DPRK

I have always regretted (or should that be lamented?) never visiting China in the 70s and 80s. In my defence I hadn't been born. It must have been a fascinating place- and genuinely different to what I've already seen. So I cast around for the 2nd best thing and that's how Sara and I ended up on an overnight train to Pyongyang on Thursday 14th July.

North Korea is technically called the Democratic People's Republic of Korea because saying North Korea implies there are two Koreas and THERE AREN'T THERE'S ONLY ONE, BASTARD AMERICANS. The capital is Pyongyang, 平壤, Ping'rang(Chinese pronunciation-Korean can be written with Chinese characters) or 평양 with their characters. Pyongyang is actually a very ancient capital but as it was bombed to tiny tiny kimchee sized pieces by the AMERICAN AGGRESSORS it was rebuilt after the war in the 1950s. And has resolutely stayed in that decade. The trolleybuses are similar to what I've seen in museums and the train is like that in a heritage railway that Mum makes us go to on rainy afternoons and men in anoraks like riding. On the way in our train never lumbered above 35mph and had to have a rest every now and then. The cars, of which there are pitifully few, are mostly vintage mercedes, Soviet cast offs and shiny 4x4s probably belonging to the international aid workers. The metro trains are from East Germany from the 70s. Sara thinks she saw a coal fired truck. The decor of our hotel reminded me of classic sitcoms like Porridge. Even the hairstyles are straight from the past-all set waves in the 40s housewife style and combed for the men.

Politically they have not moved on either. Kim Il-Sung is still the president, the small problem of his death over a decade ago not a resignation matter obviously. They have not moved on from the Korean War. At all.

My first reaction to NK is that the Koreans are tragically thin. The first ones I saw, soldiers at the border, were short (although all Asians are) and their overlarge uniforms were cinched with leather belts round supermodel-esque waists. The faces were pinched, even on the young ones. Made all the more obvious by the huge hats they wear. The children are all sticks. And don't forget we were kept in the cushy parts of NK and I can well believe that they are, if not starving, then slowly sucumbing to malnutrition in areas where we are not welcome.

Getting a visa is fairly straightforward process- you just pay a lot of money. The rules are that you get two guides/minders who follow you everywhere and you can only take pictures when they say. You can't say North Korea. And you have to respect "that you may have been taught a version of history different to theirs". We pootled off to get the visas from the embassy in Beijing. Despite it being 35 outside, it felt rather chilly... Then we hopped on a train, first to Dandong on the border. The two countries are split by the Yalu river. On one side, Dandong, there are skyscrapers, tv towers and the smog of industry. As one travels across the bridge you see the road bridge stop halfway across. NK got rid of their half. Then to the Korean side where there is...trees. And a ferris wheel from a rather tragic park, built to show how much fun they are having. It never moves.

Then to Sinuiju for a 3 hour stop while visas are checked. And our first interaction with a bona fide North Korean. Ooo. I'd heard a lot about NKoreans. They are brainwashed. Aggressive. Warmongering. A bit nuts. And maybe they are but they are also very human. Like a geriatric rottweiler they might have teeth, but they are actually kinda cute. The border guards soon dropped the stern face and were happily joking around. There was another western tour group on our train (why wherever I go are there westerners) and when they checked their cameras, 3 produced big, black proper cameras and one guy got his tiny point and shoot out which caused the guard to fall around laughing. Then they came and stared at Sara and I to judge how similar we were and then finally I gave one some twix, which he liked. Then an Australian offered him oreos and he pulled a face, which made us laugh. He doesn't like oreos. Then he nabbed some more twix, slapped the Australian on the inner thigh, and sauntered off. I waved at a soldier passing the train and he stared fixedly in front before shyly waving back. He sneaked a glance at me and broke into a grin at his shyness and then I laughed and he laughed and we shared a moment.

Another rule is that mobile phones have to be left at the border, along with anything with GPS. Cue a long conversation with completely un-techie people where I tried to explain that the phone shaped thing with a button marked maps was in fact a music player and only worked when connected the internet.

So Ipod stayed at the border. Sniff. To add insult to injury they wrote "ipad" on the envelope.

Eventually we headed off. North Korean countryside is actually very pretty. There are fields everywhere. Habitation consists of stone houses with traditional roofs. Roads were mud tracks with the odd 50s bus, 50s tractor and many many ox carts and bicycles. (I asked our guide if they had horses in NK. "Not really-there are some in the zoo"). And men with obedient geese. One thing we noticed was that every square inch of land has something edible being grown on it. That's not a sign of a food-secure nation.

Our train had a rest halfway. We stopped by a gate in a wall, which was locked. However there was a steady stream of Koreans wanting to get through. It was interesting to see whether they went for option A, climbing over the top, B, squeezing their emaciated bodies through the bars or C, crawling through a hole in the mud. Noone went for D, getting it unlocked. A boy wandered past and foraged in a pile of rubbish. There was the obligatory man squatting doing nothing (wherever you are in Asia there will be a man squatting by the road doing nothing). Soldiers walked past the train.

Their guns were fake. Quite obviously fake.

We pulled into Pyongyang late at night, 3 hours behind schedule. A westerner asked why the delay and their Chinese guide chuckled and said you can't ask "why" in Korea. We emerged into a crowd of Koreans pouring from the ancient train, to the sound of rather ghostly, eerily communist, revolutionary music. Our guide hurried forward in the gloom and we had arrived...