Thursday August 9th and I am about to have three days travel / sightseeing in North Korea. Ten years ago that statement would have been surprising since it was virtually impossible to do such a thing. However since 1998 Geumgangsan in North Korea has been available as a special tourist region for anyone.
We travel by bus from Seoul to Hwajinpo (in the far north-east of the South), where we complete our check-in. We surrender mobile phones and South Korean magazines and newspapers and are issued with a tourist pass to wear round our neck at all times. By now the rain is heavy and the previous patches of blue sky are completely left behind. After lunch we board our bus again and continue further north. We have free time so we stop to jump out of the bus and run through the rain to see the new Jejin railway station. (The next station after this is in North Korea). The station includes full facilities for immigration and quarantine checking. None of this has been used yet since the only train to run along this line was a single test run. Back in our bus we drive through rain, lashing more and more heavily, to the road border station where we complete departure checks.
Our bus and driver are now different. The bus is from the Geumgangsan tourist resort and the driver is a Korean Chinese. The tension mounts as we approach the DMZ. We wait at the gates on the south as the convoy of delivery trucks, fuel tankers, and construction machinery (all Hyundai) drive south. Running a hotel at Geumgangsan is like running one on the moon. Almost everything has to be trucked in and out. There's no reliable or sufficient electricity supply in the north so the daily convey includes diesel for the generators. The gates on the south remain open to let our convoy through to the north.
We are now in that 4 km wide strip, the Demilitarized Zone, across which some millions of soldiers point their guns to the enemy on the other side. But in between there is nothing except mine fields and an ecological paradise of undisturbed nature. Half way across we are now in the north side, and another 2 km is the guard post and gate and our first glimpse of North Korean soldier. Our tour leader encourages us to wave to him. The response here and every other time is a stone faced glare. What is he thinking I wonder?
We drive through a bizarre landscape of enormous granite boulders. Every hundred meters or so a solitary soldier stands on duty, immune to our waving. We now come to the northern side border check and go through the same procedure once again.
Back on the bus again it's only about 10 minutes before the Geumgangsan tourist complex and our hotel. We watch the acrobatic troupe perform. It's fast-paced, high-skilled, and there's not a moment when the performers drop their smiles. The banner unfurled part way through with the word "Hana" (One) and the shape of the Korean peninsula may be propaganda but it's all feel-good stuff.
The hotel is like a South Korean tourist hotel but with North Korean staff . The television channels available are South Korean only (the North uses a different system anyway). I had been looking forward to watching the Dear Leader and other propaganda forbidden in the south.
In the evening we eat dinner at a North Korean restaurant. The food is good, the liquor too although the decor rather dated.
And still it's raining.
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