ASIA | NORTH KOREA
A peek inside mysterious North Korea
The most beautiful mountain range on the peninsula happens to be in the north. Foreigners can gain access to Mt. Kumgang with a tour.
"WHEN I was in North Korea last year
," I began, over dim sum one recent Sunday afternoon with a professor friend, a sophisticated Manhattanite.
"You've been to North Korea?" he interrupted. "Anyone can go," I told him. "It's a tour."
While living in Seoul last year, I learned that a division of the South Korean mega-conglomerate Hyundai has been operating tours to Mt. Kumgang from South Korea since 1998. Considered the most beautiful mountain range on the Korean peninsula, Mt. Kumgang has been immortalized for centuries in poetry, art and song.
Before the Mt. Kumgang tour, South Koreans had been unable to travel north of the demilitarized zone — at least it was legally barred. The DMZ, established in 1953 at the end of the Korean War, sliced Korea in two, leading to the Republic of Korea in the south and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, or DPRK, in the north. The 2 1/2 -mile-wide DMZ sealed off the border between the two Koreas. To this day, tensions remain. Just last week, North Korea vowed to go ahead with a nuclear test, to the increasing dismay of world leaders.
But for Americans, to whom North Korea rarely, if ever, grants tourist visas (though it does to other foreigners), the tour offers one way to get inside the Communist country.
"Let's go!" I said to a South Korean photographer friend and colleague after I learned of the tours.
"No way. It's just a tourist trap," he scoffed. "I heard they monitor everything, and you can't go anywhere on your own. It's not like you see the real North Korea or meet any regular North Koreans."
"That's all part of the charm of going to a totalitarian country," I said, trying to persuade him. "Don't you want to see what it's all about?"
In the end, he did. Who wouldn't want to peek inside one of the most politically isolated countries in the world?
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Papers in order
TO go on the trip, we filled out simple registration forms and submitted copies of our passports and photographs to the tour agency. A couple of days later, our reservations were confirmed, and we submitted payment in South Korean won, equivalent to about $350 per person for the two-night, three-day trip. (For visa information, contact North Korea's United Nations office, [212] 972-3105.)
On a wintry February morning, we assembled at a meeting point 100 miles northeast of Seoul and received identification cards that we were to wear at all times.
Mobile phones, high-powered camera lenses and South Korean magazines were among the items not allowed into North Korea. The tour included journalists (two Germans and a South Korean), the photographer I was traveling with and about 100 South Korean tourists.
Some of the tourists came to sightsee, but I suspect more came for the opportunity to set foot on northern soil.
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