hauteboy

Finally getting around to posting some of this trip report to North Korea last year. I figure 6 months is enough to change the names to protect the innocent.

My photos are up at:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/hautebo...7601946518829/

August 30, 2007
Flight: Beijing to Pyongyang, Air Koryo 152
Hotel: Yaggakdo Hotel, Pyongyang
At last.. today I would be going to the hermit kingdom, North Korea! I'd wanted to go now for a few years since I'd heard about Koryo Tours trips, and DPRK had opened up the past few years to Americans, letting them in for the Mass Games. My wife and I were actually scheduled to go on their Mass Games trip last year when it was canceled due to flooding, I wanted to make another attempt this year. M. couldn't make it this time and since their non-US citizen tours are cheaper (I am dual citizen US/UK), I signed up for one of the Mass Games tours using my UK passport. Tours to the DPRK are somewhat unpredictable; there had been flooding again this year but so far the Mass Games were still scheduled. The Mass Games are an amazing feat, 50,000 performers doing gymnastics and synchronized movement. One of the more amazing things is a human LCD; thousands of students flash colored cards in unison to make animated images. The Mass Games are held in their own special stadium holding over 100,000 people.

I had a quick breakfast this morning at the Super 8 before checking out and heading over to the KT office. I'd cut it a bit close, it took awhile to find an empty taxi and by the time I arrived at the office they were ready to leave. Our flight was scheduled to leave about noon and KT had a shuttle to take everyone to the airport. I left my US passport, laptop and Xian warrior statue at the office but kept my cell phone. I had met some of the group yesterday during the trip orientation, it seemed like a good group of people, all about my age. And quite a mix, they were 12 of us from Finland, Netherlands, Canada, Germany, France, England, Nepal, Malaysia and Australia! We got the bad news though that the Mass Games had just been canceled, we had missed the last performance by a single day! What a bummer!! But since we had visas and plane tickets the plan was to go to the airport anyway. As we pulled up to the terminal we saw the Air Koryo plane sitting at its gate. It was an Ilyushin-62 with 4 rear mounted engines and a tail wheel. I noticed the Business Class checkin counter for Air Koryo, seemingly out of place for an egalitarian society! Checkin went without a hitch though and we had our boarding passes for flight JS152, but unfortunately these were printed on Air China boarding passes. We had a few hours to kill now, even after clearing departure immigration. Some of us grabbed lunch at the cafeteria and bought last-minute booze and ciggies for the trip, who knew what we would be able to get once in NK?

At last, it was time to board our flight. The flight looked like it was going to be pretty empty; the gate area was mainly our group, another group of Japanese tourists and a few North Koreans. We boarded the plane to the sounds of patriotic music. We were offered an English copy of the Koryo Times, full of glowing references to accomplishments of the Dear Leader, Kim Jong-Il. There were also articles on the recent flooding, and how the population was being mobilized to handle the emergency. The seats on the flight were green cloth with pink headrest. The overhead bins didn't have doors, just open to the sides like on a bus. The window shares were huge pulldown darkened plastic, not the thin opaque ones like on other aircraft. The seats didn't recline much, but the seatbacks flip forward almost to horizontal. We giggled a bit to ourselves at how it could be cool and kitschy at the same time. As we lined up on the runway, he quad-turbines spun up to a high-pitched whine and we started our takeoff roll, the IL-62 took quite awhile to get off the ground, and our climb out seemed to take forever! The flight was about 2 hrs, during which the flight attendants served drinks and a piece of cake. I am now a proud owner of an Air Koryo airsick bag, 'for your refuses'. The flight was only about 1/5 full and towards the back were several boxes of UN food aid. One of the flight attendants came and talked with me for awhile, though her English was limited. But she told me that the Games had been canceled the night before. Damn, foiled two years in a row! One of the guys in our group knew some Korean and was talking with another passenger. Soon enough we began our descent to Pyongyang airport. We landed then taxied for quite some distance before arriving at the terminal, passing by several mothballed Air Koryo planes. Pyongyang is an hour ahead of Beijing, and late afternoon by this point. As we disembarked from the plane we saw ground workers spraying water on the plane's brakes to cool them down!

