Youth Hotel Pyongyang

... of those in all likelihood prearranged and orchestrated events like open-air dances, Mass Game attendance and so on. Here you could see what was probably common crowd, loitering around the railway station as is so often the case in many other places in the world. They were not ushered away as we had sometimes suspected had been the case on some other occasions. And also for the first time I saw a respectable number of cars parked around. True to the local form, an unusually ...

... achievements made by Korean people in, as they call it, the three revolutions - ideological, technical and cultural. So in principle it&#8217;s about items and videos, exemplifying North Korean people&#8217;s successes in the three fields and the general line of the socialist construction in the country. <br><br>The whole show gets started off in an open yard with a dais bearing a Kim Il Sung&#8217;s autograph and then a monument in the form of three red flags, symbolising the three ...

... show started with what seemed to be a warm up for the people forming the backdrop "painting" of the performance. At this time they were just forming coloured lines, not pictures yet. After a while it changed to coloured lines with Korean characters in them.<br><br>After this the performance really began with the performance of the Arirang song about the legend of two lovers that are separated. A metaphor for the ...

Päivä ennen Pohjois-Korean matkaa Koryo Tours järjesti briefing-tilaisuuden osanottajille. Kaikessa lyhykäisyydessään kolme pääkieltoa olivat seuraavat: 1) valokuvaus ilman oppaan siunausta (etenkin linja-autossa) 2) poistuminen hotellialueelta yksin seikkailemaan kaupungille 3) käyttäytyä epäkunnioittavasti "suuria johtajia" kohtaan. Lentoa edeltävänä yönä katsellessani jo sängyssä leffaa iPhonella kaksi ...

... started slightly losing track of which particular war the particular memorial referred to. Chalk it up to general exhaustion to an extent. Which inevitably ensued after the saturation with a lot of new information had set in. I just couldn&#8217;t follow it in every single detail any more.<br><br>In any event, the bus was already on the move and by the time Mrs Lee was through with introduction of our schedule for today, we arrived at the site. On another wonderful, sunny Korean morning ...

... 8217;s a ten-point programme for the achievement of the great unity of the entire nation and the proposal for founding of the Democratic Federal Republic of Koryo. That would be the name for this newly-created unified state as the North suggests it.<br><br>Right by the Monument, on either side of the motorway, there was a bus bay, or some kind of a lay-by. Most certainly, they were not there by chance. So our driver pulled over on the one on our side and we were given an opportunity ...

... it.<br><br>Presently, we took our seats and the bus got us there.<br><br>Kumsusan Memorial Palace, or the Kim Il Sung Mausoleum, is basically the same thing as the Mao Mausoleum in Beijing. Only much more pompous. At one point or another, I would say it&#8217;s a must for all foreign visitors when they are in Pyongyang. On the one hand, that&#8217;s a way to pay homage to the Great Leader, and where better to do it than at the Kumsusan? On the other hand, it is a great example as ...

... in their decades-long, icy stand-off with the US, it&#8217;s proudly shown to foreign visitors in Pyongyang. We were no exception.<br><br>The US has a long record of claiming that certain incidents in which it was involved, some more and some less serious, took place in &#8222;international" waters, air space and so on. Oddly enough, it also has a record of such claims occasionally dissolving into thin air in short order upon closer scrutiny. Such turns of events, in fact, happened ...

... sozzled openly stared at us and many realised along the way that we were neither monsters nor enemies.<br><br>We started taking pictures of what suddenly turned into the most interesting thing in North Korea so far, beating even the Arirang Mass Games the night before. And interestingly enough, locals didn't frown at all. Out there in the sun, the tipple dissolving whatever fears and worries they might have otherwise had, they smiled broadly, waved to us and - invited us to join them ...

... other flight in the world, everyone seemed to start taking out their cameras, hoping for a good shot. However, being on board an Air Koryo aircraft meant we were technically on North Korean territory. As for all of us, with Simon being the sole exception, this was the first trip there, none of us was yet sure what we could and could not do. No one knew how far we could really go. I guess at this point no one was dying to be the first to get a public rebuke. Certainly not this early into ...