A Tourist's Trip to North Korea

Copyright © 2009 National Public Radio®. For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required.

STEVE INSKEEP, host:

A nation that's still governed on the old Soviet model has approved a small change that starts today. North Korea's fortified border with South Korea is ever-so-slightly more open. Rail freight service has begun from the South to an industrial area of the North. A decade ago, North Korea began permitting some other crossings to let foreigners spend money at a popular resort.

NPR's Madhulika Sikka recently took that journey.

MADHULIKA SIKKA: It's tourism that was started about a decade ago by the Korean conglomerate Hyundai - Seoul tourism operators in North Korea.

INSKEEP: What have you got on the northern side of the border that you can't get in South Korea that would cause people to want to go there?

SIKKA: Well, it's an effort by the South to start opening up and exposing the South to what's going on in the North, and this resort area, you drive across the border; it's very regimented, very organized. Hyundai Asan represents the North Koreans. Your tour is organized by them. Before your bus crosses the border, you stop at a rest stop where the representatives of the company divest you of anything you might be carrying that might be offensive to the North Koreans.

INSKEEP: George Orwell's "1984" or...

SIKKA: A definite no-no. No newspapers, no magazines, no voice recording equipment, no cameras with long optical zoom lenses, and of course no cell phones.

INSKEEP: So you go across the demilitarized zone. What's that like?

SIKKA: Twenty or thirty buses go at pre-arranged times across the border. Then you're in. Driving along a road that is fenced on either side and on either side of the fence are North Korean villages. We drive pretty fast and that's so you can't take any pictures.

You'll see Korean army guards stationed, sometimes a solitary soldier standing on a granite boulder, ramrod straight, looking out. And you'll see a picture of North Korea that you kind of had in your mind's eye - people tilling the land, you might see bicycles, no vehicles. It's a very surreal experience to be driving through this area to get to the main complex of the resort.

INSKEEP: Okay, as you talk about soldiers and fences, I feel like I'm on a resort vacation already. What happens when you get past all that?

SIKKA: You get through it and you'll get to a big plaza area where there's modern facilities. There's of course the obligatory gift shop. There is a coffee shop where you can pay $4 for a latte. It's just like being at home. There's a wonderful spa, actually; Kungong(ph) is famous for its hot springs.

You can take a walk from your hotel building over to the spa. You'll cross a crossing where the roads of the villages surrounding intersect with the road of the resort. You'll see a few people waiting to cross - North Koreans in, you know, big bulky jackets on bicycles, kids sort of looking at you a little curiously, but you're shooed through pretty quickly. The soldiers standing guard there don't want you to waste any time looking around.

INSKEEP: So I'm trying to figure out the attraction here. There's the attraction of just crossing the DMZ. There's the attraction of some kind of hot springs or spa. Do you go out and see nature? What do you see?

SIKKA: Absolutely. There are beautiful hikes. There's an absolutely stunning lake in the middle of this resort, which you have to drive to, and the bus is parked in the North Korean village, and the guides will tell you this is a North Korean post office and this is a school. But you're there for just a few moments and then you're guided to the trail. And orange-jacketed tour guides are stationed along the trails. So if you had any inkling to explore off the beaten path, there's no way that's going to happen.

INSKEEP: Now, without trying to divine all the motives of the North Korean government, what about on the South Korean side, what are they trying to get out of it?

SIKKA: Generally you get a sense in South Korea that reunification is inevitable in some fashion. So the justification for these kinds of openings, the rail links that opened today, for example, goes to an industrial complex also run by Hyundai Asan. The infrastructure has been built by the South - the rails, the roads - and they feel very much that if there is some economic interaction, other things follow naturally.

INSKEEP: MORNING EDITION's Madhulika Sikka recently traveled to South and North Korea on an editor's fellowship from the International Reporting Project.

Copyright ©2009 National Public Radio®. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to National Public Radio. This transcript is provided for personal, noncommercial use only, pursuant to our Terms of Use. Any other use requires NPR's prior permission. Visit our permissions page for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by a contractor for NPR, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of NPR's programming is the audio.