Like most DPRK observers I love North Korean travelogues. I know that the tightly controlled DPRK tourism machine presents a highly sanitized, if not outright fictional, view of daily life for North Koreans but even propaganda can be revealing. The truth always slips through. I am also well aware of the smuggled videos that reveal the extreme poverty, oppression, and executions that occur there but those are for another post and another day.

Most of the blogs, photos, and videos assembled below are the products of ordinary tourists (although the first blog contains the impressions, and photographs, of a Reuters photographer). Some of the observations are quite sharp, most of them mundane, but if you take in enough of them something approaching reality emerges.

Blogs
Inside North Korea: No One Said Anything (2010)
“The atmosphere was solemn. On the street, men wore suits and women wore the traditional Korean dress called a hanbok. While the convoy was delayed at a security checkpoint, I joined other colleagues who started taking pictures of passers-by. I couldn’t resist and snapped some shots of North Korean soldiers going in and out of a gate nearby. No one said anything.”

A Secretive Trip to a Secretive Country (2010)
“Our rooms were all on the 25th floor. I entered the room excitedly and opened the window, expecting a wonderful view of Pyongyang. Instead, I was greeted by darkness. (Not surprising, given North Korea’s chronic shortage of fuel…) Out of the darkness, I could see a couple of high-rise apartment blocks across the river. Further afield, I could see the Juche Tower (probably the brightest-lit monument in the city). Realising that I couldn’t see much, I closed the window and decided to take a walk downstairs around the hotel lobby. While strolling, I saw a bookshop selling numerous North Korean books and publications. I flipped through some of the publications and I quickly became engrossed… The printing technology, design and layout of these publications looked very “1980s”.”

A Trip to North Korea (2006)
Koreans are not shy when it comes to basic needs, the guide forbid to take pictures of men taking a piss on the middle of the road, but there was no problem when it happened in the capital next to to a monument.

Fraser Lewry (2005)
“We learn how 82 American crew were held hostage for close to a year, only being released when the US published a full letter of apology. That the US retracted the apology the moment the sailors were freed is not mentioned. We roam the ship, from the communications room where various radio and encryption machines are stamped with plates that say things like ‘Top Secret Prohibited’, to the rear of the boat where a machine gun is primed to spray bullets across the bows of any ships from the US war maniacs or their southern puppet army. Etc.”

My Holiday in a Secret State (2005)
“At the statue, a few of us bought flowers and laid them at the front of the statue, before walking back and paying our respects by bowing. This was the first occasion I realised that some people might not be suited to a trip to DPRK. You have to go through the bowing to Kim Il Sung, and just accept it, even if you don’t approve of the leadership of the country. It is all about showing respect and politeness for a foreign country in which you are a rare guest. It’s a similar deal with the stories that you are told. Sometimes they seem far fetched, the guides know they sound far fetched, you know they do, and the guides know that you know. But the key is just to play along with it, take it in with interest and use your head a little.”

Don Parish (2005)
“People work from 9am to 6pm six days a week, every day except Sunday. They get a two hour lunch hour. Apartments and medical care are “free”. (Of course, to be exact no government service is ever free; someone had to pay for it. So wage levels are lower in communist countries so the government has the money to provide “free” apartments and medical care.) In North Korea, the waiting list to get an apartment is 3 years.”

Welcome to North Korea. Rule No. 1: Obey All Rules
While in the country, I desperately tried to talk to some actual North Koreans. But all outsiders travel in a virtual bubble, as a way to just about eliminate contact between North Koreans and outsiders. Except for the hotel’s doormen, all the staff we encountered were recruited from ethnic Korean communities in China – and they are rotated back to China every three months.

Journey into Kimland (2002)
“He handed the customs agent our forms and then motioned for us to put our bags through what appeared to be one of the oldest x-ray machines currently at work on our planet. I swear the thing must have helped in the original fight against polio. Anyway, when some of us complained about possible film damage the clerk motioned us over to another, much newer, machine. The bags went through, they looked over us, the bags and our forms and that was it. The world’s most tightly sealed country and we get through customs and immigration in less than 30 minutes. I’d half expected cavity searches, book burnings and perhaps a cattle prod. Instead it took less time than it usually takes just to walk up to the immigration line in most other international airports. There went reality again, screwing up my preconceptions.”

Wandering Camera
“There was an interesting moment when Alexey had trouble falling asleep and went out of the hotel at 6 in the morning to some random neighborhood. No one stopped him.He walked for about three kilometers, and was finally stopped by a policeman, who asked him for identification (in Korean, naturally). Since, first of all he didn’t have identification, and second he knew but a few words in Korean, they could not reach an understanding. A crowd gathered around them quickly (they don’t meet foreigners in residential quarters very often :) and finally there was someone, who knew the word “Russian”. That was what he asked Alexey, and Alexey said “yes”. After that the feelings got warmer, the policeman took down his name, and let him go. There were no consequences.”

Andrew Holloway (1988)
We climbed up to a pretty wooden pavilion, overlooking the city, and sat among the local people gossiping in the balmy night air, attracting I dare say a little envy at our cans of Japanese beer. On our way up we passed the city’s principal statue of the great leader. The bronze statue was illuminated by floodlights. A number of young devotees were gathered around the statue and studying the thoughts of the prophet by the beam of the floodlights in the presence of his brazen image. This is indubitably extremely silly, but when you are actually there it is also rather touching. I found it so anyway. “Do people in your country stand under statues of Margaret Thatcher and study her works?” asked Chang Yong ingenuously.

Photos
Lars Beck
North Korea Flickr Pool (9,700 Photos)
Kok Leng Yeo (109 Photos)
Escape From North Korea (NatGeo)
Unseen North Korea (BBC Gallery)
Rare Pictures from Inside North Korea (TIME Gallery)

Video
Arirang Mass Games
DPRK Tour Video (Produced by DPRK Tour Videographer)
Daily Life Inside North Korea
North Korean Welcome Song
Village Shop in North Korea
14 Days Inside North Korea
Seven Days in North Korea
A Sunday Drive in Pyongyang
Korital, First Pizzeria in the DPRK

Travel Guides
Lonely Planet
Wikitravel
Virtual Tourist

Photo by Kok Leng Yeo