North Korea

This page collects together my amateurish scribblings regarding a trip to North Korea in October 2005, as well as linking to the experiences of some other visitors and a tossing in a few useful sites.

Kim in Kaesong

My stuff
Day One - Pyongyang airport, Grand Monument, Arirang Games
Day Two - Morning - Mausoleum of Kim Il-sung
Day Two - Afternoon - DMZ, Korean Wall, Kaesong Folk Hotel
Day Three - Mt Janam, Koryo Museum, King Kongmin’s tomb, Reunification monument, Kim Il-sung’s birthplace, Pyongyang subway, flower exhibition, State Circus, War Memorial
Day Four - USS Pueblo, War Museum, Arch of Triumph, TV Tower, Chollima Statue, Juche Tower, Kim Il-sung Square, Yanggakdo Hotel.
Day Five - exit

Other traveller’s tales from 2005
Mike from Omaha 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
Austin Arensburg 1, 2
John Goodman
Dan Schorr 1, 2, 3, 4
Staypuff
Yeohaeng Ilgi 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17
Chanuchan 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
Ari on The Web 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16
Adam Malis on NKZone
Paul & Rick Bakker
The Long Haul
Zmrzlina
Stephen Codrington (Visit One)
Stephen Codrington (Visit Two)
Nicolas Jansen
Carol Rueckert
J. Scott Burgeson
Andrei Lankov - Korea Times
Andrei Lankov - Asia Times
LA Times report

Flickr Sets
Blogjam - North Korea 2005
John Goodman - DRRK 2005
John Goodman - Arirang 2005
Puma - DPRK 2005
Mark Wang - DPRK Tour 2005
Veji - North Korea
Soda Zurich - North Korea 2005
HKP - North Korea
Austin Arensberg - North Korea
Prime8z - DPRK, April 2005
courier888 - Pyongyang 2005
scarycurlgirl - Pyongyang August 2005
Staypuff 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9

Other photos
Lars Bech
Time magazine
Der Spiegel
BBC News

Travel info
Koryo Group - excellent organisation, lovely folk, tell ‘em Fraser sent you.

Further online reading
A Year In Pyongyang
NKZone

Read these
Bradley K. Martin - Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader: North Korea and the Kim Dynasty: the Motherlode. Ferociously detailed, lengthy account of the World’s only communist dynasty.
Guy Delisle - Pyongyang: graphic novel that captures the atmosphere and absurdity of the capital city better than anything else I’ve read. Truly lovely.
Bruce Cummings - Another Country: essential reading if you want to understand why the DPRK behaves as it does. Generally well balanced, occasionally let down by the author’s obvious determination to show the North in the best possible light wherever possible, dwelling on the positive without ever properly addressing the negative.
Robert Willoughby - North Korea (Bradt Country Guides): all the places you’ll never get to see.
Michael Harrold - Comrades and Strangers: Behind the Closed Doors of North Korea: somewhat sad story of an Englishman’s seven-year stint in Pyongyang working for the Foreign Languages Publishing House.
Paul French - North Korea: The Paranoid Peninsula - A Modern History: a decent modern history of the country. Not a bad place to start.

Official DPRK Literature
www.north-korea-books.com. Your best bet for officially sanctioned DPRK literature online: from military history to recipe books to subscriptions to the Pyongyang Times. Purchase such eternal favourites as The U.S. Imperialists Started The Korean War and Let Us Advance Under The Banner Of Marxism-Leninism And The Juche Idea.

Watch these
North Korea: A Day In The Life
The Game Of Their Lives
A State Of Mind

11 Comments so far

[...] I’ve assembled the majority of the photos I took into Flickr set, as well as tracking down the stories and photos of several other travellers and compiling the links on a single page alongside some other useful links. Happy reading. [...]

[...] [...]

[...] Visit his website to read all about it. Related posts: » “Defend the DPR of Korea!” [...]

[...] blogjam » North Korea [...]

[...] me of Fraser’s North Korea expedition. graybo typed this at 8:58 am |&#124 [...]

[...] What possessed me to travel to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea? I lay the blame squarely on blogjam. Fraser made it sound like a fascinating place to visit, and the opportunity to see the Mass Games just one year after their last offering was just too good to pass up. And anything could happen between now and the next one, I thought. [...]

[...] I googled “north korea vacation destination,” and found out that about 1500 tourists go there every year. Who knew!? You can’t travel there independantly but there are organized (expensive and pre booked) tour to the north. http://www.blogjam.com/north-korea/ is a blog of some guys trip. It has lots of cool pics. [...]

[...] Last time I went to North Korea I brought back a trio of rather dandy social realism posters that Blogjam readers very kindly translated for me. [...]

[...] possessed me to travel to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea? I lay the blame squarely on blogjam. Fraser made it sound like a fascinating place to visit, and the opportunity to see the Mass Games [...]

[...] Korea must be one of the weirdest places on earth. This blog compiles photos and articles about tourism in North Korea. I hate traveling, but I’d be [...]

[...] I think about it it’s probably the same website that introduced me to the wonderful world of Tourism in North Korea . The webcams of Svalbard captivated my entire office, and it gnawed away at me until eventually I [...]

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