Visiting North Korea; a travelogue.
August 2008
Hello, my name is Dakota Smith and I am a travel writer for Travelers Digest based out of Hong
Kong. In the summer of 2008 I was fortunate enough to travel from South Korea to
North Korea. This was a once in a lifetime opportunity to cross the DMZ, the
world's most militarized border and to visit North Korea, the world's most
secretive state. Tourism to North Korea is highly restricted, particularly for
South Korean and American tourists. For citizens of these two countries to visit
North Korea it's
mandatory to take an organized tour. Below is my travelogue of my brief trip
into North Korea:
My trip started early at 4:30AM in central Seoul. This is where where I was
to meet the bus for my arranged tour to the North Korean city of Kaesong.
Kaesong is North Korea's second largest city, and is located just across the DMZ
from South Korea. It's the only city that Americans and South Koreans are
permitted to visit and it's mandatory to take a guided tour as no independent
travel is allowed within North Korea.
The bus ride from Seoul to the DMZ takes about one hour and once the bus arrived at the DMZ
all of the passengers had to register with Hyundai, the main overseer of all trips from
South Korea to North Korea. At this point in the process we were all given ID cards
that we were to wear around our necks at all
times and would essentially serve as our visas to North Korea.
The tour guides also supplied us with a list of 'do's and don'ts' for our trip.
We were told that we couldn't take cell phones, books, or iPods into North Korea. Also we weren't
supposed to take any photos of the city, the streets,
or of any North Korean person.
From the processing center in South Korea, we boarded the bus that would
take us across the actual DMZ. It wasn't a smooth
process, as we waited on the bus for over an hour before departing while Hyundai
waited to receive permission for us to cross from the three militaries on the
border: the South Korean army, the North Korean army and the U.S. army.
Just a refresher course before I continue, but for those of you who don't
know, the DMZ is the line of demarcation between South Korea and North Korea. It
is the most heavily militarized border in the world and this is because there is
still an official state of war between North Korea and South Korea/United
States. Today, almost sixty years since the cessation of major hostilities
between the belligerents, there are more than two million soldiers patrolling
the DMZ!
From the bus however, there weren't many obvious signs of such large scale
militarization. Just a few scattered soldiers, a humvee and not much else. On
the horizon there were two gigantic flagpoles, one with a South Korean flag and
the other with a North Korean flag. A proverbial measuring contest of sorts. I
couldn't tell which flag was larger but I have no doubts that both sides lay
claim to the title. One thing of interest, there's a small farming village in
the middle of the DMZ. Korean farmers have been living there since the war and
it's pretty interesting to think about their tranquil lives between three
armies.
After a few minutes the bus officially crossed into North Korea. We stopped
at a checkpoint a few kilometers from the border to go through the North Korean
border formalities. They weren't a big deal and everything progressed quickly.
The normal routine is for the border guard to stamp your visa card, however for
souvenir purposes I requested that the border guard stamp my passport. Now I was
a little weary of having a North Korean stamp in my passport, as the country had
only recently been removed from the State Department's list of 'state sponsors
of terrorism', but I didn't think anyone would really notice such an obscure
stamp in Korean.
The part of North Korea we were now entering was the 'special economic zone'
of Kaesong. This region had received a lot of investment from
South Korean multinationals and as such was one of only two places in the
country that South Koreans could visit. The other being the Kumgang
Mountain Tourist Resort, where just a few weeks earlier a South Korean
tourist had been shot by North Korean soldiers while she walked along the beach.
Shortly after re-boarding the bus we picked up our military escorts. Several
SUVs filled with North Korean soldiers who would accompany our bus through the
streets and to the designated tourist sights. There were also a few North Korean
representatives placed on the bus at this time. They sat at the front with the
South Korean tourists and didn't come to the back of the bus, where the small
contingent of foreign travelers were sitting with our English speaking South
Korean guide.
