trip to North Korea

Last weekend I travelled to North Korea, a trip that cost me my job and my apartment (see earlier post), but was worth it anyways. What an interesting and bizarre place. The place we went to was a mountain called Geumgansan, a mountain right next to the ocean. The mountain was fun, the scenery was great, but the best part of the trip was the drive to and from the DMZ to the village. Here is where you can see normal North Korean life.
The drive starts to get interesting after you pass South Korean customs and enter the DMZ. The road is next to the beach, a beach completely surrounded by several layers of thick, barbed-wire fences. When the light posts changed from blue to green, we knew we had crossed the border into North Korean territory. The South Korean soldier was smiling and waving at us, and the North Korean soldier was as still as a mannequin. A North Korean guard in a post was fast asleep, a picture I was dying to take, but picture taking from the bus is banned there. By the way, North Koreans look different from South Koreans. They’re darker and have narrower faces. They’re the same race, it shows how a little isolation can have such an effect.
We entered North Korean customs, which is not in a building but a tent. It smelled like pee. It seemingly took forever to get through immigration, as they inspect American’s passports closer than anyone else’s. We were also issued name tags with our picture that we were required to wear AT ALL TIMES. As I made it through customs, I said goodbye in Korean as I noticed the soldiers’ “Great Leader” pins.
Here is where the drive to the village starts. As I said, picture taking from the bus is forbidden, and for good reason. It really is as bad as you’ve heard. The peasants were working the fields, using ox-powered equipment instead of machines. It’s hard to tell if their villages and houses are occupied or vacant. They’re typically ugly, Soviet-looking drab concrete monolith buildings. They’re all gray, and covered in some kind of black substance because they’ve never been hosed down. Most had numerous broken windows in them. A truly depressing sight. Weirdest of all were the rows of tract houses; not Asian or Korean architecture, but Phoenix or Las Vegas-looking dwellings (only they were concrete gray with gray roof singles, and very small). They all looked exactly the same. Again, I really wish I had some pictures..
The village we stayed in is really just for show. It’s like a compound, in that foreigners can’t leave, and North Koreans can’t enter (most of the staff that works there are Chinese). The hotels are at least 4-star, and there are South Korean-owned restaurants and convenience stores. The village feels more like any other resort in South Korea instead of North Korea.
There is one area in the village, however, where you can sneak a peek at where the North Koreans live. There is a road to a communist monument and Kim family mural you can walk along. There is a green fence on both sides. On this road there is a crossing where the local villagers can cross to one side of the village to the other (as the tourist road bisects it). There are North Korean soldiers on both ends keeping watch. It is interesting to watch the locals cross this road, it seems like they are required to wear nice dress clothes in order to cross the street. A little bit of propaganda to put on a good face to the tourists. They also walk in a bit of a march, I wonder why..
After you pass the locals’ crossing, you come to a monument. I don’t really know what the monument was for, and I don’t really care. The draw is that you can walk up to the monument and look down upon the village. This place was as distraught and awful as any living condition I’d seen in my life. The building looked like it was literally crumbling, as in giant sections of the walls were missing. I don’t know if it was a school or what, but children were out playing on what looked like a 50 year old playground. There was no grass, only dirt. This building, like all the others, was dirty and had broken windows. At this point, I noticed a North Korean soldier waving his red flag at us. There’s nothing like having a North Korean soldier acknowledge you in this way to put a little fear into you. We quickly got out of there and walked up to the giant mural of father and son Kim.
Again, the scenery and hiking were great, but I won’t talk about it because its not much different than Seoraksan or any other South Korean park I’ve been to. The greatest part was seeing a culture and a place I never thought I’d see. This is what made the trip worth my job (a terrible, horrible job anyways). This is what I came to Korea for, after all, to travel and have an adventure. I now want to go back to the DPRK to see Pyongyang. There’s also another trip you can take to a city that’s not for show, where you can really see how they live. More reasons to return to Korea!!

EDIT: shortly after my trip, another tour visited this area, where a South Korean tourist was shot and killed by North Korean soldiers. Apparently she went around a fence and ended up restricted territory. All tours to this area were immediately suspended. A couple months after that, the DPRK decided to permanently disallow all tours to North Korea from South Korea. So you can't make this trip anymore- just makes what I had to endure so much more worth it, because if I hadn't have gone when I did, I would have never had another chance.