North Korea

Pyongyang — the capital of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (population 25 million, one of the most isolated and controlled societies on earth — all visitors must travel in guided groups organised through state-approved tour operators, accompanied by two government-assigned guides at all times, with no independent movement permitted — a city of extraordinary Soviet-era monumental architecture, the Kim Il-sung Square, the Arch of Triumph (the largest triumphal arch in the world at 60m) and the Juche Tower with its eternal flame).

💡 North Korea (the DPRK — established 1948 under Kim Il-sung after the division of the Korean Peninsula, the world’s most controlled and isolated state — has been governed by the Kim dynasty for three generations: Kim Il-sung (1948–1994), Kim Jong-il (1994–2011) and Kim Jong-un (2011–present). The country maintains the world’s fourth-largest military, has nuclear weapons, and provides essentially no economic, social or political data to outside researchers, making it the least studied inhabited place on earth.

The Kumsusan Palace of the Sun (the mausoleum of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il — their embalmed bodies lie in state in glass sarcophagi in the former presidential palace, visited on Thursdays and Sundays only, with strict formal attire required, extensive security screening, and the longest processional walk through institutional North Korean architecture in the country — the most strikingly unusual visitor experience in the world, combining solemnity, institutional control and the uncanny in equal measure).

💡 The embalming of Kim Il-sung (who died 8 July 1994) and Kim Jong-il (who died 17 December 2011) was performed by Russian specialists (the same institute that embalmed Lenin, Stalin and Ho Chi Minh), at estimated costs of US$800 million for the palace renovation and ongoing annual embalming maintenance. The practice of “eternal” leadership (the two leaders retain their official titles as “Eternal President” and “Eternal General Secretary” in the North Korean constitution) gives the mausoleum a unique political significance.

Mangyongdae (the birthplace of Kim Il-sung, a modest farmhouse complex 12km west of Pyongyang, the most important historical pilgrimage site in North Korea, visited by all North Korean citizens) and the Pyongyang monuments: the Chollima Statue (the mythological winged horse of national progress), the Korean Workers’ Party Monument (three hands holding a hammer, a sickle and a writing brush — the most photographed monument in Pyongyang and the most direct visual expression of North Korean ideology in stone).

💡 The Juche ideology (introduced by Kim Il-sung as the philosophical foundation of the North Korean state — a synthesis of Marxism-Leninism, Korean nationalism and the concept of self-reliance (“juche”) — is expressed architecturally throughout Pyongyang in the Juche Tower, the monumental murals, the Workers’ Party Monument and the Arch of Triumph. Every physical element of Pyongyang has been designed as a total work of political art, making the city the most completely ideologically designed urban environment in the world.

The Mass Games (Arirang or Paektusan Hero Youth Games — held at the 150,000-capacity Rungrado May Day Stadium, the largest stadium in the world, with 100,000–150,000 performers including schoolchildren holding coloured cards to create vast mosaic images, gymnasts, soldiers and acrobats performing in perfect synchronisation — the most spectacular and technically extraordinary mass performance event in the world, held approximately July–September in years the government chooses to perform it).

💡 The Arirang Mass Games (when performed — not every year — represent the largest choreographed human performance event on earth, requiring 6+ months of rehearsal by 100,000+ participants (mostly schoolchildren and soldiers) who train the card mosaic and gymnastics elements for hours every day. The images created — historical battles, revolutionary achievements, natural landscapes — change with every movement of the cards, producing a “live animated mural” effect that has no parallel anywhere in the world.

Kaesong (the ancient Koryo Kingdom capital — now a North Korean city with the finest pre-Joseon architecture accessible to tourists, including the Koryo Museum in the restored Songgyungwan Confucian Academy, the royal tombs of the Koryo Dynasty and the traditional stone village of Kaesong) and the DMZ observation point (the 248km demilitarised zone dividing North and South Korea, the most heavily militarised border on earth, with the joint security area at Panmunjom where the 1953 armistice was signed).

💡 The Korean Demilitarised Zone (DMZ — the 250km buffer zone created by the 1953 armistice, 4km wide and running the width of the peninsula — is the most militarised border in the world, with an estimated 1 million landmines, thousands of artillery pieces on both sides and the standing armed forces of the world’s fourth-largest military facing the world’s sixth-largest across a line where no peace treaty has ever been signed. The Korean War technically never ended; the 1953 armistice is a ceasefire, not a peace agreement.

Mount Myohyang (a UNESCO-listed mountain 160km north of Pyongyang, with Buddhist temples dating from the Koryo period including the Pohyon Temple (built 1042 CE), the Tongil Tower (the “Reunification” landmark) and the International Friendship Exhibition — a vast underground complex containing the gifts presented to the Kim dynasty by world leaders, a remarkable repository of 20th-century political gift culture ranging from a personal crocodile briefcase from Robert Mugabe to a limousine from Stalin).

💡 The International Friendship Exhibition at Mount Myohyang (a series of underground climate-controlled halls containing 220,000+ gifts presented to Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il by world leaders, organisations and foreign communist parties from 180+ countries — a comprehensive archive of 20th-century political gift-giving that includes objects from Stalin, Mao Zedong, Fidel Castro, Ho Chi Minh, Yasser Arafat and hundreds of other political figures, providing a unique window into the diplomatic relationships of the Cold War era).

The final morning debrief at the Pyongyang hotel before the transfer to Pyongyang Sunan International Airport (FNJ) — the end of a journey that has been entirely planned, guided and controlled from the moment of entry — an experience unlike any other in the world: a country that presents a version of itself to carefully managed outside observers while its 25 million citizens live under a system of pervasive surveillance and ideological control that has no parallel in the modern world.

💡 North Korea’s famine (the Arduous March — 1994–1998, when the collapse of Soviet subsidies, floods and drought combined to cause a famine in which between 240,000 and 3.5 million people died — the widest range of any 20th-century famine estimate, reflecting the total absence of reliable data from the DPRK — was not acknowledged by the government for several years and remains contested in its causes and scale. The famine fundamentally changed North Korean society, creating a black market economy and loosening central control in ways that have persisted despite government efforts to reverse them.