondering why you are always alone…), it gets a bitter taste when it’s done to sell a product; in this case his documentary. I feel sorry that he and his cameraman had a bad time, but I think it was at least partly their own fault. Anyway.
Although built ten years earlier than the road to Nampo, the Reunification Highway is in much better condition, probably due its strategic importance, which was made clear by several military checkpoints (none of which we were allowed to take photos of) and countless tank traps – huge concrete blocks at the side of the road, some disguised as monuments, that can collapse onto the motorway in case of a foreign invasion. (I’m sure most of the bridges were rigged, too.)
By the time we arrived in Kaesong it was almost dark. What really struck me was the fact that the city didn’t have many lights. Maybe one in five apartments were lit, the rest was dark. The only construction lit up like a Christmas tree – the statue of Kim Il-sung on top of Mount Janam… (Interestingly enough some buildings had what looked like solar panels on their balconies. Not many, but still… Who would have thought that?)
The statue actually was our first destination the next morning after a night at the Minsok Hotel, but to the disappointment of all foreign visitors (…) it was closed since some people were cleaning the square in front of it – so we had a look at the city from a nearby viewing point; beautiful! When we came back to the statue we still weren’t allowed to see it, so to everybody’s surprise we were asked to board the bus to head out to the Koryo Museum since it was still too early to hit our time slot at the DMZ. And so that’s what we did…
The Chongsan-ri Cooperative Farm halfway between Nampo and Pyongyang was the second time that my fellow tourist group grew kind of impatient (the first time was at the rather boring Museum of Metro Construction, where taking photos was forbidden for no apparent reason). It’s the DPRK’s showcase farm and whenever you see tourist visit a “typical North Korean farm” with “typical North Korean farmers” you can bet that it’s this place; which is actually more than just a regular farm…
I think we all had a huge communication problem right from the start. When we drove up to the Chongsan Cooperative Farm it didn’t look much like a farm. We parked on a huge concrete parking lot in front of what looked like a museum, announcements in Korea coming croakily from age-worn speakers – we were waiting in the direct heat for a couple of minutes and nobody seemed to know what was going on. Instead of showing us some crops next we were lead up a gentle slope to… a statue of Kim Il-sung surrounded by farmers and their families. It turned out that the Dear Leader stayed at the farm for 15 days in 1960 and 84 times more afterwards, giving on-location advice and developing the “Chongsan-ri Spirit” (about leadership) in the farm’s honor; later being part of the Chollima Movement (promoting economic development) and the Juche Idea (promoting autarky). It also turned out that the building that looked like a museum actually was a museum, though I am not sure if that fact was made known on location – like I said, there was a huge communication problem…
From the monument we went back to the parking lot, past the museum and straight to some of the farm houses, where we were welcomed by a couple of playing kids and an elderly woman. Shoes off and in we went, taking photos that have been taken a thousand times before – of the woman with her grandson and twin kids on a couch, of the generously equipped kitchen, of the technical equipment on a decent level. On the one hand it was quite interesting, on the other it was completely pointless as this was an arranged photo session. Our hosts claimed it was a typical farmer’s house, but well, I guess it’s up to you whether you want to believe it or not. (BTW: I don’t think the house was much of an exaggeration since they didn’t put in a washing machine or a DVD player – and at least in Pyongyang DVD players must be quite common as, according to the latest rumors, the government has a serious problem with South Korean drama TV shows that seem to be quite popular among the North Korean population. DVDs and especially USB sticks make it possible to copy those shows to small and easy to hide storage devices.)
Afterwards we were able to have a look at a different (predetermined) house and then we waited for like 20 minutes at the parking lot to get the heck out of there – we didn’t see a single field or animal, although the farm is supposed to produce rice, corn and beans. We also didn’t have a look at the museum or some of the facilities at the farm, like the hospital, the cultural hall, the kindergarten or one of the schools on the premises. I really wonder what went wrong there, because it seems like the other group with the grumpy guides actually saw a lot more of the farm. Most of the information in this article I had to gather afterwards – and of course nobody mentioned the surface to air unit that was on the farm and just 200 meters away from the houses we visited…
The West Sea Barrage is an eight kilometer long system of dams, three locks (capable of handling 2,000 to 50,000 ton ships) and 36 sluices near Nampo. It was built from 1981 to 1986 to close off the Taedong River from the Yellow Sea – the goal was to prevent seawater from entering the Taedong, causing floods. At the same time the Taedong’s water level was supposed to be raised under controlled conditions to improved ship traffic and to make it easier to irrigate fields along the river. Critics claim that the raised water levels destroyed farmland, contributing to the famine that struck North Korea from 1994 to 1998.
