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 you must do if you ever make it to the DPRK.

1) Take a Walk On Changjon Street

This is one of the best ways to see Pyongyang’s (relatively) new skyline. The new high-rises were completed in the summer of 2012 and give the city a surprisingly modern feel. A night walk on this street is one of those quiet moments when travelers can enjoy the city like an everyday resident of Pyongyang.

2) Bring Your Own Skates

I wanted roller blades. Even the four wheelers I grew up with would have been fine. But it was too crowded, and my American feet (average in the States) were apparently too big for anything at the Pyongyang Skate Park. Or maybe because of the huge roller blade trend sweeping the DPRK, people thought it was just plain weird that I didn’t have my own pair.

Whatever the reason, they handed me what looked like a giant, flat Q-Tip made of blue plastic with a wheel at each end. I don’t think I’m that old and out of touch, but I had no clue what this was. Apparently it’s called a Rip Stick. Miraculously, after a couple of total wipeouts in front of every kid in Pyongyang, I started to get the hang of it. If you want something a little more relaxed, definitely pack your skates.

3) Try the Street Food

On our second night in Pyongyang we were treated to North Korean style barbecued duck. While this was amazing by itself, there was an added treat that made it more memorable than most meals. The treat was an entire clove of salted, fermented garlic that our guides had bought from a street vendor earlier that day. When I say that this garlic was out of this world, I mean it.

At the risk of alienating a group of complete strangers by reeking of garlic for the next five days, I devoured every juicy nugget. So, if you can’t tell by now, you must try the BBQ duck with a salted, fermented garlic clove. We tried other types of food for during out trip, but this was my personal favorite.

4) Taste Snake Wine

I can’t tell you that it’s tasty, but the sheer novelty of the pungent wine is worth every drop. The wine is actually bottled with a live snake, which tries to get air by escaping through the mouth of the bottle, ensuring that the snake’s head is close to the top when it takes its last breath. But, if that doesn’t bother you, step up and claim your manhood. Lest you think that this is a particular North Korean rite, note that snake wine can be found throughout Asia. Of course, a bottle of North Korean snake wine will give you serious bragging rights.

5) Play a Round at Pyongyang Golf Course

The most exotic golf course on earth, period. No, it’s not nestled amongst palm trees or positioned at the foot of an active volcano, but you can be sure that FedEx will probably not ship your clubs to this course any time soon. What’s more, you probably will be hard-pressed to find a course record anywhere on earth as impressive as Kim Jong Il’s 38 under par! How did he do it? Let’s just say 11 hole-in-ones didn’t hurt. Also, it was his first time playing the course. If he hadn’t been so busy as the (great) leader of the DPRK, he could have had quite an easy life on the PGA tour. Come see how you fare.

By John Dantzler-Wolfe

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

John Dantzler-Wolfe is Operations Chief of Uri Tours Inc. Uri Tours is an authorized DPRK tour operator that handles travelers’ DPRK visas, flights, accommodations and trip planning for a flat fee. Thousands of westerners travel to the DPRK each year, and there are currently no U.S. State Department restrictions on travel to North Korea as it is generally safe for U.S. travelers.

For more information, please visit UriTours.com, or follow them on Twitter or at Facebook.

The post Top 5 Things To Do While Visiting North Korea appeared first on The Expeditioner Travel Site.

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 on track to finally open in 2013, a mere 26 years after construction began in 1987. The announcement was made recently by Reto Wittwer, CEO of Kempinski, the German hotel company that will have the honor of running the massive hotel.

The hotel’s design itself is a three-sided pyramid “with walls that jag upwards at 75 degrees, capped by a series of concentric rings, [and was] described by one magazine simply as the worst building in the history of mankind.'”

Construction on the massive project has been on and off over the years, which accounts for its huge delay, and a report by ABC News back in 2006 even speculated that construction halted at various times over the years due to lack of money, skilled labor and even the raw materials to build it, a result of massive sanctions leveled against the country over the years.

