We were very excited to get to visit North Korea … but it was definitely a scary place. We stayed at what we were told was the “nicest” state hotel in the center of Pyongyang. The minister of culture was there to greet us and he was very friendly.

Airport: we landed at Pyongyang’s airport and were the only plane in the area that had been running in the last 40 or so years. I turned my phone on - no service. We were greeted by very stoic military and customs agents who took all of our phones and put them in a trash bag. Our passports were collected as well. No phone and no passport in North Korea = scary. We also got a copy of the Pyongyang Times (in English) on the plane ride over. I’ll be posting that publication in its entirety later - priceless.

We went from the airport straight to the Mass Games. We tried to find out the frequency of this event and all we could get from the tour guides was “occasionally”. It was an impressive show, though. There were 100,000 people in the performance and seating capacity for 150,000. Our gumball group had more photography and video gear than the entire N Korean crew photographing and filming the event (they had 2 cameras).

The mass games were fascinating.  We couldn’t understand any of the words, obviously, but from the imagery we gathered that they are very proud of the country’s natural beauty, are fond of hand guns, and wish to be reunited with their neighbors to the south (who can blame them).

Pyongyang itself was a pretty clean city but was a complete ghost town.  Normal-sized roads (4 or 6 lanes) with almost no cars.  Wide sidewalks with nearly no pedestrians.  It was eerie.  Lots of tall buildings, no people.

The hotel we stayed in was also nearly empty.  You could tell a lot of effort and pride had gone into the state dinner - and we were very appreciative.  Wish I’d gotten some pictures of the food, you’d understand why I went almost 36 hours without eating.  I could actually hear one of the dinner rolls on the table whisper to me, “I’m the only thing on this table that won’t kill you.”

The rooms, we later found out, all had listening devices in them and false walls for viewing us.  There were 4 stations on the radio - 2 for government instruction and 2 AM stations for soviet-era opera music.

The bus ride to the airport the next day was our first glimpse of Pyongyang during daylight hours.  Because there is essentially no commerce there, they have no commercial billboards.  Instead there are signs congratulating the military and other that cheered on the “demise of the imperialist American dogs”.  We even passed a billboard (no picture, unfortunately) of a fist smashing an outline of the United States.  Priceless!

Monuments and Statues along the way - photographs by foreigners were strictly prohibited.

We went through Seoul, South Korea on the way from China back to SFO.  Hard to believe that these 2 cities are only about 100 miles apart.

North Korea Images Part 2 - click here.