Five Days in North Korea - Pyongyang, DMZ, Dandong train

North Korea is the most isolated country in the world in spite of this it's surprisingly easy for most foreigners to visit the country as a tourist in this video we will show you what you can typically expect to see in a five-days visited country bloody many of the sites in Pyongyang visit to the demilitarized zone on the border with South Korea and a train journey from Pyongyang to the Chinese port city of Dandong at the end of the video we will also show you some of the exciting food we had on our trip as well as giving a review of the younger to hotel most tours to North Korea start off in Beijing we can choose between a couple of Airlines to take you to Pyongyang including the North Korean airline Air Koryo the flight from Beijing takes about two hours after arriving in Pyongyang it will be taken to one of the international hotels in the city for us the massive young actor hotel and after having checked into your hotel Moderne air-conditioned chinese coaches will be ready to take you on your guided tours most tours have two North Korean guides the guides are knowledgeable and friendly although they are not encouraged to ask them any controversial questions the whole tour is also filmed which I'm sure is only used to make the DVD you can buy at the end of the trip Pyongyang has many monuments and memorials and one of the most impressive one is the grand monument amatsu hill depicting the anti-japanese revolution in the center there are two huge bronze statues of Kim il-sung and Kim jong-il and like with many monuments in the city there are certain courtesy codes to be followed when visiting the monument there's also an option of laying down flowers in front of the statues and watching the locals pay their respects is just as interesting as the monument itself another important landmark in Pyongyang is the user tower this 170 meter high tower is a monument representing the official political line of the government because as they say themselves so to be honest our country people don't believe Thomas idea anymore because he's out of date so at the entrance there are several plates with names of delegations that have visited the monument inside the tower there's an elevator that will take you to the top with amazing views of the city and its surroundings the revolutionary martyrs Cemetery a multisim just outside of Pyongyang is a cemetery and memorial to the North Korean soldiers fighting against Japanese rule it's also known as the burial ground of one of Kim il-sung's wives and the mother of Kim jong-il all the graves here have their own bronze busts out the president gave me some laundry in her death in beautiful body several times she got the rest here they present gave it to flowers when you visit North Korea you are of course not allowed to walk around freely without the guide so on the few occasions where we were taken along for a stroll and where we could interact with the locals quickly became the highlights of the tour our group visited Pyongyang on Victory Day which is a public holiday so we got a chance to see how the locals spend their free time dancing is a big part of celebrating Victory Day and the foreigners were of course welcome to join and as more foreigners join the dancing the crowds grew bigger a more official celebration of Victory Day is the mass stance in Pyongyang city centre and the foreigners are also more than welcome to join here walking into the Pyongyang Metro is like walking into a museum with these beautiful paintings and it's 1960s German trains when we first entered the Metro we wonder if this might be one of those places which is just for display and not really used by the locals but it turned out they're just on the wrong station that on the three-hour trip from Pyongyang to the DMZ you will get the feeling of the quality of the North Korean highways which are really straight but really bumpy on the way there there will be a couple of stops we have the chance to fill up on some local souvenirs and you also get the feeling of how busy the North Korean highways are on the entry to the Demilitarized Zone it's very tense and a lot of military presence after you're inside the zone itself it's actually quite relaxed the first place you're taking is where they sign the treaty in 1953 to end the Korean War some of the original flags and documents are still there the South Korean on the walls you can see pictures and maps from the Korean War as well as a mandatory pictures of the leaders of today the too expensive and you can guess when you get to the border itself you can't help but notice that there's a lot of people on the northern side but no one to be seen on the southern side the actual border itself is just in the middle of these blue houses and although we didn't get to go all the way up to the border we got a pretty good overview of the area and the only people is on the southern side where these tourists in the border city of Kaesong they have a really good stamp shop so if you want to pick up some stamps or some propaganda posters this is the place to do it how we also have a really good selection of ginseng here and some local arch not for me thank you I can on the way back from the DMZ we also stopped in Saruman City where we after a short climb to the top of a local Hill got a good view of the city and its surroundings and on the way down we stumbled across some local entertainments sorry one we also got to taste McAuley which is locally brewed rice wine good among young day we visited Kim il-sung's birthplace which is very spent his childhood back and you can see the run cool back in Pyongyang the Kim il-sung square is where the leaders have their big parades all around the square there are marks on the ground to help during the parades and just a couple of days later we stumble across a parade on the same square and neither we or our guides had any idea what they were celebrating but it was still quite an impressive sight the trip to North Korea you have to be prepared for some changes in the program as places can be shut down on short notice and so to an hour tour as a replacement for one of our cancellations we got to see this amazing acrobatic circus it wasn't really allowed to film in here but I still got a couple of shots of the action another replacement activity was a trip to the bowling course not that different from back home but a nice break from the guided tours and especially with some local refreshments on a short trip to North Korea the program will be packed from early in the morning to eight or nine in the evening every day this also means that you will be driving around the city a lot and some of the general impression of Pyongyang will be had from the bus window and these are some of those impressions and then after seven sentences flangers so as our tour is coming to an end it's time to say goodbye to our driver and our two friendly North Korean guides as we go there is an option of going by train from Pyongyang back to China if you do so you can relax in the VIP lounge before you're taken aboard a train a little bit before all the other tourists the hardware open cabins might not look like much but they're more than comfortable enough and very social one of our sides we had a young in North Korean badminton team and on the other side a Chinese tourist group no mono he goes the double ten the five or six hours it takes from Pyongyang up to the Chinese border we give you plenty of time to relax and study the North Korean countryside you you as you approach the border you can see the silhouettes of the skyscrapers in the Chinese city of Dandong and the last thing you see before entering China is the older bridge that was bombed by the Americans during the war and every built now a tourist attraction on the Chinese side if you don't count the food at our hotel the food on our trip was surprisingly good and then to tainment was never far away whether it was local vocational stuff from our guys one of my personal favorites was the Chung guru hotpot restaurant where we cooked a meal on the table another favorite with the pyongyang duct barbecue restaurant at the Tongan restaurant in Quezon City we tried the traditional Korean pants anggee which is a series of dishes served in Broncos and here we also had the option of dog soup other restaurants have more normal Asian food which was also very tasty and believe it or not pyongyang has a stylish beer bar we got to taste some of the local flavors now the uncocked Oh International Hotel is located on the younger island in the River Tay dong it's the largest working hotel and the second largest building in North Korea the hotel is very spacious and among the thing they offer is a souvenir shop a bookstore small convenience store and in the basement there are several activities like billiards casino and bowling breakfast is having one of the many restaurants in the hotel for a westerner I wouldn't say the food here is very good but if you can get by with some toast and eggs you'll be just fine and of course there's the instant coffee the rooms at the uncocked Oh our spacious put a bit worn down you have a few international channels and otherwise what you expect to find in an international hotel as most foreign visitors are placed on the top floors of the hotel you're basically guaranteed a great view from your room well that's all I have from North Korea and I leave it with a few moments from the Victory Day fireworks over the Teton River you