Immigration was actually quite quick. We were all on a group visa, and did not get our passports stamped. There was a perfunctory search of our bags, but what took the longest was sealing up the cell phones. There were 12 of us in our group, and between us we had 13 cell phones and crackberries!! Each one had to be sealed up and given to our KT guide, we would get them back once we crossed back into China. Not that we'd have been able to use them anyway, I'd already noticed there wasn't a signal. We stood around outside waiting for the packaging to be done, then got on our Korea International Travel Company bus for the ride into town. We met our local guide, Mr. Lee here. He would remain with us for the rest of our trip. It was quite a long drive into town past green fields of rice, it was what normally would be rush hour but the road was totally devoid of cars. Most tourists in NK follow the same itinerary, the first stop made when visiting Pyongyang is a visit to the oddly named Mansundae monument, a huge statue of Kim Il-Sung with outstretched arm. Proper respect must be shown here, bowing and placing flowers. We stopped at a nearby square to buy the flowers, then walked up the steps to the statue. It was already sunset and starting to get dark as we bowed and placed the flowers, I was chastised for having my hand in my pocket! Flanking the statue were two huge flaglike structures with patriotic statues of enthusiastic workers and soldiers. They all seemed angry and happy in a hurry to get somewhere nowhere in particular. Similar to one at Mao Zedong mausoleum in Tien An Men Square in Beijing, but bigger. North Korea is like the Texas of the communist world. All the monuments and statues have to be just a little bit bigger! There was a refreshing lack of western style advertising here.. though I guess there is advertising of another kind. We had noticed several propaganda slogan boards and monuments with mosaics of the Dear Leader.

After paying our respects, we head to our hotel, the Yanggakdo Hotel. This 44-story hotel is located on an island in the middle of the river, as a tourist it's possible to walk around on the island, but not supposed to leave it without your guide. The hotel was quite nice inside, lots of marble and glass chandelier. They have a casino and bowling alley in the basement, and the top floor is a rotating restaurant. I can't imagine it's ever even close to being full! Our rooms were all on the highest floor, overlooking the city below. I was sharing a room with the German. I tried opening my window to get a better view of the city, in the process I managed to smash my fingernail quite badly and started bleeding. Nice! Can't take me anywhere without injuring myself. Pyongyang was probably the darkest city I'd seen, there were streetlights but dim, most other buildings had dim fluorescent lights in windows and that was it. The room itself was fine, we even had a TV with the BBC. We headed down to dinner, our first meal in North Korea. It was quite nice, shaved cucumber, a bowl of rice, fish soup and the obligatory kim chee. The kim chee was quite good, not quite as spicy as I'm used to. And I'm sure this is not what the normal North Korean would get for dinner. After dinner we all headed for the hotel bar to drink a few beers and socialize. We tried some of the local beer, Ryongsong wasn't bad for 70 euro cents!

August 31, 2007
Hotel: Hangyang Hotel, Mt. Myohang
Today was a busy day of touring. I woke up very early this morning to a gorgeous misty view out over the city. I noticed the Tower of Juche and Ryugyong hotel. The Ryugyong was hard to miss, this unfinished pyramid-shaped hotel dominates the skyline like a derelict spaceship. Originally it was going to be the tallest hotel in the world before construction was halted in the early 90's when funding ran out. You name it, if it's big and it's concrete, North Korea has it. Patriotic music was blaring from a loudspeaker someplace. I headed down to the lobby and walked outside the hotel for a bit before heading to eat. Breakfast was toast and jam, with coffee and an omelet. We finally all get on the bus around 8:45 and head to our first stop, the USS Pueblo. This US navy ship was captured by the North Koreans in the late 1960s, allegedly for spying. The North Koreans claimed it was in their waters at the time. The Pueblo is moored in the Taedong river, next to it is displayed a US 'spy' submarine captured by the DPRK in 2001. The Pueblo is still pretty much in the same condition as it was in the 60's, including typewriters, 1967 almanacs, 'Top Secret' ttys and other racks of communications equipment. The ship came under fire when it was taken, there are bullet holes marked all over the deck. The sailors were held captive for some time, being released after the US issued an 'apology'. We sat through a film that was narrated by none other than Elmer Fudd (Westewen Impewiawists!). Our next stop was the Victorious Fatherland Liberation War Museum, documenting the DPRK version of events of the Korean War. Lots of rooms full of military equipment and news articles about the West. One room held a 360 degree diorama of one of the battles, painted background with model tanks and soldiers in the foreground, it made me dizzy as the diorama rotated around. The next place we visited was Kim Il-Sung's secret base; during WWII and Korean war he conducted the affairs of state from several tunnels dug under the city.

