My North Korea Travel Experience – What’s It Really Like?

As my train travelled across the bridge separating China and North Korea, my stomach started to knot in apprehension. “Why am I travelling to North Korea?” I thought to myself. The current tension between North Korea and the Western World had put doubt in my mind about whether this was safe.

The train pulled to a stop and North Korean military flooded onto the train, where they took our passports and thoroughly searched our bags. We waited here at the border for 2 hours before the military got off the train and let us proceed towards Pyongyang, North Korea’s capital city. After some hours passed, the lush countryside began to fade and huge monuments, buildings and skyscrapers took its place. We had arrived.

I very recently got back from a trip to North Korea. It has taken me a few days to compose my thoughts and reflect upon everything I saw and experienced – the country was extremely different to how I imagined and threw a lot of my preconceptions out the window.

I was surprised, for example, to find that Pyongyang was a very picturesque and modern city. I don’t know what I had expected from the capital city, but it certainly wasn’t this. I was also surprised to see that the countryside was absolutely beautiful, with rolling hills and vivid green colours. However, some things I saw also upset and angered me.

Getting to North Korea

A lot of people don’t know that you can visit North Korea, but it is actually very easy to visit the country (at the moment at least). You can only visit with a guided tour company, however, and this will take you on a very strict, itinerary-based tour around mainly Pyongyang, but also to places like the DMZ and Mount Myohyang.

The tour company I went with was called Lupine Travel, and I found them to be very helpful pre-trip with their booking process and getting my visa ready. The tour itself was very well-planned and I thoroughly enjoyed it, although the restrictions placed on us, such as not being able to wander off and do our own thing and having to ask to go to the toilet and take photos, did get a little frustrating. But, this is the nature of tourism in North Korea, and is the same with all tours to the country.

We entered North Korea by taking an overnight train from Beijing to Dandong (a city on the border of China and Korea) and then another train from Dandong to Pyongyang – a pretty arduous journey taking around 18 hours. On arrival at the border, North Korean military searched all our bags and took copies of our passports, which took around 2 hours, before we proceeded to the capital city train station.

North Korea Day 1: Arrival and Visiting Mansudae Hill

We arrived in Pyongyang at around 6pm, and immediately made our way to our tour bus, which was to take us from A to B during the whole trip. We were taken straight to Mansudae Hill, which contains the 22-metre bronze statues of Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-Il. We had to walk in lines of four up the hill towards the statues, walking past about 200 military, before standing before the statues and bowing to them.

Having just endured an 18 hour train journey and just arrived in the country, I wasn’t sure exactly how compliant we had to be, or how easy it was to get into trouble, so this experience made me feel very on-edge and completely overwhelmed. It was probably one of the most surreal moments of my life.

We then ate dinner at a “local” restaurant. This restaurant was definitely set up for tourists, and in no way “local,” but it was our first taste of Korean food, which I’ve decided I really like. Next, we went to our hotel for the night, which was the Yanggakdo International Hotel – the largest operating hotel in North Korea, and also one of the tallest buildings. This hotel was absolutely spectacular, with crystal chandeliers, marble floors and gold trimmings. It made me pretty angry actually; half the country are starving and yet this several-hundred-million-dollar hotel exists.

North Korea Day 2: The DMZ, Metro Station, The Arch of Triumph and The Fun Fair

We awoke bright and early, and headed to visit part of the Demilitarised Zone (DMZ), which is a strip of land running along the Korean Peninsula. It is used as a buffer zone between North and South Korea, and is 160 miles long and 2.5 miles wide. We specifically visited the Joint Security Area (JSA), which is located in the truce village of Panmunjom; within the JSA are a row of buildings used for meetings between North and South Korea.

I expected to feel quite tense during my visit to the DMZ, but the military guide who showed us around was actually pretty relaxed and put us at ease. Our military guide showed us around an area with a museum and where previous meetings had been held, before taking us to the JSA. We viewed the JSA from a balcony and watched the soldiers change shifts.