Considered a major technological accomplishment the West Sea Barrage is a standard stop for international tourists as well as foreign dignitaries – nevertheless photography was strictly limited until a couple of years ago, since the dam was considered strategically important (if you watched the Vice documentary, this is one of the many aspects where it is completely outdated). Even the former US president Jimmy Carter visited the West Sea Barrage during his stay in the DPRK in June 1994. (Interestingly enough Carter arrived by boat, not by car – I assume you can guess why…)
After a good night’s sleep at the *Ryonggang Hot Spring House* we drove to the West Sea Barrage, more specifically: P’i Do Island, which was included into the dam’s construction. There you can find a visitor center, which is also home to the P’i Do Lighthouse, the tallest and most powerful lighthouse in North Korea, its focal plane at 86 meters. The tower itself is 33 meters high and shaped like an anchor, so it’s also a nice looking monument.
Visits to the P’i Do Lighthouse usually start with the local guide showing you a video tape about the construction of the West Sea Barrage (which was actually quite interesting, despite the fact that it was what most people would consider “a cheesy propaganda video” – nevertheless I liked it quite a bit!), followed by a Q&A session about the dam. Then you go outside to take some photos and leave when your group guides tell you to… The underwhelming opening to a generally slow day.
Nampo / Nampho is the center of the North Korean shipbuilding industry and has a population of about 370,000, making it the fourth biggest city in the DPRK; other important employers are the Nampo Fishery Complex, the Nampo Smelter Complex and the Nampo Glass Corporation as well as several sea salt producing companies.
My trip to Nampo began, like most trips there, on the Youth Hero Motorway, a 46 kilometer long expressway between Pyongyang and the industrial city on the north bank of the river Taedong. Construction started in November 1998 with the massive support of young Korean volunteer workers; hence the name Youth Hero Motorway. While on the highway Mr. Yu told us that he was one of the volunteers when he was a university student – you could read between the lines that it must have been an excruciating project for everybody involved… Opened in October 2000 the widest motorway in North Korea (5 lanes in each direction!) already is in really bad condition. At least half of it is full of potholes, so we were able to drive faster on most countryside roads. (A video taken on the Youth Hero Highway came with *the first article of this series*.) I didn’t have a look at the watch how long it took us to get from Pyongyang to Nampo, but I guess it was about 2 hours, probably longer…
Nampo itself looked a lot more like how most people imagine North Korea to be – a bleak industrial city full of decay, with a lot less of those colorful apartment blocks and post-futuristic buildings I loved in Pyongyang; the streets being in a lot worse condition, too. We never stopped anywhere within the city limits, but parts of Nampo would be a perfect location to shoot a remake of Michael Radford’s 1984. When we drove past the Nampo soccer stadium I thought that most of the abandoned buildings I visit were in better condition – the FIFA would never approve of that one! (A *look at GoogleMaps* confirmed that the stadium basically is a ruin…)
The sun was setting and it was a beautiful evening, but quite a bit of Nampo looked rundown and rather depressing. Some government buildings and the huge paintings of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il looked nice, but overall it was pretty clear that Pyongyang had priority over Nampo in many ways. I am actually a bit surprised that we drove through Nampo as there is a bypass north of the city center – so they could have avoided showing us stuff like the soccer stadium if they really wanted to… (I took some photos and both videos published with this article the next morning on the way to the West Sea Barrage, just in case you wonder about the different lighting conditions.)
