Travel to North Korea? Most people are shocked when they learn that thousands of Westerners do in fact travel to North Korea every year. While tourism in North Korea is very structured, there are still plenty of opportunities to meet the locals and experience authentic North Korean sights. Below are five things [...]

The Ryugyong Hotel, the 105-story pyramid-shaped skyscraper under construction in Pyongyang, North Korea, otherwise known to the world as “The Hotel of Doom” for various reasons — not the least of which is due to its Death Star-like appearance and its location in the world’s most reclusive country — is [...]

I’m pretty 100% in the anti-cruise camp with Arthur Frommer, unless that cruise is incidental to a small trip (like the great overnight cruise I took from Sweden to Estonia over the Midsummer holiday), or something as wacky as the recently-launched North Korean cruise. Yes, you read that right, appropriately [...]

You would think that Kim Jong-il’s most important addition to culture would have been his glorious ability to look at things and make us ponder the meaning of the universe (or why one needs to wear wraparound sunglasses to observe lettuce). But in actuality, perhaps his most lasting monument to [...]

A trip to the DMZ only heightens the wish that one day, unification for the Koreans will no longer be a dream. By Jon Wick 3/29/09 2:42 p.m. Dora Observatory, DMZ Razor wire surrounded us as soon as we reached the northern border of Seoul. Manned watchtowers lined the rivers [...]