Lunch was next, at a fondue style restaurant on the other side of the river. Again, good food and lots of it; there was kimchee, squid in a tasty sauce and raw meat which we cooked in hot oil. We had seen more people out today, walking around or riding on full buses or trams. Women wore traditional style dresses and men in worker jacket and pants. Everyone we saw had the Kim Il-Sung pin attached over their hearts. There are very few traffic lights in Pyongyang, instead what little traffic exists is directed by smart looking traffic girls. Crews on the street were both sexes. The whole place felt a lot like Beijing did on my first trip to China in 1988... empty roads, no Western companies. What a change in China since then! Our next visits were to an industrial museum, displaying North Korean industrial technology, then an art studio. The arts seem to be highly valued here, most of the embroidery and pottery we had seen was excellent quality and reasonably priced. Since we were going to miss the Mass Games, our guide had arranged for us to see the circus instead. We stopped at a park full of revolutionary statues again before heading to the circus performance. It was quite full, lots of soldiers and other North Koreans, this is the most people we'd seen so far. Not sure if everyone was there for our benefit or not though! The performance was quite good, there was water acrobatics like O in Vegas, there was a swimming pool under the ring floor. Other tumblers and trapeze artists made for a good show, but still quite a letdown compared to what the Mass Games would have been!

It was already quite late in the afternoon before we set out on our drive to Mt. Myohyang, in the interior of the country. The drive took a few hours, passing fields of corn and rice, again on completely empty 4-lane roads. One stretch was impressive, with the road on stilts following a river valley. We arrived at the Hangyang hotel, which looked right out of a 1970's James Bond film, all pyramid shaped and concrete, and of course with a rotating restaurant. Even the rooms were a throwback to the 70s with rotary style phones! After dinner, several of us went out to sit on the lawn in front of the hotel, our guide joined us and we spent several hours sitting, chatting and drinking beer under the stars! Such a clear sky, no light or pollution meant the air was crystal clear. It was well after midnight before we all went to bed.

September 1, 2007
Hotel: Yanggakdo
Today was another full day of touring. Woke up early again this morning to walk around outside the hotel. There was a stream running by that had amazingly clean clear water, the early morning air smelt fresh, quite refreshing! The DPRK is mostly an agricultural society, and a pre-industrial one at that... most of the work has to be done by hand since they are short of fuel and energy. There are corn and rice fields everywhere, but the yields are low. Most electricity here is generated by hydro or coal. Lack of industry and cars means there isn't much pollution (well, at least not that tourists would see). China is certainly much worse in this respect.

Our first stop this morning was the Buddhist temple; surprising in a communist country! But it has been here for 1000 or so years. The guide here spoke good English and she wore a bright pink traditional Korean dress! This is keeping with the theme I had noticed, all of the guides at the places we have visited have been women, all speak English and have either been in military uniform or traditional dress. The temple/gate guardians here were painted in bright colors, one riding a white elephant. The temples here have a greenish grey color theme, compared with China which uses more red and yellow. The temple was in gorgeous setting, surrounded by mountains. There was a bush here carved in the rabbit shape of Korea.. all maps you see here show the two Koreas as united.

