Non-North Koreans had a field day with the videos of people crying they saw after Kim Jong-Il’s death last year. People saw it as over-the-top and probably forced at the pain of punishment. I wrote on that crying before. On this trip, on April 15 — the hundredth anniversary of Kim Il Sung’s birth — we got to visit the newly unveiled colossal statue of Kim Jong-Il next to his[…] Keep reading →

A detour brought us to something few non-North Koreans, and probably few North Koreans, get to see — the other side of the tracks in Pyongang. April 15 was the celebration of the hundredth anniversary of Kim Il Sung’s birth, something like July 4, 1776 in the United States. Amid the hubbub, they detoured our bus from whatever our route was supposed to be to a driving along some dilapidated[…] Keep reading →

We toured a museum of the subway system there. Here are the brief notes I took: Room after room of staged photo after staged photo of Kim Il Sung smiling, giving no information on engineering or planning or contribution from anyone but him… where he sat, when he visited, but no details on what he said. Nothing about what we would call the project. That museum was just like most[…] Keep reading →

Who would expect beautiful beaches in North Korea? Visiting that far north in April, we didn’t find warm sunny beaches, but the Earth is beautiful and it’s hard to hide that. Some of the beachfront hotels looks nice, almost Mediterranean, from afar. Up close you saw the hotels couldn’t have been seriously maintained in decades. One hotel had zero hot water. We had to heat water by dropping a heating[…] Keep reading →

I doubt many people would expect to see much natural beauty in North Korea. I was surprised to see a lot once we got out of Pyongyang. You could only call most of the land stark. Little of it was arable. I don’t claim to be an experienced photographer — see Joseph’s blog for that quality of picture — but I saw some great stuff. My pictures don’t do the[…] Keep reading →

Before visiting Pyongyang, you might expect a dismal, dreary place. Below I’ll show some views that met my expectations (click for bigger views, email if you want higher resolution) The city also has many monuments and sites — monuments, stadiums, statues, victory arches, grand libraries, grand boulevards, etc. I’m not sure, but I suspect whoever is leading the planners envisioned creating a Paris of the East. They had a lot[…] Keep reading →

Many times daily in North Korea you see someone crouching doing nothing but passing time. Usually they’re alone, but sometimes in a group. I kept meaning to take pictures, but it feels funny to take a picture of someone doing nothing. I found the two below on the web. As best you can tell they’ve been squatting all day and will be for a while longer. They’ll be in a[…] Keep reading →