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 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

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Visas: This is the difficult part. If you're from the US or South Korea you can pretty much forget about it. Mt Kumgang however is the one exception with visa free exemptions for most nationalities. Other nationals may have some luck approaching the tourism office in the North Korean Embassy in Beijing; your chances of being granted a visa are far lower at other embassies. A visa, if it is going to be granted, can normally be granted quickly.
Health risks: No particular risks, although there is a shortage of western medicines so it's not a great place to get sick. However traditional Korean medicine is available.

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