The Ryonggang Hot Spring House (in most itineraries referred to as the “Dragon River Hot Spa Hotel” is not in Nampo city, but 20 kilometers northwest in a small town called Onchon – and like so many rather modern things in Korea it dates back to when the country was under Japanese occupation; which also might explain why you take off your shoes at the entrance and switch between house slippers, apartment slippers and bathroom slippers… The House actually is a resort, consisting of seven small villas with four apartment units each, and a so-called service center with a restaurant, a karaoke room, a pool room, and all the other usual stuff. Each apartment has its own private hot spring tub; the water is said to treat “hyperpiesia, non-tubercular arthritis, neuralgia, neuritis, lumbago, varieties of wound (sic!), sequelae of operations, chronic gynecologic inflammation, functional disorder of nidamental gland, sterility, chronic gastritis, chronic colitis, skin diseases including eczema and prurigo” according to the spa’s brochure. Speaking of the brochure – it was too large to scan as a whole since it was three big pages each side wide. So I scanned the more interesting two connecting pages on each side, leaving out the pages that mainly consist of water analysis data and tourist spots nearby.
Upon arrival Mr. Yu, Mr. Kim and Sarah started to set up the famous petrol clam BBQ *I wrote about in the food article*. By then it was pitch-black and rather cold outside, but the soju and vodka warmed everybody from the inside. Half an hour later the whole group went to the main building to enjoy dinner – a pitch-black dinner at times as Nampo, unlike Pyongyang, suffers from regular blackouts. But the food was good and the company was nice, so it was a really successful evening again…
Oh, one last thing about the Ryonggang Hot Spring House: The tree covered resort is surrounded by a barbed-wire fence and the main entrance (facing open fields, not the town’s center) is guarded by an armed soldier – your guess whether he is there to protect guests from locals or locals from guests is as good as mine!
The human side of North Korea.
That’s what the title of this article should be, but I guess I’ll stick with the naming conventions I decided weeks ago – nevertheless the trip to the Taesongsan Park & Funfair was hands down my favorite part of the eight days / seven nights I spent in North Korea – although I most likely contracted food poisoning there…
After finishing the first ever *Fun Run* in the DPRK everybody went back to the *Yanggakdo Hotel* for a quick shower and some hearty breakfast. From there we drove to the Mansudae Memorial for a deep bow in front of two gigantic statues and a couple of photos of the area with a great view at the city, directly down to the *Workers Party Foundation Monument*; nice, but not interesting enough to deserve its own article.
The Taesongsan Park & Funfair are in the north eastern outskirts of Pyongyang, near the Pyongyang Zoo and the *Revolutionary Martyrs’ Cemetery*, basically right next to Rakwon Station, the final stop on the Hyoksin Line of the *Pyongyang Metro* – nevertheless they are not marked on *GoogleMaps*.
People always say that there are barely any cars in Pyongyang, that the city feels deserted – not on May 1st near Mount Taesong! As soon as we got closer, traffic became quite heavy. Still nothing in comparison to any bigger in an industrialized country, but the traffic policemen were pretty busy and we actually had to wait at intersections. (BTW: Contrary to the internet phenomenon most of the traffic police are male, not female… about 2:1 or even 3:1 of what I saw!) There even was a taxi among the cars. Yes, a taxi! They have taxis in North Korea… The most crowded area was around Rakwon Station, where a constant stream of people left the metro system. Sadly most of the traffic and people photos turned out to be blurry or had window reflections in them, nevertheless I’ll include a couple of them to show you that there are people actually living in Pyongyang and that it is not a ghost town populated by a couple of actors who play “perfect country” for the handful of tourists who visit the DPRK every year…
The Taesongsan Park & Funfair is exactly what the name says – a huge park with lots of funfair rides. We drove about 1/3 into the park and when we left the bus our guides told us to everybody’s surprise that we could explore on our own and that we would meet about 40 minutes later. The announcement was borderline shocking since nobody expected anything like that. Yeah, we were told that we would be able to mingle with the locals on May Day, but everybody thought it would be a group experience. People bolted off in all directions, but I stuck with Jeff, Ben and Jimmie; having a feeling that this could be a great experience if I was able to keep up with Jeff (who had no intentions to shake anybody off!). But first the three decided it was time for a bathroom break, so all of a sudden there I was on my own, in a park in North Korea… completely unprepared, to be honest.