It's hard to accurately describe the scenes from the bus windows. The city
was a virtual ghost town and there were large roads but no traffic. People
walking were far and few in between, most I imagine at work in the South Korean
factories on the periphery of the city. The people that I did see were dressed
in outfits that resembled the fatigues popular during China's Cultural
Revolution. There were soldiers everywhere, on every street and standing at
attention. Most were unarmed and it seemed probable that there were only so many
to fulfill the role of employer, the military is in fact the largest employer in
the North. Soldiers could even be seen in some very unusual places, one soldier
was standing in the distance on some railroad tracks. Another was just standing
in an empty field and one more was standing under a tree next to a cow. I was
later told these soldiers were placed in strange positions to prevent tourists
from taking photos of the city and countryside from the windows of the bus. Each
soldier was in possession of a large red flag which they could raise to halt the
convoy. But still, unless these fields were of utmost importance to national
security, it all seemed a little silly.
Another thing that was quite apparent is that I was now in a truly Communist
state. I had been to many 'Communist' states before, however they had just been
Communist in name, a justification for a one-party dictatorship. North Korea,
however, was different, there was no embrace of capitalism here. No shops, no
stores, no advertisements, nothing! It is the only place that I have ever been
to that doesn't have Coca-Cola, imagine!
While there weren't any advertisements, there were lots of propaganda murals.
Our guide translated one of them for me and it read something like 'don't buy
American products.' Not like that was an option anyway.
The first stop on the tour was the Barkyeon Waterfall.
As soon as the bus came to a stop, the
soldiers in the SUVs fanned out and created a human perimeter of sorts, so that
there was only one way for the tourists to walk. The uniqueness of watching
North Korean soldiers form a human fence would have been enough to fascinate me
if not for the waterfall, which was amazing!
Reaching the waterfall meant a short hike
through a mountainous forest. It was jam packed with all of the tourists from
the bus, but it was nonetheless easy to appreciate the beauty of this part of
North Korea.
After spending about 1.5 hours at the
waterfall, everyone boarded the bus and we headed back into the city. On the way
back into Kaesong we crossed over the largest highway in the country, which
connects the city to the nation's capital of Pyongyang. From our elevated
position I could see at least a few miles and there was no traffic as far as I
could tell. Eerie to say the least.
Our first destination in Kaesong was lunch
at a restaurant. The restaurant was part of a tourist complex and completely
surrounded by privacy walls. After our bus pulled into the complex's parking
lot, the gate was shut behind us and we were once again separated from and
hidden from North Korean daily life.
Lunch was a delicious meal of about ten
different traditional Korean dishes. To me it seemed that the cuisine of North
Korea was quite similar to that of South Korea and I couldn't ascertain any
large differences. It was a strange feeling though, eating a feast in a nation
that has lost so many to famine over the years and where 37% of children are
malnourished.
After lunch the tour went to a few small
cultural sights. It was a shame that we weren't allowed to walk around and
explore the city streets as they looked remarkably more interesting than the
generic touristy places that we were visiting. A few times throughout the day
there were checks of our cameras by the tour minders. I wasn't too happy about
losing the few shots I had taken from the bus of the city streets and North
Korean pedestrians, but such is life. At one point while we were stopped, I was
observing people walk by on the sidewalk through a chain-link fence, when a
North Korean soldier told me not to look in that direction. Forget about mind
control, North Korea has face control!
Our last stop in North Korea was a
museum/souvenir shop. This was great as I was dying for some souvenirs. I bought
a few propaganda pieces about the reunification the Korean Peninsula and the
soldier being the 'pillar of society.' I also bought a King Jong-Il stamp to
mail a postcard to the U.S.
It was only after I purchased the souvenirs
that our guide told me that taking the items into South Korea was illegal, as
they amounted to Communist propaganda. If found they would be seized at the
border. Thankfully a fellow tourist on the bus had a backpack with him, as I had
been advised not to take any bags, and he offered to carry the souvenirs into
South Korea. After all of the warnings about taking restricted items into North
Korea, who would have thought that this trip would end with goods being smuggled
from the North into the South?
At the North Korean border post once again,
everyone had to go through a metal detector and submit their digital cameras for
photo review by a security officer. As would be expected from reviewing that
many photos, it took quite a while. It's not an issue if you have photos that
you shouldn't, they'll just be deleted. After this process was complete we
crossed the DMZ once again and went through the screening at the South Korean
border post. There were no issues and our souvenirs went undiscovered. Shortly
after this we were back on the bus and headed towards Seoul.
All in all, it was a once in a lifetime
experience that was definitely worth the tour price of $200 US Dollars. I'm not
sure that everyone would enjoy this trip, but if you're keen and enjoy going to
places that few have seen, well this is your trip!
- Dakota Smith