After lunch, we drove back to Pyongyang and took a ride on the Pyongyang Metro. Before 2010, tourists in North Korea were only allowed to ride between two stations, giving rise to a conspiracy theory that the metro was purely for show and that the passengers were actors. However, we rode the metro across 5 stations, and it was pretty interesting to see locals going about their daily lives. Every station was beautifully designed and contained a huge picture or statue of one of the Kims.

As we walked out of the metro at our final stop, we were greeted with The Arch of Triumph: a huge, impressive monument which was built in 1952 to commemorate the Korean resistance to Japan.

This is where something interesting happened. A guy on my tour asked our guide if he could buy ice cream at a nearby stall. Our guide said no, but he went and got one anyway, as did another guy from the group. This caused a lot of tension, and apparently, was written down as a “serious incident”. Now, it confused us as to why buying an ice cream could be such a serious incident. Perhaps our guide was worried the ice cream stall was fake? Or perhaps they didn’t want us to be interacting with locals in this way? Who knows, but its certainly strange.

Anyway, we went up to the top of The Arch of Triumph which graced us with a beautiful view of Pyongyang, with pastel colours and high-rise buildings.

After dinner, we headed to a small amusement park, where we got to go on some rides. This was probably one of the highlights from my visit to North Korea, as we had a chance to interact a little with some of the locals. We were, however, told that we should skip all the queues and go straight onto any ride we wanted, because “we’re Western”. This annoyed me; this is not presenting a good view of us as Westerners to the citizens of North Korea, as it conveys some sort of “white supremacy”. Perhaps this was the intention of this.

The best part was where we went on a swinging boat ride. Myself and a few others from my group were sat at one end, and some local school kids were sat on the other. As the boat swung higher and higher, we all started to laugh and be silly together and this felt like a genuine interaction with locals. We high-fived the kids as we got off and left them with huge smiles on their faces. As most of our time in the country was spent pretty segregated from the locals, this experience left me pretty happy.

North Korea Day 3: Mount Myohyang, Monument to Party Founding and The Korean War Museum

We awoke early again and made the 3-hour drive to Mount Myohyang, a beautifully scenic area which is home to the International Friendship Exhibition. This is a large museum complex displaying a massive collection of gifts that were presented to Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-Il during their lifetime. Some of these gifts were incredibly lavish, such as a plane and millions of dollars worth of furniture, silverware and pottery.

There were also items such as a taxidermied polar bear and lion and a lot of decorated elephant tusks, which irritated me. Much like the hotel we were staying in, the sheer beauty and decoration of the museum was astounding. It seems the Kims spend more money displaying their gifts in a highly exorbitant museum than they do feeding their people.

After this, we visited a nearby temple called Pohyon Temple. This Buddhist temple is one of the very few places of worship open to foreign tourists in North Korea. It was founded by a monk named Kwanghwak in 1042, but half of the temple complex was destroyed by US bombings during the Korean War. It has since been reconstructed and was a very beautiful site. I was actually under the impression that religion was not allowed to be practised in the country, but apparently, this is not the case.

After lunch in the surrounds of Mount Myohyang, we drove back to Pyongyang to visit the Monument to Party Founding, before heading to the Victorious Fatherland Liberation War Museum. Our guide first showed us around the grounds of the museum, where she mostly just pointed at destroyed aircraft and stated things like “this is an aircraft we shot down in 1952. This killed 6 US military,” before taking us into the main museum building. Much like most of the buildings we’d visited, the war museum was immaculately kept and covered in gems and gold, and also contained a huge wax figure of Kim Il-Sung.

This was where it was the most difficult to keep our mouths shut. We watched a couple of short videos about the Korean War, which were pure propaganda, conveying the “ignorance and stupidity of the US imperialists” and how Kim Il-Sung was “innovative and a great leader who defended the country with grace”. We also visited the USS Pueblo, a US Navy intelligence ship which was captured off the coast of the Korean peninsula in 1968, and displayed as a trophy inside the museum grounds.

