Originally Posted by
offerendum
Very interesting! In "older" reports I always read you have to leave your mobile to custom. I guess they changed this rule....
Yes. The media player also got in as well.
Our tour was escorted by 2 guides and a photographer. The main guide sat up front, while the 2nd guide sat at the back. The ground rules were not to photograph from the bus or at the military. Simple enough. Our first stop was the humble birthplace of President Kim Il Sung, their first leader.
The park surrounding this historic site was very serene. You could smell the evergreens and everything was well-manicured.
When photographing their leaders - current and past, we needed to put their full figure into frame.
1 of the 2 top-grade tourist hotels is the Koryo, which has a retro charm and kept very clean over its 30 years of history. It was built in the 1980's but I felt a more 70's vibe to it.
We got the local channels and some foreign ones as well, including the BBC and Chinese channels. There weren't the incredibly enthusiastic newscasts but it was interesting to watch war documentaries talking about American imperialists and no commercials whatsoever.
Pyongyang looks like any typical city with highrises, monuments, and the like. At night, the city looks a bit dark, but upon closer inspection, you will see faint lights shining from within. Many homes installed solar panels outside, which I presume are imports from China.
The streets had lots of pedestrians. All the citizens wear a pin featuring their great leaders' faces to identify themselves. But then, tourists are easy to spot by our way of dress and cameras on hand.
Pyongyang is a city of grand monuments. There were so many of them. This one was built to celebrate victory against the Japanese colonists that were kicked out of the land at the end of World War II.
Hopping to the right angle, I caught sight of the city's tallest - the empty hotel that Kempinski tried to operate.
While there were no ads everywhere, propaganda posters don't count as ads.
Beautiful scenery paintings grace bus shelters. Better than a Coke ad, eh?
Housing looks typical of any city. The blocks in the city centre are generally not too tall. Across the river, there are far more taller buildings.
Ginseng is quite famous in North Korea, with the best growing region near the DMZ at Kaesong.