If this isn’t your first visit to Abandoned Kansai you know that I am not much of a street photographer – I take pictures of buildings, abandoned ones usually, to be more specific; not of people. And we were told not to take photos of people directly anyway. Which I ignored right away by taking a photo of one of those tent like food stands that spread all over the park and Pyongyang in general. (Privately operated, BTW! You have to apply for a license to run one, but that’s pretty much all I found out about them.) The woman running the tent immediately waved me over and I thought I was in deep trouble, but instead of yelling at me she had a big smile on her face. Before I knew what was going on I had a cold bottle of water in my free hand – and I had no idea how to manage the situation, because as I told you, we weren’t prepared for that. Was it a gift? Did she expect payment? But how could I pay without having any local money on me? (Foreigners are not allowed to have local currency, although they sell you notes fresh from the press on your last day at the Yanggakdo Hotel, at a ridiculous exchange rate though.) After a quite confusing (not to say panicking) moment I remembered that I had some sweets from Japan in my backpack, so I opened it and gave her some green tea chocolate – and everybody was happy. (It must sound trivial if you weren’t there, but it was a truly amazing situation to me…) Seconds later my fellow travelers showed up again and we continued our tour through the park. (And I found out that we can buy stuff from the tent stands with Chinese Yuan, although I thought it was forbidden for them to accept foreign currencies.)
I knew that it would be impossible to shoot a decent video with the whole group, so a minute later I went on a stroll by myself again, still trying to reflect what just happened. So I walked around for about 10 minutes and as you can see in the video – just a normal park with normal people enjoying themselves.
By the time I got back to my new friends from the States, Canada and Australia the next big thing was going on already. I saw Ben and Jimmie, but Jeff was nowhere to be seen, just some dozen local kids crawling over a table… and Jeff. While I was gone my American buddy sat down, took out his tablet and started to play a flight simulator; much to the interest of almost every Korean coming by, especially the kids. It was amazing! I’ve never seen that many smiling and curious kids at the same time, even a couple of adults stopped by to find out what was going on. Including Mr. Yu, who kind of broke off the spectacle… which turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Mr. Yu was clearly uneasy about the situation, so I talked to him for a minute or two while Jeff headed deeper into the park – I followed shortly after and reunited with the rest of our mini group.
As I mentioned in a previous article, the Taesongsan Park is a popular spot for BBQs. A blanket, a gas heated pan plus lots of food and alcohol. Fun for the whole family. Dozens, probably hundreds of groups were spread all over the park, enjoying the blessing of a late spring under still blooming cherry trees. It kind of looked like home (which currently is Osaka, Japan), it felt like home. We were passing by quite a few groups when Jeff decided to approach one of them, us three still in tow. Almost instantly Jeff was offered a seat and before we knew what was happening all four of us sat down. Jeff gave me 20 Yuan and asked me to get some beer – I tried to find some at the food tents, but since I don’t drink beer I didn’t even knew what it looked like; of course nobody there spoke English. Except for Mr. Yu, whom I met again, but only for long enough to find out that we would meet half an hour later than planned since everybody enjoyed themselves so much.
With good news (but without alcohol) I returned to the group and sent Jimmie on the beer mission. By that time Juliette came by and was invited to join everybody, too.
The group we joined was a big family, at least three generations from toddlers to grandma. Jeff was in his element, showing pictures on his tablet to our hosts, introducing everybody, translating parts of the conversations – and what got lost was made up with nice gestures and big smiles. By the time our bottoms hit the ground we had chopsticks in one hand and a paper cup of soju in the other. Meat was sizzling in the pans and the scarf wearing grandma next to Juliette was cutting up delicious baechu kimchi; from a big plastic bag, the napa cabbages still in wholes.
Those 10 to 15 minutes we sat with that group of locals was the best time I had in the DPRK and I still don’t know how to describe the way I felt. (Not only myself, but everybody involved – we talked about this experience for the rest of our trip.) I grew up with a certain image of North Koreans, which is probably pretty similar to yours. Partly based on North Korean material (like parades, official news reports, interviews with average people after Kim Jong-il died), partly based on Western media portrayals – and here I was eating and drinking with (random!) locals on a sunny day in a beautiful park in Pyongyang; sharing THEIR food after THEY invited us. The nicest, most open-minded people I’ve ever met. Not a single negative word, not even a single negative vibe. Jeff, him being American by definition an oppressor and arch enemy, was actually the most popular one of us. Those people were nothing like the image I had of North Koreans before the trip! There was no way they could have been nicer or could have made us felt more welcome…
(Of course we didn’t take advantage of the situation and contributed some bottles of beer as well as sweets we brought from our countries to the feast. BTW: When our Austrian group members Anton and Veronika passed by halfway through our time there, our hosts invited them over, too – nobody was left out, everybody was welcome!)