North Korea Day 4: Kumsusan Palace of the Sun and Sight-Seeing around Pyongyang

Today we put on our formal attire for we were off to visit Kumsusan Palace of the Sun, where Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-Il are laid to rest. The whole morning made me feel pretty tense, as we had to walk around the palace in lines of four, and were not to speak.

We had to bow three times to each leader, once at their feet, once at their left side, and once at their right. It was surreal to see real bodies laid on display in this way, and the number of guards watching our every move was extremely intimidating. I felt particularly nervous as I had forgotten the memo where we were told to bring formal clothes for this occasion – they somehow let me into the palace wearing Nike trainers and temple pants.

Following this, we went to visit Kim Il-Sung Square, which is the part of North Korea I see most frequently in the media as this is where marches etc are held. The square was pretty deserted when we got there and carried a very eerie atmosphere.

Next, we had lunch before heading to Mangyongdae Native House – the place where Kim Il-Sung was supposedly born and raised before becoming president. Many North Koreans visit this native house to pay homage to Kim Il-Sung, which was evident from an array of flowers that had been placed in his honour.

The home is a reconstruction, and portrays the family as humble and poor, from the small size of the cottage to the collection of very broken cooking objects that the family supposedly used. The Mangyongdae Native House is very likely to be another propaganda feature in my opinion: historical records show that Kim Il-Sung was born to a middle-class family and that his father even served as a Protestant missionary.

We then made our way to The National Library. I expected this to be quite boring if I’m honest, but it was actually extremely interesting. It gave us a huge insight into what Western literature and non-fiction North Koreans are exposed to, which turns out isn’t a lot, but they did have Harry Potter, Shakespeare’s works and Sherlock Holmes!

One of our tour guides who had been really quite stilted and unwilling to talk about her personal interests throughout most of the trip started to open up when I asked her if she’d read Harry Potter. Her face lit up and she said “it’s my favourite! In Chamber of Secrets where Harry sings Happy Birthday to himself – that makes me sad. And Hermione is so brave!” From then on, she was a lot more willing to answer my questions about life in North Korea – it seems that a good book brings people together everywhere in the world.

One thing that shocked me was an English language textbook. In foreign language learning books in the UK at least, we would be presented with sentences that generally don’t have much importance, and are purely there to help you learn the language. However, this book from the library had sentences such as: “The US imperialists have been the sworn enemy of the Korea people for more than a hundred years ago” and “The US imperialists killed one-fourth of the population of Sinchon County during the 52 days of their occupation.” Harrowing.

Next up, we made our way to a local school where the kids put on a performance with dance, singing and musical instruments for us. All of the kids in North Korea are super talented as they are taught singing and dancing during primary school.

Finally that night, we went to the local circus. This was a display of extreme aerobatics, and my god, I’ve never seen anything so incredible. The stunts and tricks they performed were absolutely mind-blowing, where one in particular involved a man back-flipping metres into the air from a see-saw before landing perfectly stood on another man’s shoulders. However, while these incredible acts were going on, on a screen directly behind the stage, footage of war, anti-US propaganda and patriotic images were being displayed. Given that there were school kids here watching the circus, this was quite unsettling.

North Korea Day 5: Departure

My time in North Korea had come to an end and we boarded our train back to China. I felt as though I had learned so much about this fascinating country, however, I also worry that I’ve been slightly brainwashed. If I knew nothing of North Korea before arriving there, I would have said “wow, this is a wonderful, beautiful country.

The citizens are given free education, healthcare and housing, and the country is so clean and unspoiled. But, knowing what I know, I’m aware that a lot of what I witnessed and experienced was likely staged or just for show, and is not at all representative of most of the country. The issue is, it’s extremely difficult for me to untangle what’s real and what isn’t. I suppose that was probably their motive.

Further North Korea reading:

• Watch my North Korea travel vlog
• Check out my North Korea travel guide
• Learn how to visit North Korea as a tourist

Thank you for reading!

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