It’s now replete with hiking trails, water gardens, forest boardwalks, and a view of the neon skyline from Seoul Tower. There was a traffic warden, a man in control of nothing. It turns out that criticising North Korea gets you a lot of enemies. Kim Il Sung Square, the day before his birthday celebration, Video: An amusement park in Pyongyang, North Korea and some cute girls there, Video: Revolutionary Martyrs' Cemetery on the hundredth anniversary of…, Rules for visitors in North Korea, part 1, Video: On seeing North Koreans seeing Kim Jong Un speak for the first time, Another genius business idea: real-life fairy tales, Facebook’s woes and what it could have done instead. I first showed it on TRT World on a show that the famous professor Robert Kelly was also participating in from Seoul. The three major achievements that North Korea is proud of are government welfare housing, national free medical care, and 11-year free education. These neighborhoods were known as daldongne, or “moontowns,” because they seemed however slightly closer to the moon, propped upon a hill. During your typical stay in North Korea, you stay in Pyongyang a lot, constantly supervised. In North Korea, you learn a song about the Communist party and how it loves you more than your mum does. We will post it on the website as soon as possible after the review. Out of this situation they created a relatively complete (although not advanced) industrial system for a country of only 25 million. That's all we saw, People ask me whether I would like to return to North Korea (I'm assuming, humorously). Apparently, that was the first ever rock gig in North Korea. At the DMZ, we were allowed to take photos in certain places, but only of this soldier. Please check your email to confirm your subscription. I spoke about it for TVN in Poland. But for decades still, its steep, winding alleys and quiet soup shops remained some of the poorest parts of the city. Haebangchon’s growing popularity means some restaurants have lines that snake around the block, bars crowds often spill out onto the pavement, and cars park illegally along the street, forcing pedestrians to share the road with mountain bikers descending Namsan and the occasional Lamborghini as it barrels through, driven by a celebrity who trusts he or she can relax here without being recognized. You must log in or register to reply here. The most notable structures in this area are the train station and hospital. In North Korea, they take your passport away, and then you are told because you don't have it, you have to be under constant supervision in case you are hurt in a traffic accident. As in Pyongyang (or London), here too chimneys polluted the air. in NorthKorea. Park is a 53-year-old who looks like he’s 40, smiles like he just scammed you out of a 10-spot, and peppers his sentences with Spanish, a relic of his times spent studying psychology in El Salvador. Kang notes how the Japanese Government General Building, an elegant neoclassical structure in central Seoul, was torn down in 1995, and asks, “Is there value to remembering a painful past? I took this photo at some point regardless, as I really liked the pristine North Korean landscape. As the Haebangchon Shintaekriji account notes, one resident recalled, “It was like a chicken coop or a barn—my chest got sore every time I saw it.”. Many trains looked like they were barely in one piece. ISO 200, 24mm, f/2.8, 1/1000s. MD-500 Scouts can be patrolling the air from time to time. Defence.pk is a one stop resource for Pakistan defence, strategic affairs, security issues, world defence and military affairs. “So, no need for work, just drink all day, like me.”. This is one of the few genuine smiles I managed to catch on camera. Amazing how media create perceptions...It turns out to be quite well structured, green, clean and modern structural city... That day. Many local artists welcome the change, while others see it as another form of gentrification. These little containers are for different kinds of food, and you literally assemble your own meal, which is nice. Its a sad situation really, no neighbouring country is powerful enough or willing to take the consequences of backing them entirely, so in order to survive NK has to essentially become their own "superpower" through developing nuclear warheads and ICBMs. The Mafia's headquarters can be found here, along with their chop-shop. But it has nothing in common with slums in Nairobi or Mumbai. This photo, I like to think, shows the more human side of North Koreans that you don't really get to experience on a tour like this, as you are always kept far apart. Given the hardships required to journey to South Korea at that time, it’s astounding that two people could make the trip and have their son wind up a slumlord millionaire in Seoul. But “no slums” is not the glory of North Korea, but the government’s strict resident identity control. The account describes one resident, living in the local schoolhouse, who would walk to the top of Haebangchon, where the quiet Namsan forest began, carefully collect firewood, then cook a ball of unwashed rice—as residents were so poor they feared that by washing the grain, they would lose some small part of it and decided it was better to eat it dirty. North Korea has its own restaurant chain. “On the weekend drunk people make noise, the traffic can be uncomfortable, and there are too many smokers disturbing the public.”. Some people made their homes out of tarp or cardboard, and as one person recounted in the Shintaekriji account, “I could hear the farts next door.”. They were also on display in the Cross Club Prague. The airport is rather peaceful and firmly under Chinese control. And the demilitarised zone is actually one of the most militarised zones on the planet. Another recalls riding his horse through the woods of Namsan’s slopes and watching children play in the streams there. In the blog Korea Exposé, Haeryung Kang writes about the fascinating history behind this often ignored landmark, a staircase that once lead to Gyeongseong Hoguk Shrine, built in 1943, where Japanese colonialists forced Korean schoolchildren to attend daily prayers honoring Japan’s war dead. Before the war, the neighborhood had been a shooting range for the Imperial Japanese Army, which had its headquarters at the foot of the hill, where the U.S. Yongsan Garrison now sits. North Koreans are seen at a residential compound in Pyongyang, North Korea, Thursday, April 12, 2012. And the North Korean government has a notorious reputation for draconian punishment. If only the government would get out of their way. DC Trivia:There are many types of meteorites that restrain the Superman. [. Woman hiding from the sun as we drove past, a bit like the Umbrella Man observing the JFK motorcade. However, the Seoul Metropolitan Government is encouraging Haebangchon’s quickly changing demographic. Considered by many the best South Korean film ever made, its most famous line is repeatedly screamed by Cheolho’s traumatized mother, who survived the war and keeps thinking another attack is imminent: “Get out of here!”, It’s a line that precisely captures the ethos of the community at the time. Tegegn Yimer Kassa, a 35-year-old Ethiopian who teaches taekwondo and hapkido, moved there in 2013 and says he enjoys the diversity and the fact that “it’s very close to Namsan for walking, and the view there is very natural.”, In the days before plumbing, Koreans ghettoes were usually situated on hilltops, where residents had to suffer the daily work of carrying water buckets up to their homes.