North Korea as seen from the Dora Observatory on the DMZ tour.The trip to the DMZ made a great preview for my trip to North Korea this past weekend. While the “security precautions” at the Dora Observatory in the DMZ were ridiculous (you weren’t allowed to take pictures of the North unless you were standing behind the yellow line on the ground that was a good three meters from the binoculars which were set up to get a closer glimpse of North Korea), they held true in North Korea. Photos were rarely allowed unless you were on Kumgang Mountain or in the tourist square where the hotel was situated at the base of the mountain.
But that’s getting ahead of things.
I left for North Korea last Friday night at 12:30am, we drove all night – I took a lot of motion sickness meds and was out for the entire ride – and arrived at the South Korean border around 7:00am after a brief rest stop just south of the border. The South Korean border crossing was an extremely modern building, where our passports were stamped and luggage was scanned in a matter of minutes. We then boarded new buses to take us to the North Korean border. The North Korean border crossing essentially a glorified wedding tent where we waited in huge lines and had to proceed through by the numbers on our huge ID cards that were required to be visible at all times.
The guy in front of me in line was Korean-American (American-Korean?) and our tour guide came running up to him minutes before he had to pass through North Korean immigration and told him under no circumstances should he speak Korean to the immigration officer. Sure enough, the officer took one look at the guy and started speaking to him in Korea. The guy shook his head and said “I don’t understand.” The guard looked disgruntled and handed the guy back his American passport.
We re-boarded our new “North Korean” tour bus and waited for another half hour for the rest of the people at immigration to board their buses. All buses passing through have to move together and there was at least a dozen at our permitted border crossing time. (Unfortunately, due to photo restrictions, I have no documentation of any of this.)
As we headed to the “tourist square” at the base of Kumgang Mountainit was hard to miss the North Korean soldiers standing every hundred meters with red-flags in hand. They watched the buses as they past just waiting for one of us to do something 'illegal' (i.e. take a picture from the bus). We reached the the 'safety' of the tourist square for a brief rest stop and then started the journey to the mountain.
But that’s getting ahead of things.
I left for North Korea last Friday night at 12:30am, we drove all night – I took a lot of motion sickness meds and was out for the entire ride – and arrived at the South Korean border around 7:00am after a brief rest stop just south of the border. The South Korean border crossing was an extremely modern building, where our passports were stamped and luggage was scanned in a matter of minutes. We then boarded new buses to take us to the North Korean border. The North Korean border crossing essentially a glorified wedding tent where we waited in huge lines and had to proceed through by the numbers on our huge ID cards that were required to be visible at all times.
The guy in front of me in line was Korean-American (American-Korean?) and our tour guide came running up to him minutes before he had to pass through North Korean immigration and told him under no circumstances should he speak Korean to the immigration officer. Sure enough, the officer took one look at the guy and started speaking to him in Korea. The guy shook his head and said “I don’t understand.” The guard looked disgruntled and handed the guy back his American passport.
We re-boarded our new “North Korean” tour bus and waited for another half hour for the rest of the people at immigration to board their buses. All buses passing through have to move together and there was at least a dozen at our permitted border crossing time. (Unfortunately, due to photo restrictions, I have no documentation of any of this.)
As we headed to the “tourist square” at the base of Kumgang Mountainit was hard to miss the North Korean soldiers standing every hundred meters with red-flags in hand. They watched the buses as they past just waiting for one of us to do something 'illegal' (i.e. take a picture from the bus). We reached the the 'safety' of the tourist square for a brief rest stop and then started the journey to the mountain.
On route to the mountain, we stopped for a group photo (there was about 90 foreigners on the tour I was on) at the huge picture of the Dear Leader and the Great Leader. Before we got off the bus, people were sticking their cameras out of the bus to take photos of the picture (when I got closer I saw that it was a huge tiled mosaic). I handed my camera over to Kelly in the window seat and she began snapping away. When we got off the bus, people immediately started whipping out their cameras for a closer shot. The North Korean tour guide and our South Korean guides started freaking out and yelling at us to stop. That we were not at all permitted to take photos of the mosaic and if we wanted one we could come back tomorrow and maybe the bell hop at the hotel across from the mosaic would take a picture of it for us.
And this was less than 3 hours in to the trip.
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