All good things must come to an end, so after a while we had to leave to get back to the bus, but not without Jeff chatting up some more people on the way, all of them reacting very friendly and interested. Sadly I didn’t get a good end, but a rather bad one. I was feeling a little bit under the weather all day, but it got worse on the bus ride to the city center, where we had lunch on a boat. By the time we sat down I was freezing and sweating at the same time, feeling seriously sick. With Jeff’s help I was able to lie down in the cabin of a crew member and when I got up again I almost fed the fishes across the ship’s rail – luckily my stomach was almost empty and my body seemed to appreciate the gesture. I was feeling a bit better, nevertheless I stayed in the (boiling hot) bus while the others explored Moranbong Park for more interaction with locals; afterwards everybody said Taesongsan Park was way better since this time it indeed was a group experience again. I guess I picked up an undercooked piece of bulgogi and contracted food poising, which I literally sweat out for two hours or so. Which was another blessing in disguise as the evening bus ride to Nampo was the shakiest and bounciest you can imagine, but that’s a story for another time. (Oh, and just in case you wonder – although I could have done without the food poisoning, it was totally worth the experience at Taesongsan Park! No regrets whatsoever…)
“Fun Run” is an oxymoron, at least to me. I hated running at school, I hate running to catch the last train (and if it isn’t the last I usually don’t run and wait for the next one…) and I especially hate running during *urban exploration*, after all the main topic of this blog. So when I read in the itinerary of my trip to North Korea that one of the (optional) items on the agenda would be a fun run I completely ignored it. It wasn’t until after I booked the tour, actually until after applications for the tour closed, that I started considering joining the fun run. It would be a new experience, it would be for a good cause (minimum donation: 20 Euros) and let’s be honest, when do you get the opportunity to go running in Pyongyang?
The 2013 Pyongyang Fun Run actually was a world premiere. There is a regular Pyongyang marathon, but this event was the first charity run in North Korea. Originally it was planned to have a 5k version and 10k version, leading from the Ryanggang Hotel through Pyongyang’s “sports district” (where most of the competition venues are) to Kwangbok Street. But things didn’t go according to plan and when the organizers found out that a renovation project in the sports district was starting just before the event (and a group of tourists running through a camp of army construction workers wasn’t an option…) the 10k version was axed and a new route was found: along Taedong river, from the former site of the American spy ship USS Pueblo past the *Yanggakdo Hotel* to the city center at Kim Il-sung Square. (*Click here for the exact route on GoogleMaps.*)
Since the Fun Run was optional and we had a tight schedule for the day (May 1st, one of the most important national holidays in North Korea – guess why…) all participants got an early wake-up call – 6 a.m.! A blessing in disguise as I was able to take one of my favorite shots from the window of my hotel room, sunrise in Pyonyang… beautiful!
Originally I intended to run the whole distance with a couple of brief stops for a photo here and there, but after I found out that some people would rather do a Fun Walk I decided to join that relaxed group and take it easy – a smart decision as I woke up slightly sick. Instead of my usual DSLR I brought a pocket camera. Less weight, less “threatening” – photography is treated differently in the DPRK as you know by now.
Although my fellow group member Juliette and I usually were at the rear end of the runner field I never had the feeling that we were under supervision. Every once in a while I saw a Korean guide standing around to show us the track (we started running / walking on top of a small dam along Taedong River, but to avoid bridges and roads sometimes we had to go down to the road north of it or to the waterside promenade to the south). It was early in the morning on a national holiday, so the streets weren’t exactly crowded, but I passed pedestrians or got passed by cyclists on a regular basis – it felt like a genuine morning stroll in a country that is nicknamed “hermit kingdom”. I guess I should have tried to “escape” to find out how tight supervision really was, but I didn’t feel supervised at all – and if I would have been able to speak Korean it would have been easy to make contact with locals. I took a small video with the pocket camera, too – maybe you will be able to demask all the secret service agents I wasn’t able to see; probably because I was too busy enjoying the experience as the weather was great and the atmosphere was tranquil.
Now you might ask: What’s the point of a Fun Run that hardly anybody sees and that had only about 50 participants, none of which were regular locals?
