Conclusion

This trip was really worth it: discovering such a different and exceptional country was really interesting. Some aspect were close to what I was expecting, some weren’t.

I was expecting to see a cult for the Leaders (President Kim Il Sung, General Kim Jong Il and Marshal Kim Jong Un, in case you still did not get their names…), but have been surprised by the intensity of this cult. It is in theory not more shocking than any country with a State religion everybody has to believe, but the worship is really intense here. Portraits of the President, sometimes accompanied by the General, are omnipresent, large red and white signs are all over the country to recall the most important verses of the Juche idea.

I was expecting to see a fairly poor country, and the countryside matched what I had read about this country. Wooden plough pulled by oxen, people walking in lands where one cannot see any village, and stopping to scratch the soil. The contrast between what I have seen from the countryside and Pyongyang is salient (and I cannot imagine the countryside we have not been to). Pyongyang streets are clean, with large buildings, people nicely dressed and correct lightening during the night. People do not seem utterly hungry. However, I have seen several types of poverty during my trips around the World. The first one is the non-technological poverty: we simply time travel to a cohesive society, still agriculture-based and using techniques of the 19th century, such as some provinces of China or the DPRK. The second type of poverty I have seen is what I would call the slum poverty. In these countries, such as Brazil or Philippines, the poverty is close to the cities, and it feels like the country tried to catch up the globalization but left some of its citizen apart. In some parts of these countries, there is no more stable activity, and people are just waiting for tourist, to sell them cheap souvenirs or services or even beg some money. I think I am more disturbed by the later poverty: The first one looks like China 50 years ago, France 100 years ago or even South Korea 30 years ago and has therefore still a chance to reach an healthy growth.

However, I was expecting to be really watched closely by very strict minders and take huge risks every time I would try to take a picture without asking, but the reality was pretty different! The guides were really friendly, I could take picture everywhere, except in museum (lie almost everywhere), in front of people without their permission (like everywhere) or at very sensitive checkpoints or border (understandable), and when we tried to derogate from the rule, the more we were risking was a little admonition.

The second point radically different from what I was expecting was the attitude of the local people. I had read I was going to meet an army of identical zombies, cold and unresponsive to the tourists, like 1984. I probably didn’t go to the same country as those who wrote this because it was totally different. Korean I have seen, like any other human beings, smile back when we smiled at us, laughed when we tried to pronounce some words in Korean, and greeted us spontaneously. If you consider people like zombies even before trying to interact with them, they will appear as zombies, but if you smile and are open to to them before trying to communicate with them, they will try to interact with you and smile, like everywhere on this planet. Childs are laughing and curious, like everywhere. We have merged inside the Korean crowds in Pyongyang several times and could interact with the people. I am perfectly aware that Pyongyang is different from the rest of the country, that we mostly only saw the elite of the country, but this elite did not seem any happier or sadder than other peoples I had seen in other countries, and I had the same impression for people in the country, even if they probably have little information (or no information at all) on what happens in Pyongyang (and thus in other countries).

I was told that I was going to see actors, but I strongly believe it was not the case. I think Pyongyang people have other fish to fry than to worry about the hundred tourists in their city. I am aware we saw only the nicest places of the city, carefully selected, but the people we saw seemed very natural to me, even if I am aware they were part of the privileged. Of course, we had little freedom to chose where we wanted to go, but it is hard for me to compare with other countries since I am not really used to group travelling. When Chinese tourists visit Paris in a big group, they go to Versailles, to the Champ de Mars and to the Louvre, and don't see the 93-Suburbs or some very agricultural Departements; It is more or less the same, except that, unlike these Chinese , we could not visit the 93-Suburbs equivalent of DPRK even if we wanted too. (and DPRK does not seem ready for backpackers tourists yet...)

There are mainly 2 kinds of testimony about DPRK. The first kind are testimonies from victims of the regime who managed to escape and experienced the starvation, the death of their families or even the camps; I cannot add any comment to these books with what I saw in DPRK because I only looked at the nicest places of the country I was allowed to see during this organised tour. The second kind of testimonies is about what tourists experienced in this country, and I can comment on this. Regarding these testimonies, the last points I depicted are very different from what I had read about the country from the point of view of other tourists. I do not know if this country is changing or if the journalists writing about it tried to exaggerate what they saw to produce more attractive stories, but I hope the first suggestion is the right one.

My best memory is undoubtedly the half marathon and its very special atmosphere. It almost made me want to train to come back next year to run the full marathon and reach the podium!