-
-
Recent Posts
Recent Comments
Tags
Alexandria antigua asia book review burma central america china croatia darien DMZ DPRK DPRK travel Egypt embera europe guatemala japan Kim Il-Sung Kim Jong-Il Laos Mongolia music nicaragua North Korea North Korea travel on the road panama panama city Paul Theroux postcard Pyongyang review road trip road wisdom Ryan Murdock south dakota the church tom sheppard trains travel travel philosophy travel stories travel writing vagabond vagabond dreamsArchives
Categories
- Africa
- Asia
- Caribbean
- Central America
- Classic Cocktails
- Europe
- Great travel writers
- Imaginary Places
- Japan
- Middle East
- North America
- North Korea
- On Travel Writing
- Postcards from the Edge
- Reader Questions
- Reviews
- South Pacific
- Travel philosophy
- Travel stories
- Uncategorized
- Update
- Vagabond Dreams Outtakes
- Video Blogs
Tag Archives: DPRK
Cracking Up in the DPRK
This is the seventeenth in a multi-part blog on North Korea. You can find the others here
We said goodbye to our brave military escort at the DMZ, thankful that they’d protected us from the imminent danger of American attack.
We made one last stop on our way back to the capital, just outside Kaesong city. It was reputedly the tomb of an early Korean king and his Mongolian wife, but as with everything else in the DPRK, nothing could be taken at face value. North Korea has been known to fake archaeological findings to support whatever version of history is the current party line.
Posted in Asia, North Korea
Tagged asia, DMZ, DPRK, Kaesong, Kim Il-Sung, Kim Jong-Il, North Korea, Pyongyang, road wisdom, Ryan Murdock, travel, travel stories, vagabond
Leave a comment
North Korea – The DMZ Too
This is the sixteenth in a multi-part blog on North Korea. You can find the others here
Our presence on the wrong side of the frontier caused a mild scramble among the South Korean forces.
Frantic radio messages were dispatched. Binoculars were trained on us. Reinforcements jogged over to take up positions half-concealed by the corners of buildings, where they conducted a whispered conference and pointed accusing fingers of guilt. They clearly considered us traitors to humanity.
Posted in Asia, North Korea
Tagged asia, DMZ, DPRK, Kim Il-Sung, Kim Jong-Il, North Korea, North Korea travel, Pyongyang, road wisdom, Ryan Murdock, vagabond
Leave a comment
Coming Down Hard in the Demilitarized Zone
This is the fifteenth in a multi-part blog on North Korea. You can find the others here
The highlight of my time in North Korea–the moment that made all the badgering and propaganda worthwhile–was our visit to the Demilitarized Zone and the truce village of Panmunjom. This thin line bisecting two worldviews is the last Cold War frontier, and the world’s most heavily defended border.
The uneventful drive from Pyongyang featured the same broad tourist highway we’d seen on the drive north to Mt Myohyang, with the same manufactured greenery on both sides. There were more roadblocks and checkpoints as we neared the border, but this was the only indication of the massive concentration of conventional, chemical and biological weapons stockpiled in the surrounding hills.
Posted in Asia, North Korea
Tagged 38th parallel, asia, DMZ, DPRK, North Korea, North Korea travel, Panmunjom, road wisdom, Ryan Murdock, vagabond
2 Comments
Propaganda Gets Me Down
This is the fourteenth in a multi-part blog on North Korea. You can find the others here
The Arch of Triumph commemorates North Korea’s liberation from the Japanese occupation at the end of World War Two. It looks an awful lot like the Arch in Paris, but of course Pyongyang’s Arch was deliberately built to be 3 meters taller…
North Korea doesn’t acknowledge the Pacific War (WWII) and the role it played in the liberation of the country, which made this a natural topic to bring up with our minders. It’s good to test the waters every now and then, to remind each other we both know where the line’s been drawn in the bullshit.
Child Stars, and the North Korea Spy Ship Incident
This is the tenth in a multi-part blog on North Korea. You can find the others here
Any propaganda tour of Pyongyang is bound to include a visit to the American spy ship Pueblo, captured by North Korea in 1968. To most people 1968 is ancient history, the distant past. But the North Koreans are still gloating over it and the international incident it caused.
Posted in Asia, North Korea
Tagged asia, DPRK, Kim Il-Sung, Kim Jong-Il, North Korea, Pyongyang, road wisdom, Ryan Murdock, USS Pueblo, vagabond
Leave a comment