The International Friendship Exhibition is the next stop on our itinerary. This is a set of buildings built for the sole purpose of showing off all the gifts that have been received by the Dear and Great Leader by people around the world. The gifts range from extraordinary works of art (usually Chinese embroidery/jade carvings), to the bizzare (a stuffed crocodile barstand from the Sandanistas) to an ashtray from Jimmy Carter. There is Kim Il-Sung's train carriage, cars, etc. Kim Jong-Il's gifts tend to more mundane such as electronics or furniture. Each item is labeled in Korean, English, and the language of the country from where it was donated. Lots of gifts were Chinese and Middle Eastern (Pakistan, Syria, Iran) but they had room after room of gifts from pretty much every country; we only saw a small portion apparently. We weren't allowed to take photos inside unfortunately. The whole building was built of marble, and quite cold inside! We also had to wear little booties over our shoes.. the LP book warns against the temptation to slide across the floor!

We went back to the Hangyang hotel for lunch before heading back to Pyongyang. Along the way we stopped by the side of the road for some photos. Our first stop once back in town was Kim Il Sung square; this is similar to Red Square in Moscow, used for military parades. We visited a bookshop and stamp store to shop for souvenirs. Everything here is priced in Euros for foreigners, although you can use US$. We never saw any of the local currency. After visiting the bookshop, we went for a ride on the Pyongyang Metro. I've been on the Moscow metro, which was built very deep in case of nuclear attack. The Pyongyang Metro is even deeper, and very similar to some Moscow stations. Huge chandeliers, lots of marble, etc. The map showed there were two lines, forming an X. We started at one end and were only allowed to ride until the next stop. All of the metro cars had photos of the two Kims.

After the metro, we went to the Koryo hotel for drinks. The Koryo has two revolving restaurants up top, where we sat for awhile and watched the sunset. We weren't allowed to take photos from up here though. For dinner, we went back to the Yaggakdo hotel, which had opened up the revolving restaurant up top just for us! We made sure to celebrate, again drinking copious amounts of local beer! Though the stuff is weak enough to not get too tipsy.

haydensydney

Fantastic - what an interesting trip report - I have a burning desire to visit NK and have not found much previously on others experiences - loved the pics too ^

LAXGR

Wow! What a fascinating trip report. Thanks for all the great details!

bensyd

Great report! Did you manage to try the draught beer in the lobby bar from memory they needed to work a bit on their brewing technique but it had been installed just one day before we arrived, I thought the Taedonggang was pretty good ^

hauteboy

I don't remember trying the draught, but looking at the photos all of us are sitting around with mugs of beer, so we must have. Taedonggang was good as well, didn't remember the name of that one though.

September 2, 2007
Hotel: Yanggakdo
Today was our last full day in the DPRK, but just as busy as the previous two had been. This morning we would be visiting Kim Il-Sung's mausoleum, for which we had to be presentable. Shirt+tie for men and dress for the women. The mausoleum itself is huge gray granite/marble building with no windows, just a large picture of the Great Leader. It is always busy with locals who usually visit two or three times a year. When we arrived there was a long line of workers and women in brightly colored traditional dresses, pink, blue, green, etc. The other KT tour arrived as well, this was the American group, so they had managed to get in as well despite the Mass Games being canceled. There is a large courtyard in front where people pose for their photos. It takes awhile just getting into the mausoleum, it is so large. Moving walkways take you down a long corridor, then turn 90 degrees and go through an underground tunnel for another 50 yards before turning left again and entering the mausoleum building. You have to leave your cameras here, then walk through a series of huge rooms with patriotic music playing. At one point we got a MP3 player with an English narrator narrating the dramatic tales of the people when Kim Il-Sung 'fell asleep'. Officially in NK he is not dead. Finally after passing through a windtunnel?! we entered the room where the preserved Kim Il-Sung lies in state in a glass coffin. You can get much closer here than Mao's tomb in Beijing, maybe 4 feet away. The protocol here is to bow at the right, head and left sides. Truly a bizzare experience.

