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Tag Archives: North Korea travel
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
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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
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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.