So I've been back for a little while but its summer and I haven't been successful in making time to post on a hockey message board until now.
I didn't end up in North Korean prison!
It appears that you won't end up there just for being stupid or disrespectful either.
The Western guide that traveled with us in North Korea happened to be the guide of Otto Warmbier who is currently detained for stealing a poster. She didn't like to talk about it very much. What he did was a willful crime so that is why I believe he faced the repercussions he did. I heard a rumour in our tour group that there was more to the story than a stolen propaganda poster, so we will have to see if anything else comes out about the story when he is likely released in a few months.
Our guide did tell us some other stories that didn't result in being jailed. On one trip, a member of one of the tour groups got black out drunk and wandered away from a tourist site. He ended up forcing himself into a North Korean taxi somehow, and arrived back at the Yanggakdo International Tourist Hotel after being missing in action for 4 hours. He couldn't recall where he had been for those four hours.
Another member of a different tour group did a handstand to pose for a photo in the main square of the Palace of the Sun which is the mausoleum of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il. It's an area where you are supposed to be on your most somber and respectful behaviour. The North Korean guides were mortified, but nothing happened to the tourist.
My friend and I took the train into and out of the country. We had to open our bags upon arrival and show them our electronics. They only looked at laptops and searched for files bigger than 100MBs. Presumably to look for The Interview movie files. They ignored my phone and go pro and didn't bother to look into anyone's bags.
On exit they didn't look through our bags at all. They did look through our phones and cameras for pictures. I didn't get anything deleted. My buddy had one pic deleted. He had failed to get an entire statue of one of the leaders into a photo. The arm was cut off. That's a no-no. We both had some stuff we weren't supposed to photograph on our cameras (etc, Members of military, construction) that were ignored/missed. They took my gopro but I believe they lack the ability to view it as I videoed out of the bus windows when I was supposed to constantly and all the footage was intact.
They gave us body pat downs on exit and looked through our wallets. My friend had some North Korean currency in his wallet our North Korean guide had given us after we had presented her with some gifts. She talked the border guard out of taking it.
That's what we heard about authorities and our experiences with them. I came to the conclusion that if you act like a normal human being who displays a little bit of respect you have nothing to fear in North Korea. There were hundreds of Western tourists staying in our hotel. Our group was over 50 people alone. We were there at the same time as a tour of Nobel Laureates and a Prince of Liechtenstein. So if the North Korea government was going to detain someone for purely political reasons they probably had better options than my friend and I.
As far as I could tell, life is going on in North Korea. They don't appear to be staging things for tourists lime some people believe/would have others believe. Its fairly normal outside of the major, obvious differences. The Hermit Kingdom is not "crazy" as portrayed in the media. The propaganda of which there is a lot is logical and serves a purpose. "Facts" about Kim Jung Il that circulate outside the DPRK, like he hit 7 holes in one during one golf game don't exist there.
Ok. Maybe a little crazy.
As for the country itself. Coming in on the train you travel through the fertile areas of North Korea (They prefer that you call it DPRK or simply Korea
), you definitely see some poverty. There wasn't much of anything to see except rice fields and small villages. The roads were all dirt, and you rarely saw a vehicle on them. The landscape was very hilly, and completely deforested. I'd say that the life of a farmer in the North would be akin to those you see in rural Asia (Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, etc.). There were power lines running to all the villages but we were told by Western guides that the electricity doesn't really run. Despite the obvious poverty people were dressed in clean clothing, and the roads, and villages were very clean and orderly. Military members are everywhere but the vast majority aren't armed and are doing mundane tasks such as working in the fields or construction. We actually saw very few guns in North Korea. Far fewer than say Latin America where every security guard has a combat shotgun. I was expecting more armed soldiers.
Pyongyang is a different story. For those 10% lucky enough to live in the capital it seems like life in North Korea has a lot more to offer. In the cities in general there is access to self improvement and recreation centres. Kids have access to attend after school programs to develop their hobbies. Everything is orderly and clean. It's pretty peaceful as well due to a lack of cars. Mostly everyone is walking or riding bicycles. You see a lot of people using cellphones. No internet of course. Everyone is dressed in pretty similar clothing with similar haircuts.
It feels very 1970's Soviet block. A lot of the apartment blocks have solar panels in the windows, so it looked like electricity may be a bit spotty in the city as well. The city was well lit up at night without interruption while we were there though. It was hard to identify restaurants and stores because they don't bother with advertisements or eye catchers. Everything was very plain. Most of the city looked like 70's era Soviet apartment blocks with monuments scattered throughout. A 105 story hotel they started building in the 80's and had to abandon in the mid 90's due to the famines towers over everything else. It is still not completed.
A new street was finished in 2013 that is very modern looking. It is the Science and Technology street. It is going to be the mecca for various scientists and scholars of North Korea. Kim Jung Un has placed heavy emphasis on education and technology since coming into power.
Science and Technology building. It was designed to look like an Atom. 7000 computers inside. There weren't very many people inside this building. A few hundred maybe, and only a fraction of the computers were being used. Some would say this is proof that the entire thing is staged for tourists. My belief is that North Koreans have very structured and busy lives. Their daily routine is filled with work, and "volunteer" activities such as practicing for special events/marches. Travel is an issue as well. Most is done on foot. The subway is extremely limited, buses are few and they have electric transit cars that are also few in number. So to just go hang out at the Science and Technology building after work is probably a monumental task to undertake for the average citizen.
Red tag on the seat Kim Jung Un sat upon:
Theatre for viewing scientific movies. Someone was watching a Kung Fu film. We had a good laugh with our Korean guides over it.
Earthquake simulation room.
For the kids: Our Korean guide kept trying to kick them out so she could play in it.
That's all I have time for now. I'll write more if anyone is interested and try to answer any questions anyone might have.