The next stop was the Revolutionary Martyr's Cemetery, more monuments to those killed during the Japanese occupation (WWII) or Korean war. There is as much anti-Japanese sentiment here as anti-Western. The cemetery was on the side of a hill with a huge staircase leading up through the graves to a huge stylized stone flag. Each gravesite had a stone pedestal with a lifesized bronze bust of the soldier. At the the top just under the flag was the grave of Kim Jong-Suk, mother of Kim Jong-Il. She was quite young when she died, only 37. After the cemetery we headed to the Arch of Triumph.. like the one in Paris, but just a bit bigger. It has the dates 1925 and 1945 (end of Japanese occupation).

From the Arch of Triumph we walked up past the stadium to Moranbong park where they have a local funfair. We got to see normal North Korean families out with their kids enjoying the day. They were eating ice cream, riding on rides, etc, and we were albe to get some great people photos here! Some people, even kids, shied away from the camera but others loved seeing themselves on the digital camera screen. Some of us rode on some bumper cars and a spindly looking roller coaster. They also had shooting games like a carnival, but these were different from what we would have at home.. the targets were angry looking caricatured Japanese and US soldiers!

Kim Il-Sung's birthplace was next, this was some distance out of town in a parklike setting. It had a reconstructed house where he was supposedly born. We spent awhile in the park walking around before heading back into town and the Juche Idea tower. The Juche Idea is the Korean philosophy of self-reliance, since they are cutoff from the world. It's a huge tower with a red glass torch at top, at night this is lit up with moving lights to represent the flames. In front are workers holding the three symbols of Eastern communism, the hammer, sickle and calligraphy brush. You can go up the tower in an elevator, it gives a great view out over the city. From up top I noticed a hammer and sickle monument some distance away, this turned out to be our next stop. The Foundation to the Workers Party was a circular monument with three fists pointed skyward, holding a hammer the sickle and calligraphy brush (Mongolia has the same symbols, and they have a similar monument too in UB, just smaller!).

Since this was our last night we went out to a restaurant to eat. It was already dark and the streets are so dim, surrounded by concrete apartment blocks. Anywhere else you would have thought this was a bad part of town from the lack of lights, but the whole city is like this. We ended up at a Korean barbeque restaurant, they had the grills in the middle of the table. Quite a yummy meal, mainly duck. After dinner we went back to the hotel, and went bowling in the basement of the hotel, they had three lanes. I guess it had been awhile since I'd bowled, I barely was able to break 100.

September 3, 2007
Hotel: Train
Ah.. so our stay in the DPRK finally was coming to an end. Today we would be taking the train back to Beijing, nearly 23 hrs. On our way out, I noticed a DHL truck outside the hotel, the only Western company I had seen the whole time here. The train station was quite busy when we arrived. Some kids were playing volleyball (common sport here, most factories will have a volleyball court) without a net. We had a last group photo, then said our goodbyes to our local guides, they would not be joining us on the train. The train left on time at 10AM. Our group had the first three cabins in the car that would be going all the way to Beijing. The cabins were nice and clean. We set off through the countryside, past more corn and rice fields and small villages. For lunch we went down to the dining car, which had the omnipresent photos of the two Kims. Around 3PM we arrived at Sinŭiju, the border town. This took awhile to complete formalities, the NK customs officers came in our cabins and searched through our bags, our cabin was first. They also took our cameras and looked through all the pictures. After our cabin though they stopped searching as thoroughly! Afterwards we were allowed to get off the train while customs went through the other cabins. There was a bar above the train station here that had a microbrewery! It was pretty good too. Finally time to get back on the train, where we also got our cell phones back from our KT guide. We cross the Yalu river into Dandong, China. The old bridge is still here, only reaching halfway across the river. It was bombed on the North Korean side by the Americans during the war. We stopped at the train station here too for immigration and we could tell we were back in China as there was a Super 8, McDonalds, and people coming on the train trying to sell us stuff! I bought $1 of North Korean currency (the only I had seen) for like $3.. quite a markup. We looked in vain for Kim Il-Sung pins but didn't have time to find any. Finally we set off for the overnight train to Beijing, it was already nearly 5PM; the border formalities on both sides (with time change) had taken almost 3 hrs. The rest of the train trip was uneventful, most of it was dark so not possible to see anything. We passed through Shenyang and Tianjin before arriving at the Beijing train station at 9AM to chaos. I kind of got separated from the rest of the group, but found them again at the front of the station. We all said our separate goodbyes and left our own ways. I had made a reservation at the Park Plaza, so headed there to shower and change.

ghia74

North Korean TR's are my favorite to read, and yours in no exception. Even though all the agendas are so similar because you have to use the tour group I enjoy reading peoples takes.

