North Korea Day 2 - Part 1

After resting up in our hotel, and going around inside it and eating breakfast, we hopped on the bus and headed to Kim il Sun's Old House (Manyongdae Native House).

This is the house in which supposedly, Kim Il Sung was born. Whether this is the real house, a replica, or if it was moved, is unclear. The lady guide attached to the house was quite passionnate as she expounded the details of how the Great Leader had been born into a poor but patriotic family, his brother died fighting against the Japanese invasion, and he supposedly left home at a young age to participate in the anti-japanese movement.

The story spun by the tour guide attached to the house was a bit over-the-top, depicting poot, but perfectly patriotic people and parents sacrificing their well-being in order to give their son a chance and the son vowing to purge Korea of Japanese and return to help his family. He also apparently learned to read and write at a ridiculously young age, and the house is rife with anecdotes demonstrating the wisdom and foresight of the future great Leader.

After visiting the house and hearing the talk, we headed out and walked through the beautiful park surrounding it. The trees and ponds were well-tended and it was without a doubt the most meticulously groomed park in North Korea. it is, after all, the park surrounding the house where their godlike Eternal President was born.

After the house visit, we hopped back on our tour bus and headed to the Pyongyang National Gift Museum, where gifts to the regime from North Korean nationals are displayed. The gifts are from Korean expatriates all over the world and are usually something linked to the country where they are living, but sent with a prayer for reunification. Some gifts are really preposterous, like a big tiger carved out of marble-like stone, weighting a few tons or an intricately ornate wooden vase made from tens of thousands of pieces of wood glued together. Some other gifts are an autographed basketball, tea sets, paintings, etc.

Some of the gifts came from Canada, from Korean expats or Korean communities abroad, many came from the founder of Hyundai, who is himself originally from North Korea. I saw some gifts from various ITF headmasters as well. unfortunately we were not allowed to bring our cameras inside, so no photos there :(

Korea Trip - North Korea

So we took the train to North Korea, crossing the Friendship Bridge... And stopped

...We stopped so that North Korean immigration agents could go through our stuff.
It was a bit anticlimactic, but the chief customs guy was pretty funny, he even gave a bottle of rice wine to one of the guys in the group. After about half an hour, it was done, and the train lurched to a start again.

...Then, after an hour or so, the locomotive caught on fire.

Being not allowed to leave the train, and the windows not opening more than a crack, we were unable to know what was happening when the train suddenly stopped in its tracks, in the middle of nowhere, near a small rural village without electricity.

We then noticed village people coming to and from the village under the orders of the government officials on the train, carrying buckets of water to the front of the train. I was in another train, talking to a group of Chinese laborers on their way to Pyongyand to work on a new building, and eventually understood that the locomotive had caught fire and that we would be there a while.


...And you know what? That there five hours was one of the most fulfilling of the whole trip, because we got to see a small rural North Korean village from up close, and some of the village kids even went up to the train and I got to communicate and play rock paper scissors with these kids that probably have never seen a Caucasian before...

Anyways, a few hours later, a new locomotive came in from Pyongyang, and we finally made it, five hours late.


Pyongyang itself is a lot more industrial than what we saw from the train on our way there, but most buildings are old and look.... Washed out... Then you have those huge government projects and monuments that are, let's face it, impressive, like the Ryugyong Hotel (Still being finished).

After arriving at the hotel, we had time for a shower and supper in a huge and very empty dining hall. The elevators of the hotel were pretty cool, a pair of them had half the shaft sticking out of the buinding, and you could see yourself being propelled up or down. The elevators were very efficient, only staying open for 3 seconds. I sort of liked that, as I hate having to just stand there, waiting for a door to close, but one of the girls was not quick enough to get out and got to make an extra trip up and down the elevator back to her floor :P

The next day we were going to head to Kim Il Sung's "Birthplace House", and the Museum of Gifts.