NOTE: The original topic was presented in 5 posts, each with a different title. to preserve the original feel of the topic, I will present the photos in 5 posts, with their original titles bolded and underlined.
"A trip to North Korea
The autor is Artemii Lebedev, one of the leading web-designers in Russia. He recently went on a trip to DPRK. I'll translate his comments briefly.
On your arrival at the airport you need to leave your cellphone, no roaming service is avaliable but if you select an operator manually you get PRK 03 although he never saw a single person with a cell-phone. Laptops are allowed it seems that north koreans are not aware of cards that can make your laptop to work like a cellphone.
The only house where a foreigner will be ever allowed on his visit. It's a model-house of a model-farmworker of a model-collective farm. There is even something that looks like a computer made of components that are not even plugged together. Internet does not exist, only intranet is avalaible.
On your arrival you will be assigned to a guide and a driver. That will constantly follow you. You can't leave the hotel on your own. The daily program consists of 2-3 visits to a landmark. In the hotel you can watch BBC,NTV (russian chan),and a couple of chinese channels, so you can't really complain about freedom of speech. The food is good, and you can't complain about that either. In a park he saw elder women picking up herbs, the guide said that it was for the rabbits, although it was clear that it was the kind of herb that the "owners of the rabbits" could eat.
Kiosk that sells foreign product to tourists, as in snickers chinese sprite and lays from 2001. You have to chose your product pay at a sepate booth get a checkstub and give it to the merchant to get your purchase.
Kiosk for locals, most of the time they sell lemonade, forigers are given a plastic cup, locals get porcelain mugs, that are washed in a bucket of water after use.
Sometimes you see people selling some kind of a vegetable, that was taken next to a fruits and veggies store, they immediatly closed the door as they saw a tourist.
North Koreans are always amazed when they see a white man.
The plaster statues are clean and not broken apart. North Korea is a perfect reproduction of the year 1950.
They still havent figured out how to make flat glass withtout bubbles, the only exception are the windows in the hotel or large vitrines.
Oil is almost inexistant, so most of the labor is manual.
Water seems not to be avaliable everywhere when you leave the capital. A woman is washing her clothes in the river.
Life in a village
When building in a city they tend to block the old houses with tall bulidings , if that is not possible they put a concrete fence so you would only see the roof.
As soon as you try to take a picture different from the magazine "Korea" the guide will say: "why are you taking a picture" "it's forbidden here"
Koreans are not shy when it comes to basic needs, the guide forbid to take pictures of men taking a piss on the middle of the road, but there was no problem when it happened in the capital next to to a monument (look at the guy on the steps)
The big monument, (they cut off the electricity at 11)
The city at night is scary, there is no light on the streets and people use white lights and no curtains.
during the day the elevator didn't work for 15 mins
View from the monument, besides the pretty view you can also see the dead birds.
Reality of the NK, a forigner will not see this generally.
The whole Pyongyang is like this, when he asked the guide about the old houses the guide said that old people didn't want to move out in the new ones and like it that way
The mausoleum
You have to button up your shirt and look serious, and leave eveything except your sunglasses at the entrance, you will have to go trough an x-ray scanner (which no one tells you about), and for some reason there is a wi-fi router. The statue is white, and the light on top is blue and on the bottom is red. And its called a "visit" because the Great Leader is still "alive"
Next to the statue wearing an ironic t-shirt ( Hysteria of the USSR), the guide didn't know russian well, and when was asked an unplesant question didn't know russian at all. End of part 1 , next part "the defence".
