North Korea Chapter 1

I got home last night from North Korea. I was in Kumgangsan Province, in the southeast corner of NK. It is only 10 kms beyond the border and 5 hours from Seoul. This region of NK was opened to South Koreans for tourism in 1990 and has some of the most beautiful scenery and best hiking on all of the Korean peninsula. The tourist village is surrounded by mountains and is run by Hyundai, one of the largest companies in South Korea.

Before the trip, the tour company provided a list of banned items, such as cel phones, PDAs, any print material from South Korea, books that may contain subject about either Koreas, binoculars, zoom lenses beyond 160mm, computers, any type of communication device. We were prohibited from talking with North Koreans in general, and in particular we were not allowed to talk about politics or the economy. If anything was overheard that was negative about NK, Kim Jung-il or Kim Il-sung, our guides were the ones that could be fined or thrown in jail.

We left Seoul at 11.30 on Friday night. We travelled by bus to the border. We stopped at a small beach to watch the sunrise on Saturday morning. This beach was on the SK side. We watched fishing boats coming and going from the harbour. Most of the fishing boats had guns on the front of them. The only other types of transportation we saw were tour buses. The rest stop near the beach was filled with South Korean tourists in their hiking gear, also going to the same park as we were going to. The hiking in this region is truly amazing and it has become a desirable destination for many South Koreans.

Stay tuned for Chapter 2.