Tag Archives: Pyongyang

Cracking Up in the DPRK

Posted on January 1, 2010 by Ryan Murdock

This is the seventeenth in a multi-part blog on North Korea. You can find the others here

  

ANDQMTF2B80-CNV00025.jpgWe 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.

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North Korea – The DMZ Too

Posted on December 11, 2009 by Ryan Murdock

This is the sixteenth in a multi-part blog on North Korea. You can find the others here

 

 

ANDQMTF2B80-CNV00034.jpgOur 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.

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A North Korean Shopping Mall

Posted on November 17, 2009 by Ryan Murdock

This is the eleventh in a multi-part blog on North Korea. You can find the others here

 

It took me nearly a week to realize why Pyongyang felt so much like a stage set. It wasn’t just the marble monuments and the enormous public buildings, the empty ten-lane streets and the weird scarcity of people. It was the almost total absence of shops. In all our bus rides through the city, I’d seen nothing to suggest that people actually lived there.

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Child Stars, and the North Korea Spy Ship Incident

Posted on November 12, 2009 by Ryan Murdock

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.

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Back in Metropolis, Circuses and Elephants

Posted on October 28, 2009 by Ryan Murdock

This is the seventh in a multi-part blog on North Korea. You can find the others here

When I got back to Pyongyang it was gray and overcast and just beginning to drizzle. I shook of my bus daze as we drove through the city’s silent streets.

Our minders took us directly to the circus.

Outside our private entrance, a group of Koreans practiced marching in the empty parking lot. Drill instructors ran beside them, yelling to get their legs up higher, and sometimes hitting them with sticks.

 

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A North Korean Field Trip

Posted on October 7, 2009 by Ryan Murdock

This is the fourth in a multi-part blog on North Korea. You can find the others here

 

One day I took an overnight trip from the capital of Pyongyang. A field trip of sorts. It was the only time we were permitted to sleep someplace other than our hotel, locked down on an island in the city.

We drove on a smooth, wide multilane “tourist highway” that begins in Pyongyang and ends at Mt. Myohyang, a couple hours to the north.

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The North Korean Hotel Experience

Posted on September 16, 2009 by Ryan Murdock

This is the third in a multi-part blog on North Korea.

 

I’ll begin by telling you a little about our hotel: our posh 5-star jail-away-from-home, the site of our evening house arrest, an excursion into the surreal side of tourism at the edge of the map.

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First Glimpses of Pyongyang

Posted on September 12, 2009 by Ryan Murdock

This is the second in a multi-part blog on North Korea.

I flew to Pyongyang on Air Koryo, the North Korean national airline. It was an old Russian jet with a rate of climb of about 2 degrees. It felt like we’d never get in the air. Surprisingly the flight was full. There was one flight a week into North Korea from Beijing–its only contact with the outside world. Most of the passengers on this one were members of a Hong Kong table tennis team traveling to a competition.

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