She said the North Koreans she met seemed surprisingly content with their lot. “There are no stores you can walk into and buy off the rack.” Ms Thomas bought chopsticks and fridge magnets with pictures of the ruling family on them as souvenirs. The group were taken to a library filled with books on the Kims. “You always have a guard with you, and a guard minds the guard, and they have cameras on us.”Ī brief visit to a town to the north of the capital revealed there was “no architecture, nothing to see.” It was only the “fabulous” sacred palaces in Pyongyang that were filled with marble and gold, chandeliers and travelators that “go for miles.” Local visitors were crying genuine tears as they looked around the buildings they were given time off once a year to explore. They know when the tourists are going to arrive. There was nobody, it could have been put there for us. “The school was big but there weren’t a lot of students. For tourists, there’s plenty, but people have a food shortage. They get their food through a public distribution system, they can’t buy it themselves. “They show you the best of Pyongyang, you eat at the best restaurants, but you don’t see many locals eating there. The Indian writer and blogger said guests would look out at Pyongyang at night and see total darkness, because no one else in the capital has electricity to light their homes after dark. At the hotel, she said, “you’re free, because you can’t escape.” Ms Thomas said her group stayed at a hotel on an island in the middle of a river, where tourists could drink and gamble at a casino - something citizens are rarely able to do. “If you’re asked to walk in a straight line, you walk in a straight line.” You have to bow to every statue of the Kims and there’s no folding of a newspaper with a picture of them on it. “We were told not to take pictures of unfinished buildings, work half done, or local people. “It was don’t more than do,” Anjaly Thomas told. On their arrival, tourists have their passports taken away and are given a half-day briefing on dos and don’ts. A TRAVEL blogger who visited North Korea on one of the secretive country’s tightly controlled tours says everything outsiders see is a lie.
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