The first building that catches your eye upon arrival to the capital of North Korea, Pyongyang, is clearly the Ryugyong Hotel. Construction of this massive 100-storey glass pyramid began in late 1980-s but was later paused due to the crisis caused by the fall of the Soviet Union. 30 years later it still remains unfinished.

The above story sets the tone for the general impression of Pyongyang as a city. 

 

On one hand, you feel astonished by variety, size and architectural style of residential buildings. Many of them are new, but even older structures are thoroughly painted in pastel colours and look fresh.

 

On the other, you will hardly feel this empty and lonely in any other metropolis. Looking at Pyongyang skyline, even in daylight, it is impossible to get rid of this dreadful and mystic sense.

 

 

 

The funny feeling grows as it gets darker outside. Pyongyang looks fine at day but gives almost no sign of life at night - rare windows are lit after sunset and the air is trembling from the dead silence.

 

Even if people really live in these buildings, their attractive facade does not match with interior and amenities. For instance, running water is a luxury that is only distributed for 2 hours per day.

 

 

 

Since the tour guide solely takes you through the same 2-3 streets with enormous desolated skyscrapers, only a good viewpoint allows to peep beyond the ghostly decorations. From there reveals the view over the real residence areas - ghettos of one-story crooked gloomy huts, located only 1-1.5 km away from the mighty Juche Tower.

In 2016 an American student Otto Warmbier was arrested and accused of stealing a Juche propaganda poster from Floor #5. Despite high media coverage and involvement of various politicians, one hearing and a few staff testimonials were enough to sentence Otto to 15 years in North Korean labor camp. Less than 1.5 years later he was returned to the US in coma and with a severe brain damage, of which he died in few days without regaining consciousness. Our guide said that he folded the stolen poster (highest contempt towards the eternal leaders) and deserved the punishment. Otto was 22.

While in North Korea, tourists must obey all orders of their guide and coordinate every move. However, if the group behaves and builds trust, the guide would reduce some of the boundaries.

The first walk down the streets of Pyongyang feels like a step outside after years in prison.

Not many people are out for a walk in the streets after dawn, but you can still see chatting couples, teenagers running around with a ball and adults watching movies on outdoor screens. 

Unexpectedly, locals are not very curious about tourists and rather act cautiously - throw a frowning stare and quickly pass by.

With dawn the city transforms into a buzzing anthill. All citizens commute to work nearly at the same time, accompanied by street performances of cheerleading bands - dancing women dressed up in blue, red and white dresses. As the tour guide explained, these performances encourage and inspire people before their working day.

All streets, squares and courtyards are equally distributed between citizens for community duties. People collect garbage, weed the lawn and cut the shrubs at their entrusted piece of the city on a daily basis - before or after work.

People in the streets of Pyongyang look very much alike, wearing centrally produced clothes with limited variability and having one of the 15 approved hairstyles. Younger generations typically look less physically fit and healthy, due to famine in childhood, but do not stand out in their style or behaviour.

However there is one thing that differentiates people - their songbun status. Songbun determinates whether a person is “devoted”, “hesitant” or “hostile”, depending on their political and social behaviour. Level of one’s loyalty to the system further defines their access to education, career, wealth and even quality food.

Songbun is inherited and can rarely be raised. However, any misconduct may result in deterioration of one’s songbun and, consequently, their quality of life. “Hostile” citizens are forcefully relocated to labour camps, together with their parents and children, to live and die in isolation from the rest of the Juche society.

Government officials deny any type of discrimination or violation of human rights in DPRK.

Pyongyang exemplifies how a 4-million city can overcome logistic issues and traffic jams. Private cars are banned in North Korea and can only be owned by state corporations or gifted to outstanding figures of culture, science and sport by the government.

Roads outside of Pyongyang are straight and absolutely empty. It is common to drive in the middle of two lanes and sound a broaching horn at oncoming pedestrians that are not used to beware of vehicles.

One of the fastest and cheapest types of transport is Pyongyang metro, operating 16 stations on 2 underground lines. Over 10% of city population rush down the escalators for their commutes every day.