It is also nice to see that you went without anyone you knew. North Korea is on my list of places to see. However, I do a lot more global trips than any of my friends or family. Thus if someone is willing to spend the time and $ to go to the other side of the planet North Korea is a hard sell. At this point my only opportunity will for a visa will occur for the Mass Games. Do you know if your wife would have been refused entry had she gone and they canceled the games? And out of curiosity, I remember hearing the trip from Beijing costs around $3,000. I was not aware of an American premium, how much extra is that?

hauteboy

The other American group got in, so we probably would have been OK.. I think there was a tour the following week that got canceled (the games were only canceled for about two weeks. they restarted them about a week after we left. ).

Yeah, most tours do visit the same places. Oddly though ours didn't visit the DMZ from the Korean side.. Well I guess there's always next time They are running the Mass Games again this year.

I think it was a 400 euro difference between US/non-US tours at the time.. and I got an additional discount as I'm a (grad) student. So it was about $1600. But that was with the Euro at 1.3... now it's definitely closer to $3k

I found this group too but not sure if they have US tours:
http://www.traveller.fi/korea_matka_eng.php

N145PM

Very interesting Trip Report, Hauteboy. You're pretty hot looking, too!

hauteboy

For flight details, I had redeemed an AAdvantage 90k biz award for this trip. I also threw in a side trip to Xi'an to visit the terracotta warriors before the NK trip. My whole trip itinerary was:

AUG25 AUS-LAX AA Y (M80)
AUG25 LAX-NRT JL J (744)
AUG26 NRT hotel Holiday Inn ($56)
AUG27 NRT-XIY JL J (767)
AUG27 Visited forest of Stelae, Bell Tower, Drum Tower, Islamic Quarter
AUG27 XIY hotel Super8 Xian (188CNY)
AUG28 visited Xian warriors, Temple of 8 Immortals, Big Goose Pagoda, Shaanxi museum, Ming walls, Great Mosque
AUG28 overnight train to PEK ($72)
AUG29 Visited Prince Gong museum, hutong tour, Koryo Tours briefing
AUG29 PEK hotel Super8 Dongsi (198CNY)
AUG30 PEK-FNJ JS Y (IL62)
AUG30 FNJ hotel Yanggakdo
AUG31 Mt. Myohyang hotel Hangysan
SEP01 FNJ hotel Yanggakdo
SEP02 FNJ hotel Yanggakdo
SEP03 overnight train to PEK
SEP04 PEK hotel Park Plaza ($95)
SEP05 PEK-NRT JL J (767)
SEP05 NRT-SFO JL J (744)
SEP05 SFO-SNA AA Y (EMB)
SEP05 SNA-AUS AA F (737)

One interesting thing that happened was when I was getting off the SFO-SNA flight, someone came on the plane and announced my name. I thought that was pretty odd, but it turns out it was the inaugural SNA-AUS flight (didn't know that when I'd booked the award!) Apparently I was the highest VIP/AAdvantage member on that flight & they knew I had just come in from China. They had a table setup with cake, and they were playing country music. When announcing the flight, the airport director said AA had lots of celebrities on some of their inaugural flights, Frank Sinatra, Don Ho, and now Mr. hauteboy.

For those interested in menus, here are the details from the JL flights:

BIMMERKID2

Great Pictures.. I have a question.. whats taht in img_3470 and img_3469?

Also,, I wonder who would buy those vehicles.. Nice looking though.

hauteboy

That was in their Industrial Museum, so dunno what that equipment was exactly. Some kind of metalworking machine. The 3470 is a map of the NK power grid.