Channel: erikssc

Views: 1,011,919

Rating: 4.6896262 out of 5

Keywords: North Korea, DPRK, Pyongyang, juche tower, dmz, demilitarized zone, yanggakdo hotel, grand monument, mansu hill, mansudae, revolutionary martyr´s cemetery, victory day, mass dance, pyongyang metro, kaesong, sariwon city, sariwon, kim il sung, kim jung il, kim il sung square, train pyongyang dandong, north korean food, young pioneer tours, north korea documentary, travel north korea

Id: 8QaNA9eSQVE

Length: 18min 16sec (1096 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 02 2016

Reddit Comments

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[u/MadammeMarkus]

I didn't expect to watch the whole video. It was very interesting to see a country not usually covered by more casual travel documentaries. Cheers for this.

[u/seXmym0nkey]

That was a pretty great film! The shot of you reading the paper on the train and nodding seemed very contrived though, gave me a good chuckle!

[u/alex8155]

just to give what seems more and more to be an unpopular opinion these days but..

people really need to stop visiting North Korea. you really are supporting their shitty 'government' one way or another.

[u/RocketChicken]

It's amazing seeing how many people are just choreographed into making western tourists think they're living a normal life.

[u/SpiderRoll]

Its certainly well produced and might be interesting if this is your first look at North Korea, but this really shows us nothing different than stuff we've seen in dozens of other travel documentaries about NK. We see the same highly controlled tour where you are shuttled from one sanitized monument to another. They always show the same things:

• The various war and political monuments, with the inevitable forced bowing
• The subway, with all the civilians averting their gaze from the tour group
• A robotic and joyless dance session with local women in traditional clothing
• Empty highways
• Checking in at the DMZ: Yep, they're still all just standing around staring at each other
• Parades, mass games, and similar collectivist spectacles

None of this really shows us the heart and soul of North Korea, we're seeing the same overwrought, state-sanctioned facade that has been shown to countless tourists before.

[u/inwaker]

2:58 SUOMI MAINITTU SUOMI SUOMI SUOMI

[u/encreturquoise]

The video is interesting but these audio comments...

How can people be so naive? I guess they didn't visit the labor camps.

[u/Pwnspoon]

Very interesting tourist pov video of NK.