It takes quite a while to reach the station from the overground entrance. Metro in Pyongyang is not just a transportation system, but a solid facility, engineered to serve as a bomb shelter due to its deep disposition.

Built in the 1970s, Pyongyang metro reminds of the older Moscow Underground with its dusty soviet design - same marble floors, modernist illumination and political murals.

The metro coaches were borrowed from Berlin U-Bahn after the collapse of the German Democratic Republic. North Koreans made a slight update of the interior adding ubiquitous portraits of eternal leaders to every coach.

Well, maybe just one thing... Sheer emptiness.

Pyongyang airport only receives a couple of flights per day. Ever as small tourist groups have climbed into buses and North Korean travelling salesmen have passed all customs controls, the terminal is left in dead silence and abandonment. It feels delusive to experience an airport building with disconnected departures displays, unplugged cash machines and empty taxi zones.

Same deceitful feeling keeps haunting you in shops, supermarkets, cafes and restaurants in North Korea.

In Sunan you can find a store that supposedly sells electronics - just like in any other airport around the globe. However, you find it with the lights off and a lonely cashier at the till. Whilst the cashier notices you and rushes towards the switch, you take a look at the assortment: 32-Mb memory sticks, 35-mm film cameras and button mobile phones - all at enormous cost. Seems like this store is there just for the sake of being.

Visit to a local grocery store stands as a separate line in the tour programme. It is strictly prohibited to take pictures inside the store, most probably, to protect this absurd tourist attraction from mass disclosure.

Deserted supermarket stores a variety of oddly selected goods: USSR-produced Alyonka chocolate, the 2000s edition of Campari bitter and unidentifiable frozen pork hooves. Fresh fruit, local specialties and decently-looking meat are also available here. Variety of prices is just as wide - a 1-dollar Chinese chewing gum, a 100-dollar pack of Tide detergent and a 1000-dollar Maybelline lipstick here live on one shelf. 

Looking at this random selection of products and prices, you can tell that these stores barely have any centralised procurement. The word «selection» itself is not precisely accurate. Store assortment depends on what the unofficial traveling salesmen bring in their luggage from the neighbouring Russia or China - hence the weird set of products and inflated prices.

It is possible to buy products from the shop, but only through the tour guide. Tourists are not allowed to touch local cash, so the guide instantly converts dollars, euros or yuan and helps with the purchase.

Locals never visit supermarkets to buy groceries - food coupons provide enough ingredients for the whole encouraged 2 meals per day. Men additionally get rations for 10 liters of beer per month that they can consume at home or drink together with friends in a pub after work.

Many non-deficit products, such as corn or rice, are freely traded at food markets and help to add some variety to the diet. Many interesting treats like peach-flavorued soda and corn ice cream are available at local corner shops and vendor stalls.

Tourists do not exchange coupons to get food but have little control over pre-arranged meals. However, it is worth insisting on non-adapted traditional cuisine - then your food becomes more spicy and authentic.

In just a few days you can try all the signature Korean dishes: bibimbap - mixed rice with vegetables and meat, bulgogi - marinated beef, samgyetang - specialty chicken soup and, of course, legendary kimchi. Most of the meals are paired with 1/2 bottle of Korean barley beer per person. Do not be afraid of accidentally eating a dog soup - in North Korea it is an expensive delicacy, cooked and served only during the most hot and dry days.

The food is fresh and nice but not sapid and savoury. Unlike in South Korea, which has almost the same cuisine, North Korean dishes lack texture and depth in taste, as if they were made from underfed ingredients. 

Apart from salt, pepper and gochujang (hot pepper paste), a standard set of spices in cafes includes monosodium glutamate, more commonly known as flavour enchancer.

As a rule, tourists are taken to touristic places with well-tried meals, rehearsed service and exemplary atmosphere. Just as many other rules in North Korea, this one can be broken with enough trust from your guide and humble behaviour.

Although local cafes follow less strict sanitary norms and embrace a cheeky atmosphere, they are far more authentic and engaging. Our group managed to cook meat at a traditional Korean grill, assemble a spicy stew at a soup cafe and grab a local pint at a pub - all surrounded by regular Pyongyang citizens.