Well, first of all: Those 50 people (and non-participating donors) raised about 2000 Euros to buy milk powder for an orphanage in Nampo – that alone would be reason enough to organize an event like that. But I don’t think it was the main reason why Koryo Tours did it. I think they organized the Fun Run to once more push the boundaries. Some people took the run very seriously, others (like myself) basically went for a stroll, so by the time the winner reached the goal the starting field must have stretched over two or three kilometers – too much to supervise with a dozen helpers or two. Since the track wasn’t closed off the runners and local people mixed, a first in the DPRK. North Koreans don’t see many foreigners – let alone see them running through the city, feeling the wind of change in their hair. Okay, let’s not overestimate the importance of this event. It still was just a fun run. But many events in history started with only some dozen people. Maybe next year there will be 100 people running, the following year employees of the Yanggakdo Hotel might be allowed to join and one day regular locals – you never know…
And even if not, it still was a great experience for all participants. It was just nice to walk around, to see locals interact with each other, to take photos from a different perspective other than from a bus or from a building. To hear the wind in the willow trees, to swallow a couple of bugs that were swarming everywhere along the river, to see locals spread herbs to dry in the warm spring sun, to have a moment for yourself without seeing any guides or fellow travelers. To pay attention to details – even though I had spent three full days in Pyongyang I never noticed the solar powered street lights, because on a group tour there is almost always somebody talking, there is almost always something to see. Yet I missed the solar panels. Nothing worth mentioning in most countries, but if anybody would have told me “Pyongyang has solar powered street lights!” I probably wouldn’t have believed him. But see for yourself, they are visible on quite a few photos I took that morning.
When I first found out about the Fun Run I completely ignored it – luckily I changed my mind and took part, as it was one of the highlights of my trip. If you ever go to North Korea and have the opportunity to join… do it! You’ll make memories for life!
The food during my trip to North Korea is a topic I didn’t want to touch with a 10 foot pole, because as we all know the DPRK is a terribly poor country and it was struck by famine for several years in the 1990s. But I know that a lot of you are very much interested in what visitors to North Korea eat… and where… and when…
Since trips to North Korea are group tours pretty much everything is included in a total price. We always had breakfast at the respective hotels we stayed at – buffet at the *Yanggakdo Hotel*, set menu at the Dragon River Hot Spa Hotel in Nampo and the Minsok Hotel in Kaesong. Lunch usually was at restaurants run by KITC (which means that usually we didn’t eat with locals), dinner was either at the hotels or at restaurants. Lunch and dinner included water and one beer per person, additional alcohol was available at a ridiculously low price – I think 50 cents per bottle.
The Korean guides usually had their own table, not because they got different food, but because it was a chance for them to get away from the group and be amongst themselves. Tour guides work long hours, so they definitely deserved it!
Breakfast at the Yanggakdo Hotel was pretty good – usually some bread / buns, sweet doughy things (like donuts), pickles, kimchi, fried eggs, stewed meat (chicken, pork), battered fried fish, fried potatoes and veggies. Simple, but delicious. (Breakfast at the other two hotels was a lot more simple, which is understandable since they had a lot less customers…)
Lunch was always amazing! Usually we sat on a long table were groups of four people shared about 8 to 10 dishes. Kimchi, fried eggs, stewed meat, broiled / fried fish, sweet and sour tofu – similar to the breakfast, but way better quality. Again: simple, but extremely delicious. Since there are a lot of Koreans living in Japan I had all kinds of kimchi before, hot and cold, and I never was a big fan of it – but the kimchi we had at the KITC restaurant in Pyongyang was amazing, the best kimchi I ever had!
One day we were able to choose one of the main dishes, either bibimbap or naengmyeon. Bibimbap is one of the most famous Korean dishes (mixed rice, including vegetables, meats, eggs and several spices) and since I had it before I went with naengmyeon, cold noodles in a broth Pyongyang is famous for. Living in Japan I am very familiar with soba and udon (two Japanese kinds of noodles than can be eaten hot or cold) and so I was very curious about naengmyeon – and the guides were quite interested in my opinion. To be honest with you, if prefer udon over soba over naengmyeon at any day, but for the sake of understanding among nations I called it a draw – actually making our guide more interested in Japanese food. (I brought some sweets and shared them during the trip with fellow travelers, guides and locals.)
