I didn’t know what to expect when I booked the trip into North Korea. The tour company write-up promised hiking trails graced by fairies, phoenixes and immortal hermits, but also contained a lengthy list of rules for avoiding problems with DPRK soldiers.

So when we boarded the bus at midnight in Seoul, I imagined a clandestine moonlight entry through the DMZ, our small pack of foreigners arriving at the base of the Diamond Mountains, known as Kumgangsan, in the early morning hours, and after a day of peaceful hiking in the midst of magical creatures, spending the night in an isolated hotel, having seen hardly anything except mountain trails. I expected to see little of the North, but equally little of the South as well.

 It was nothing like that.

The tour, run by Hyundai, is not a simple hiking excursion, but an elaborately orchestrated resort experience: no bus passes through the border alone – they move en masse, timed, daily. In the morning, a giant convoy of tourists form, waiting as the sun rises over the East Sea and the distant but visible mountains. And so, outside the border, we sat, until finally, literally hundreds of people had gathered, mainly South Koreans in ostentatious hiking apparel.

And so, being conducted as one group, we were herded through South Korean immigrations, housed in a newly constructed building of steel and glass, and out the back, where we were loaded onto different buses and issued ID cards, to be worn around our necks at all times. As the convoy made its way through the DMZ, we were warned that we would be fined, in US dollars, of course, for any spelling mistakes that appeared on our IDs. Our tour guide, a stern, young, South Korean woman, also told us the immigrations officers may ask us questions about our occupations, and if we didn’t answer exactly as our ID cards read, we could also be fined. While beautiful stretches of untouched beach barricaded behind barbwire sped by the windows, we committed our ID cards to memory. Our cell phones had been left on the southern side; even the chargers were forbidden in the north.

Within the DMZ, the actual border between south and north is marked by a decrepit wooden stake standing upright from the dirt. Soon after this, we passed bayonet-armed DPRK soldiers, who looked on in seeming annoyance.

North Korean immigrations consisted of a large, white tent on either side of three small trailers, which housed officers, x-ray machines, and metal detectors. We waited in the tent endlessly, shuffling one by one into the trailers, where entry permission was stamped not in our passports, but on our ID cards. We could be fined for losing this also. 

Everywhere the convoy went, soldiers stood posted along the highway holding red flags, watching for any sign of a camera pointed out a bus window. Photographs outside designated areas were strictly forbidden, and a red flag went up, the buses were required to stop so the offending camera could be sought out, the image destroyed, and the perpetrator dragged off to wither away in prison. Actually he would just be fined. This never happened during my trip – luckily, I suppose.

Within minutes we had arrived at Mt. Kumgang resort, perhaps the most un-communist setting imaginable. Brand new four-star hotels nestled among a multitude of restaurants (including a food court featuring fried chicken), coffee shops, a hot spa, and even a Family Mart.

Hotel-Oekumkang

Just when I had begun to despair that there would be no hiking, it now being ten a.m. with the heat of the day upon us, we were ushered back onto the bus, our hands full of overpriced bottled-water and junk food, and taken to the base of Sejonbong Peak, where we were permitted a full three hours to explore before returning to the bus.

However resplendent the Diamond Mountains are, the beauty was lost to me as pushy southerners nudged and bumped me aside on the concrete path. We saw absolutely no phoenixes, although a friend did point out what she termed a “Stalinist chipmunk.”

Along the path, some North Korean citizens, both men and women, stood watching. We could easily identify them by the red pin featuring Kim Jong Il’s picture, which they wear over their hearts. They all looked unhealthily thin, but perhaps this was my imagination. Although we asked as instructed, none of them would let us take their picture. They smiled and sometimes asked us where we were from, but would turn away if we gestured with our cameras.

Once back on the buses, we were dropped off at the resort where I found little to do but spend the wad of American dollars I had brought. But there was more disappointment to be met, as we explored the sprawling gift shop for any item brandishing the DPRK flag, images, or even the name. There was nothing. While we could purchase Hollywood fridge magnets, Channel perfume and an ocean of items bearing Kumgangsan imagery, the closest I came to having a DPRK souvenir was a slim, low quality cookbook entitled “Best Recipes of Pyongyang.”

For dinner, we ate bibimbap, buffet style, and while working our way through overstuffed bowls, got to talking about the flooding and starvation happening elsewhere in the country. But by then we weren’t even in North Korea ; we were inside a tourist bubble floating above the DMZ. This was proved further as we sat in the hotel lounge, drinking Taedonggang lager and watching a Filipino band cover Kenny Rogers and Whitney Houston. Had we been interested, we could have also found entertainment at a nightclub, a noraebang, or even a strip club. We were definitely not behind any iron curtain.

North Korean Beer and cheesy lounge music

 In fact, the only time we truly were in the Workers’ Paradise was when the convoy passed through a small North Korea village. The homes, tiny and dilapidated, were identical, except the newer ones near the highway were painted pink, while the others were dirty grey. The villagers worked in the fields by hand; but when the buses passed, by order, they had to sit down where they were, as our tour guide explained. Dramatic murals in bold, basic colours graced the few street corners. Cows, which belong to the village instead of any individual, wandered freely in the fields and narrow streets. Nothing modern seemed to exist; it could have been 1947 as easily as 2006. Over two days, that seemed to be my only glimpse of what life above the border must really be like. That, and the ubiquitous cold-eyed soldiers.

The author and her friend under a Kim Jong-Il mural near the tourist hotel

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