And what of the argument that the opening of this odd wonder of the world may help to open up the country?

“The short answer is no,” Bruce Goslin, executive managing director of K2 Intelligence and an expert on the country, told CNBC.com. “Aside from the obvious facts that it’s a hermit country, ruled by a dictatorship and most of its population are starving, there aren’t many signs of it opening up soon.”

[Hotel of Doom by Joseph Ferris III/Flickr]

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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 enough, cruises — er, a cruise — has come to North Korea, pictures of which can be seen here via Gawker.

From the looks of things, it appears this pleasure cruise involves lots of school children waving flags, plastic dining room sets, and of course, a questionably-looking buffet. All in all, par for the course for a typical cruise.

With that in mind, I present to you, 10 ways a cruise resembles an isolated totalitarian state:

1) Complete insulation from the outside world and foreign cultures.

2) Substandard dietary standard compared to other societies.

3) Shuffleboard.

4) Highly regimented schedules involving activities requiring limited physical exertion.

5) A devoted following within its society easily offended by outside criticism.

6) Attempted defectors usually end up drowning.

7) Deviled eggs.

8) Favored article of clothing is baggy T-shirt and shorts.

9) Bingo is considered a pleasurable activity.

10) Never-ending desire to leave as soon as possible stifled by impenetrable borders, lack of resources and cultish-like belief that things will get better.

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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 Earth will in fact be the Ryugyong Hotel, or as is referred to in some circles and probably not in any of the hotel’s promotional material: “North Korea’s Hotel of Doom.”

This 1,100-foot-tall, 105-story behemoth began construction back in 1987, but due to certain small setbacks such as the fact that the project ran out of money, electricity, food to feed its workers, and basic raw materials, has still yet to be completed. Nonetheless, Egyptian conglomerate Orascom Group recently invested $400 million dollars to get the project back on tracks and hopefully finish it by 2012 (obviously in honor of Kim Jong-il’s father’s — Kim Il-sung — 100th birthday).

And if you like this scar on our planet, then be sure to check out the UK Telegraph‘s recent photo essay documenting other horrible skyscrapers around the world, including Tokyo’s Lego-like Fuji Tower, and Beijing’s China Central TV headquarters that has acquired the mental image-pleaseing moniker, the “Boxer Shorts” building.

Read, enjoy, and revisit come Halloween for more seasonally-appropriate horror.

[The World’s Weirdest Skyscrapers]

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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 and even tanks cloaked in camouflage stood at the ready. The proximity of this otherworldly situation to the cultural and business center of the country was staggering. Our vulnerability was quickly becoming apparent.

Three weeks prior to this, I found myself searching for destinations to pass my time in Korea. I dusted off the idea of visiting the Demilitarized Zone (better known as the DMZ) from the recesses of my mind and decided to see if it was even possible. A simple internet search, a few clicks, and I had the intriguing world of the DMZ at my fingertips.

The only way to get there is through a guided tour, and without actually going into North Korea, there are far more options and itineraries available than I had ever imagined. You have a choice of half-, whole-, or two-day overnight trips to different locales along the world’s most heavily fortified border. I ended up selecting an adventure travel company, paying roughly $35 USD for the daylong option. An hour north of Seoul we were to visit an infiltration tunnel that could get Northern troops within a hour of Seoul, the special “Freedom Bridge,” and an observatory with a panorama of the DMZ and North Korea. Despite it being labeled as one of Korea’s most popular tours, it was no problem reserving a seat. My expectations of seeing a country the world sees as part of an “Axis of Evil” were at Guinness Book proportions.

The bright sunshine made me squint as I took the final step off the tour bus. The two small United Nations and Republic of Korea army signs stood blindingly bright against the dank camouflage design of the modest building. The small rise of the pavement obstructed my view, only building my inner anticipation. Today, from the relative safety of the southern version of the DMZ, I was going to see what all those rumors of oppression and control looked like. I would lay my eyes on the most mysterious, threatening, and veiled country on the planet: North Korea.