Another lunch highlight was the lamb BBQ in a Pyongyang park. Of course we had our own tables, but local groups were having picnics at identical tables, too, so it wasn’t completely out of the ordinary what we did there. Sunny day, great food, locals – a nice break from “foreigners looking at things”…
The lunch our guides were most proud of was pansanggi we had in Kaesong. Pansanggi consists of about a dozen small brass bowls filled with… well… vegetables, fried fish, pickles, tofu, meat, … It originated among Korean royalty, who realized that variety is the spice of life and rather had small portions of many dishes than big portions of a single dish. And since they had the resources to afford it… The preparation was amazing, for example this was some of the best tofu I ever ate – and of course the presentation added to the experience, too.
Dinner usually was kimchi, fried eggs, stewed meat, pickles, broiled / fried fish, tofu… lots of variations, so hardly any of us got sick of it over the course of the eight days we spent in the DPRK; but it was all Korean food, so people used to not only eating a different dish, but a different cuisine every day might have a tough time in North Korea. One evening we had the opportunity to visit Pyongyang’s only pizza restaurant with authentic Italian equipment and staff trained on location, but I bowed out and had dinner at the Yanggakdo Hotel. When in Rome, do as the Romans do… and eat pizza – but when in Pyongyang I prefer to have Korean food!
In Nampo we had a local specialty before the dinner – the petrol clam BBQ. And yes, it’s exactly what it sounds like. You arrange dozens of claims on a flat stone, soak them with two 500ml plastic bottles of petrol and light them on fire! Since the Nampo clams don’t open up when cooked that way, most of the gasoline actually burns into thin air. Nevertheless about 1 in 4 clams taste of petrol according to our guide Sarah. (I’ve tried only one since I had a weak stomach that day – more about that later…) But since “better safe than sorry” is valid all over the world our guides treated us with two bottles of soju (sweetened rice liquor) and two bottles of Pyongyang Vodka (beyond 50% alcoholic content…). I was tempted to ask for a bottle of Victory Gin, but I bit my tongue last second. 🙂
By the way – the standard farewell meal on the last night is at a duck restaurant in Pyongyang. When we went there the place was packed (with foreigners…) and the food was amazing! Four plates of meat, two plates of veggies and a grill in the middle. Heaven!
What else is there to say?
Oh, pretty much every meal came with a soup and rice – and the rice was usually one of the last dishes. Why? Because our hosts didn’t want us to give the impression that they would fill us with rice so they wouldn’t have to give us much meat, eggs and vegetables. A sweet gesture, but I don’t think anybody would have complained to get the rice along with the meats and vegetables; but I’ve heard it’s custom in other countries, too, for example at Chinese weddings.
If you want to visit North Korea, but you can’t stand the idea of eating fish, meat and shellfish with every meal there is good news: a vegetarian option is available, but no kosher or halal one.
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.
Grand People’s Study House is one of the most famous buildings in Pyongyang and part of pretty much every tour to the DPRK. North Korea’s central library is located at Kim Il-sung Square in the heart of Pyongyang and can hold up to 30 million books, including a couple of foreign ones. It was built over a period of 21 months and opened in April of 1982 to honor Kim Il-sung’s 70th birthday.
We entered the study house through the entrance of Seomun Street (the north/south one, not the east/west one) and I have a feeling that this is not the entrance most people use. The first room we entered was a huge hall with a gigantic statue of Kim Il-sung, about 2 storeys tall, to the left and the right an escalator each, half-hidden behind huge pillars. We used the right escalator to go to the upper floor where a couple of locals were using PCs, looking through the library’s catalogue according to a white sign with blue lettering. I was really surprised to see that most signs at the Grand People’s Study House were bilingual Korean / English; not only those guiding signs, but also the names of study rooms and auditoriums.
