LONG LIVE COMRADE KIM IL SUNG!

Ok, so a few weeks ago I went to North Korea.

In July, I had exactly one week that was completely free. The first two weeks of July, I was in Kunming learning Chinese with a friend, and the last week of July one of my other friends from Canada came to visit me in China. So that left me one week in which I didn’t really know what to do. Now, in February I had wanted to go to North Korea but the border was closed because of Ebola, so it was still on my mind. I almost jokingly decided to look at tours, to see if anything was available on my dates, and on the first tour company website that I saw, there was not only a tour on these exact dates, but it was a budget tour, cheaper than all the others! I saw it as a sign from the Gods of Travel, so I booked it. In case you’re interested, it was still very expensive, 950 euros for technically 5 days but it was actually only 3 full days of travelling (to be fair though, they were VERY full days). By the way, you cannot visit North Korea independently, you have to be part of a tour, and not only that but you have to leave from Beijing as well. This is one of the reasons why I had never been before: not only is the tour itself quite expensive, but add to that the cost of the plane from Canada to China and it becomes an exceedingly expensive 3-day trip.

My tour company was called Koryo Tours. I knew it was a big one, because it’s the first one that shows up when you Google “North Korea tour”. That tour turned up to be quite popular, so they had to split the whole group in three groups of 25 people each. My group was called Simon’s group, obviously not because of me but because the Western tour leader was also called Simon. It was quite cool because we were a lot of young people, since it was a budget tour. We asked the guides and apparently the people are usually much older.

By law, in North Korea the group must be accompanied by at least two North Korean guides at all times. In our case, there were three guides, two men and a woman who was in training. There was also Simon accompanying us, and a cameraman from the KITC, Korea International Travel Company (the North Korean company in charge of tourism) filming us for a DVD that he’d sell us at the end of the tour.

Everyone’s first reaction when I told people was “Oh no! Be safe, etc.”. The thing is, North Korea is extremely safe, at least for tourists who behave like they should (i.e. who don’t leave Bibles in bars). But your guides are responsible for you, and if something happens they are the ones who will be punished.

So, that was the prologue. Now, here’s what happened. I decided to be extremely detailed, because not many people know what a tourist typically visits in North Korea, and I simply decided to give my impressions of everything chronologically, as it happened. So this is a post that lists absolutely everything I did, while also talking a little bit about my impressions and feelings when I did those things.