We’ve added our photos of the North Korea trip to Flickr. This is our tour group at the Mansudae Grand Monument. Our impressions of the country from our visit:
- Everything smells musty.
- Nothing is properly lit – restaurants and shops are dark (and musty).
- Statues and portraits of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il are everywhere. In our group we started asking each other ‘who are those two?’ whenever we saw one.
- All adults wear a pin showing either the great or supreme leader, or both. Failing to wear it and being spotted by an inspector can have dire consequences.
- The standard working week is Monday-Saturday, and there are self-improvement activities to be done on Sundays.
- The people are very sombre in public – not much talking, no laughing or joking. Could be related to the points above.
- Ordinary people cannot own a car or move freely within the country so there is almost no traffic on the roads.
- Only the elite with flawless family histories live in Pyongyang.
- Apartment blocks, even in the elite capital city, look very dilapidated.
- Some buildings seem to have been abandoned mid construction eg. an apartment block with some inhabited floors and other floors of bare cement, no windows etc.
- Health and safety on constructions sites is not a high priority (one of the things we are forbidden to photograph is construction sites).
- There is a lot of menial physical labour going on everywhere eg. manual weeding, cutting grass with shears or even scissors, laying concrete boundaries along roadsides.
- There is no rubbish anywhere, public spaces are spotless.
- Groups of students can be seen marching and singing in public squares.
- As foreigners we get a lot of looks from local people but it’s impossible to know what they are thinking. Some (but not many) wave back when we wave.
- The city is dark at night (our hotel runs on a generator).
- The people do not like their country being referred to as North Korea – if you try to send a postcard mentioning those words it will not be sent. It’s either Korea or DPRK (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea).
- Engineering projects that seem standard or dated in the West are celebrated beyond all reason.
Blimey. Excellent reportage!
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