Speaking of signs: When I took pictures of the restroom signs I seriously confused Mr. Yu; so much that he talked to our Western guide Sarah about it. I overheard the conversation and explained to him that I thought the signs looked interesting, with a more traditional one on the door and a more modern one next to it. I also mentioned that people who have never been to the DPRK don’t know what toilet signs look like in the DPRK and that some are interested in those details. This situation perfectly showed how differently photography is treated in North Korea and the majority of the world. For us photography became a thing we just do, sometimes even carelessly – even without having a camera with us most of us are able to take pictures at any time with a phone or a tablet. We rather take too many photos than to miss something we might regret. Not so in North Korea. There are a lot less mobile phones (which I don’t consider a bad thing…) and you only bring your camera to special events. Remember the days of analog photography, when you took pictures without knowing if they were good and you had to pay for every single one of them to find out? That’s what it’s like in the DPRK. In the 1950s or 60s hardly anybody took trivial photos – nowadays the meaningful photos have a similar share as back then the pointless ones had…
The tour through the building was pretty much exactly the same as the one everybody gets – and of course they told us the story about how Kim Il-sung invented the adjustable table when he first visited the study house. (He saw his fellow Koreans’ backs bend over the tables and decided that the height and angle of the tables need to be adjusted to make it easier for them to study…)
At the media room our guides popped in a tape with Beatles classics – a video I am not allowed to post on Youtube due to possible copyright infringements. Isn’t it nice to live in the free world?
From the media room we went to the foreign language classes and had a peak at an English lesson and some people learning Chinese. When we were on our way to the balcony to enjoy the stunning view at Kim Il-sung Square all of a sudden Jeff decided that he wanted to talk to the English students – after a short deliberation we got permission to go back, much to the surprise of everybody. Jeff, Juliet and Barbara crashed the English class, introduced themselves and asked the students a couple of questions; including if they had some themselves. At first the whole room acted like a group of deer in headlights, but they gradually warmed up to their new teachers and even started to give answers. Those conversations weren’t deep, but nevertheless quite moving to everybody present – students, guides, foreign visitors. This was quite an unusual situation, probably an all-time first. And everybody seemed to enjoy it – a welcomed change of pace after the rather unspectacular visit of the *Taedonggang Combined Fruit Farm* and the quite boring Museum of Metro Construction (where we were not allowed to take photos… although nobody seemed to know why).
When we finally reached the balcony of the Grand People’s Study House we were running behind schedule (of course…), so I was only able to take a couple of quick photos and a short video. Guess what – at a school kids were waiting for us… to entertain with a musical performance!
Oh, one final little detail though – remember how I wrote that we entered the Grand People’s Study House and used the escalator to the right of the Kim Il-sung statue to get to the upper floor? Well, when we left we used the same moving staircase to get back down, which means that they changed the direction of the escalator, although there was a second one to the left of the statue. I guess it doesn’t mean a thing, but if you were critical of the system you could claim that everything is a show, that they don’t keep the escalators running all day and just turn them on for tourists to get in and out… heck, maybe the left escalator isn’t even in working condition anymore?
The Taedonggang Combined Fruit Farm (referred to as Taesongsan Combined Fruit Fam in most tour programs – I looked at GoogleMaps, it’s definitely the same place…) about half an hour outside of Pyongyang was one of the most unspectacular locations on my trip to North Korea. We were given the choice of either visiting the Pyongyang Folk Village (a park with miniature versions of landmarks in Pyongyang and the rest of the DPRK) for a rather steep entrance fee (something like 20 Euros) or heading out to the fruit farm for free, and the vote was unanimous – Taedonggang Fruit Farm!
Well, what can I say? The view from the observation point was nice, given that it was barely 50 meters high – but a fruit farm, predominantly apples and peaches, in spring isn’t exactly the most exciting place to be. So after we listened to the local guide how 800 people work on the farm, that the apple trees were imported from Italy and that the whole thing was built within just three years we headed down to the gift shop, which was actually the more interesting part of that stop. Fresh apples that looked like apples I remember from my childhood – different sizes, not perfectly formed, spots everywhere; much unlike the cloned stuff you get in supermarkets nowadays. I bought some dried apple rings and apple shampoo as souvenirs, but they also offered different kinds of juices and alcohol. Then we boarded the bus and headed back to the city, Pyongyang.
If I had only done some research in advance… What the guide didn’t tell us was that the Taedonggang Combined Fruit Farm is probably the best-defended farm in the world – the residence of the Kim family in Kangdong is only about 10 kilometers away and Kim Jong-un most likely passes by on the way to the city every day! There are several units of the Korean People’s Army stationed in the area, including some anti-aircraft units. So when you look at those peaceful pictures, please remember that all hell could break loose within seconds…
Abandoned Kansai 