Planning a trip to North Korea
This is the first in a series of posts on my recent trip to North Korea.
I travelled with Young Pioneer Tours in August 2013 on the Liberation Day Tour departing from Kuala Lumpur.
Planning a trip to one of the world’s most closed countries is surprisingly easy. In fact, it’s the easiest trip I’ve ever planned.
It’s near impossible to ‘independently’ travel in North Korea, so unless you’re prepared to fork out for a custom tour to your liking, the only way to travel in North Korea is part of a tour group. As such, all you have to do is get yourself to Beijing or Kuala Lumpur and pay for the tour!
The first question is “Should I go to North Korea?” and the answer is “absolutely”! It’s fascinating, wonderful, weird, amazing, wacky & fun. I love to travel to places where I can experience everything in life as if it was for the first time - and North Korea is no different. I’ll have more posts shortly about travelling in North Korea later in the week.
Booking the trip was super easy with Young Pioneer Tours and their staff respond very quickly through email & social media.
I paid for my trip’s deposit and balance payment via Paypal which was easy - but just remember to check Paypal’s foreign currency conversion rate vs. your own bank’s - as using my own credit card’s currency conversion rate saved me over $100.
The visa application & processing is all handled by the tour company - it’s a simple one page form and was one of the easiest visas I have applied for!
Immigration staff will take the visa when you leave the country (unless you get a visa from the Embassy in Singapore) and if you arrive & exit via Pyongyang, there’s no stamp in the passport.
Basically all tours, regardless of tour company are operated by Korea International Tour Company (KITC) who will provide English-speaking guides and a driver for the entirety of your trip.
Our guides had a great relationship with our guide at Young Pioneer Tours, so we enjoyed a surprising amount of freedom whilst we were in the country.
The itinerary often changes on a daily basis and whilst you’ll make most of what is in the planned itinerary (and sometimes more!), it can be on different days and different times. If there is something in particular, you really want to see - make sure you let your tour company or Korean guides know so it has a better chance of happening!
There is no way to use a credit card or receive money whilst in North Korea, so it’s essential you take enough cash. You can take either Euro, Chinese Yuan or US Dollar into the country, although Euro & Chinese Yuan seemed to be preferred.
It’s super safe in North Korea, so I’d recommend taking more money than you think you need, as there are no options to get anymore money. Beers & drinks are typically less than 1EUR and simple souvenirs such as books, decorations, pins, flags, t-shirts, small propaganda posters are all under 10EUR.
When you get your money changed, try and get the smallest possible change as vendors in North Korea rarely have much change in foreign currency. Often, you’ll receive your change in some combination of Euro, Chinese Yuan and US dollar.
Paying for pizza at a local restaurant
The local North Korean won currency can’t be used by foreigners (we tried), but you sometimes can get some at the Yanggakdo Hotel currency exchange counter for souvenir purposes.
Officially, it is recommended that you don’t take cameras into the country with a lens greater than 250mm or GPS functionality (or GPS marked on the camera).
For my trip, cameras were not checked on arrival or departure and I certainly saw some other tourists with some serious-looking cameras and some serious zoom lenses.
Taking photos is not a problem at all over there - just make sure you don’t take any from the bus or of any military. In our tour, one guy was playing a game on his smartphone in the bus whilst we passed a military checkpoint - however the man at the checkpoint thought he was taking a photo of him … luckily our guides were able to sort out the misunderstanding!
It’s best if you just tell your friends and family that you will be out of contact for the time you are in North Korea as all contact to the outside world is costly and time-consuming.
You can make calls from the Yanggakdo International Hotel, but as you would expect the charges are generally 3-5EUR per minute. You can also send an email from the hotel’s email account, but it costs 3EUR and requires filling out an “international communication” form.
Sometimes you can also get a local 3G sim card in Pyongyang - but I’ve heard it’s quite expensive. Some on our group managed to get some roaming coverage from South Korea whilst at the DMZ - but at the DMZ you should be taking it all in for the small time you have there and not checking Facebook!
I’ll post more of my experiences of travelling in North Korea shortly.
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