While we were enthusiastically browsing the menu, our guide felt lost - she only tried coffee once in her 50 years and did not know what to choose. We ordered a mango smoothie, frappuccino and some wine that our guide accepted only after a few rounds of persuasion.

Few glasses later, our conversation became much more intimate. The guide talked about her childhood, life in a distant village and the lifetime struggle with destiny. Coming out of the ordinary poor family, she 'should not have become a tour guide', but managed to excel at school, got sent into university, studied languages until absence of any accent and was allocated to work with foreigners.

The guide and her assistant were curious to learn more about our lives. They asked us to show our iPhone pictures and questioned cities, lifestyles and people that they saw while absorbedly flipping through unfamiliar places and objects.

Later in the bus on the way to the hotel our guide turned on the built-in karaoke and sang us a Korean folk song "Arirang": 

Another major educational institution is Grand People's Study House, also known as Pyongyang library. According to the story,  Kim Il-sung liked to read books while resisting the Japanese occupation. After the war was over, his wife gifted him the library as a present to support his passion.

The library is open to all citizens and provides many learning opportunities - public lectures, reading clubs and foreign language classes (Chinese, Russian, English and a few European languages included). 

The main subject taught in Grand People's Study House, is clearly Juche ideology. Location of the building emphasises its purpose - Juche tower soars into the sky right across the river.

A collection of a million foreign books is a special pride of the library keepers. 60% of them are said to be Russian.

Tourists cannot not see the collection and are only shown the white wall that fences the storage. At the library desk, a tiny technical window in the wall spat some books out as we passed by. Somebody ordered an amusing set of Russian books from the storage - Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina”, encyclopaedia of traditional medicine “Far Eastern plants and herbs” and Ostrovsky’s revolutionary novel “How the Steel Was Tempered”. The customer must have been a very versatile and inquisitive reader.

There is one part of the library that is openly and emphatically shown to foreigners - a collection of books that were hand-picked by Kim Jong-il and gifted to the people of North Korea. The eternal leader selected some practical read, including a surgical guide for veterinarians, compilation of steelmaking methods, salad recipe book and, despite his death in 2011, a 2014 edition of the Russian state exam task book.

 

 

 

North Korea is completely cut off from the outside world, but this does not mean that technological progress here stopped in the 1950-s. 

In 2008 the ban on cell phones was lifted, and an Egyptian telecom holding helped North Korea to set up their own 3G network. People use illegally imported devices from Apple, Samsung and Nokia, as well as nationally produced smartphones “Arirang”.

Access to the Internet in North Korea Korea is prohibited but it is replaced with intranet. The internal network is equipped with all essential functionality to browse the news, make video calls and even search for a date.

Since recently mobile phones are not confiscated at customs, but foreign smart devices have no use in North Korea. None of the global telecoms have roaming agreements with the country, thus tourists are constantly out of service. However, few methods of contact with the outer world exist. You can buy an expensive international SIM card or make an overseas call from the hotel.

It seems that North Koreans are generally proficient with technology. Not only that most of the Pyongyang townsfolk have smartphones, they also frequently use desktop computers. Even though the machines run on an outdated Windows 98, they are widely spread in public institutions - for instance, the library.

Computer education is compulsory in DPKR. A giant atom-shaped Sci-Tech Complex is said to provide unlimited access to technology and digital library to the citizens. We though were denied a visit due to "tight schedule and lack of free time". 

North Korean passion for abnormally huge structures have not spared sports buildings. The main sports arena of Pyongyang, Rungrado 1st of May Stadium, is currently the largest in the world with total capacity of around 115000 spectators (Wembley is 90000). It is the ultimate venue for the annual national festival - Grand Mass Gymnastics and Artistic Performance "Arirang" that brings together over 100000 participants. 

Identification of one's sports or arts talents begins in Mangyongdae Children's Palace - a public institution that engages pioneers in after-school activities. Kids come here every day to learn dancing, music and instruments, languages, various sports and needlework.

Once a few weeks children show off their acquired skills in an open performance that features dances, songs and instrument playthroughs, delivered by music bands, folk collectives and soloists.