As we approached the platform, another reminder of strict picture-taking regulations was yelled from a fully armed Korean soldier; the tension was palpable. Each step brought a new and different vision of what may greet my eyes. Will we see the Northerners chained, wearing tattered clothing, working the rice fields to exhaustion? Would it be nothing more than an undeveloped moonscape just on the other side of the fence? Would I have the red dot of a North Korean laser scope on me at any point?

I stepped foot on the observation platform where the view yawned in all directions. Mountains framed a small distant city. The barbed wire meandered along the topography perpendicular to us. There was no moonscape and no apparent forced labor camps, just a continuation of rolling hills with the barren foliage of early spring — a striking continuation of Korea.

3/29/09

1:15 p.m. Third Infiltration Tunnel Theater

The camera slides gracefully over a lush mountaintop meadow. Pristine distant ridges are interrupted by a Korean child lifting a flower to the heavens. A voice finishes its soliloquy. “The DMZ will be a lasting memory of the unification of the Koreans for generations to come.” The lasting memory for those inside the theater is a unification of different sorts.

Our previous stop took us to what is known as the “Freedom Bridge,” the actual bridge used by northern refugees and POW’s returning south after the Korean War. Pictures of loved ones and family members, personal notes to them, and tattered flags lined the chain-link fence and drifted in the breezes skirting the rows of barbed wire. The memorial was a grave reminder of the rift, not only between countries, but between their people. It is with this emotion fresh in our minds, that we entered the theater.

The unification witnessed in the movie was not of the two Koreas, it was that of distant family members meeting after nearly 50 years of forced separation. The screen filled with images of men weeping in each other’s arms, mobbing one another after realizing their relation. In 2000, the North agreed to a temporary loosening of border regulations allowing such encounters. This policy has since been ended.

A lady to my right leaned towards me, eyes fixed on the screen. “Can you believe that this is true?”

“No,” I answered truthfully. “I can’t even begin to fathom what those people were going through.”

Emotion lingered thick over the audience. North, South, it didn’t matter . . . they were Korean.

4/03/09

4:26 p.m., from an e-mail issued by the U.S. embassy

The U.S. Embassy in Seoul is transmitting the following information through the Embassy’s warden system as a public service to all U.S. citizens in the Republic of Korea. Please disseminate this message to U.S. citizens in your organizations or to other Americans you know.

North Korea has announced that it will attempt a rocket launch between 11:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. on one of the days between April 4 – 8, 2009, from a site in northeast North Korea. This possible event has received much media attention. At this time, the U.S. Embassy in Seoul sees no potential danger to American citizens in South Korea as a result of the possible launch and does not believe that any special actions are warranted by American citizens other than to pay close attention to local news reports during this time period.

4/5/09

9:32 a.m. Seoul

With proof of the staunch ideologies, again, coming to a boil on a global scale, it seems bringing the two Koreas together is further out of reach than ever before. It was only after an e-mail from the U.S. embassy, with the reality of a North Korean missile launch dawning on me, that I stopped to reflect on what the DMZ and the separation of Korea truly means.

Leaving the DMZ along the same watchtower-dotted roads we came on, there was a much different energy felt inside the bus. At that time, there were only rumors of an impending missile launch that were seemingly overshadowed. There was a thick sense of collective heartbreak for the Korean families considered by those creating this situation as mere collateral damage. They are the ones heroically fighting a daily battle.

One can only hope that soon, the fences and barbed wire, along with the oppression and control, will come down and the continuation of the Korean peninsula, as witnessed from the Dora Observatory, can be a continuation of Korea and its people.

This tour is considered Korea’s most popular for a good reason: it leaves an unforgettable impression on those that reserve a seat. The fascinating, and often terrifying strip of land labeled DMZ, doesn’t just provide the taste of undeniable tension, it makes one feel the unbelievable emotion of family. The yearning for unification creates a hope that good will conquer in the end, and allow the Korean people to one day live harmoniously again.

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