DAY ONE

We woke early to allow us to try and cross the Yalu River from China to North Korea but despite making it to Chinese immigration on time, a power outage in the immigration building delayed our crossing.

Once Chinese border formalities were completed we boarded a bus and drove across the Sino-Korea Friendship Bridge to Sinuiju in North Korea where we completed North Korean immigration and customs formalities and were introduced to our guides Mr Kim and Miss Ann. Once that was done, we were taken for a very nice lunch in Sinuiju before boarding our train for a 5 and a half hour trip to Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea.

Our first meal in North Korea

The train was clean and comfortable and our guides were quick and concise in answering any questions that we had.

We arrived at Pyongyang on time and were escorted to the Youth Hotel. Unfortunately at this point we learned that Mr Kim was sick and wouldnt be joining us for the rest of our trip. He was replaced with Miss Su and we were introduced to her.

As it was now after 7pm, we had dinner and settled in for the night.

DAY TWO

Our second day began early with a 2 hour drive out to Myohyang-san Mountain where we saw the International Friendship Museum and some of the many gifts that had been presented to Kim il Sung. Amongst the gifts we saw were two train carriages from Stalin and Mao, cars from Soviet leaders Georgy Malenkov and Nikolai Bulganina and lots of ivory from African countries. All up there were over 100,000 gifts from around the world in this Museum. In total there were around 200 rooms covering about 70,000 square metres.

Myohyang-san Mountain - International Friendship Museum

When we had looked at a relatively small percentage of the objects (and even that felt like a lot) we went up to the roof to look at the view and enjoyed a cup of coffee before moving on to our next location.

The second stop was Pohyon temple originally built in 1042AD and since rebuilt was initially 24 buildings and was a major centre for Buddhist teachings. The temple was named after the Buddhist saint Pohyon who was in charge of the “morals of Buddha.”

Pohyon Temple

Following this we had a delicious lunch at a local restaurant.

On our return to Pyongyang, Miss Ann and Miss Su took us to see the Arch of Triumph which was built to honour and glorify President Kim Il Sung’s role in the military resistance against Japanese Rule. Inaugurated on the occasion of his 70th birthday, each of its 25,500 blocks of finely-dressed white granite represents a day of his life up to that point.

Arc of Triumph

Our next visit was to the Mangyongdae Children’s Palace. Children in North Korea go to school from around 8am to 1pm six days a week. In the afternoon they are able to choose an extra-curricular activity at the Children’s Palace. Some of the activities we saw were learning musical instruments, basketball, painting, needle crafts. Once we had seen the children practising their activities, we were taken into the auditorium whilst the children performed some amazing musical and dance acts for us. They were incredible.

A child learns the Acordian

Learning needlepoint

The Childrens Show

Our final visit for the day was to Kim Il Sung’s birthplace, Mangyongdae-Guyok in Pyongyang.

Dinner again was at a local restaurant and we were well fed before returning to the hotel at around 9pm. It was a very busy day indeed.

DAY THREE

The Third day of our trip began at 7am when we got up especially early to visit the new statues of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jung Il that had been unveiled the day we arrived in Pyongyang. I was surprised at the number of people who were already there to pay their respects at that time of the morning.

The new statues of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jung Il

Our next visit was the one we had all been waiting for… the visit out to the DMZ. After about a 2 hour bus trip from Pyongyang we arrived on the North Korea side of the DMZ. A soldier explained to us what was where within the zone and we hopped back into our bus to be driven through no man’s land into the DMZ itself. We were allowed to stand on both the North and South Korean sides of the meeting table after which we were taken to the building that was used for negotiations for the Korean War and the building in which the armistice was signed.

The DMZ looking towards South Korea

Following the DMZ we drove to Kaesong and visited the Koryo Museum which was located in the central institute of education in the Koryo dynasty (918 AD-1392 AD). Here we found many exhibits from Korean history. Strangely enough, this was also a favourite place for people to have wedding photos taken and as a result we were able to see a few wedding parties come through as well.

Koryo Museum

Lunch was at a restaurant in Kaesong and we had a delicious traditional meal.

Delicious meal

On our return to Pyongyang we visited the USS Pueblo which was an American Spy ship captured by the North Koreans in 1968 and is now displayed as a tourist attraction complete with bullet holes. We were shown a video that talked through what happened during and after the capture of the ship.

USS Pueblo - bullet holes

We visited the Pyongyang metro and were able to go for a ride on the train. The stations were incredibly ornate and had the local newspapers on a board on the platforms so that people could read the news on their way home.

Pyongyang metro

We were then allowed to go to a souvenir shop and go shopping where I bought a few gifts.

Dresses for sale

By this stage it was late and we had a Korean BBQ dinner which was again, delicious.

DAY FOUR

This was our time to say farewell to some members of our group as some of us were heading back to China today. We left at 9am, caught the 10:10am train back to the border, completed formalities and were back in China by around 4:30pm.

All in all, it was an extremely good trip and I am glad I went to visit North Korea. Our two guides were excellent and any mistakes in this posting are all of my own accord as my ageing memory is not as it should be 🙂

cheers

KC