A small military jeep containing four Korean Peoples Army (KPA) soldiers arrived to greet our motorcade and we proceeded along an otherwise empty highway. Immediately apparent was the distinct difference in landscape between North and South Korea. The South has hills covered in verdant forests, whereas the same chain of hills in North Korea has no trees at all. Instead there are muddy slopes covered sporadically by a thin layer of grass. With the many international trade embargos, North Korea has faced a severe energy crisis. The hills have been stripped bare because wood, for a time, was the North’s only source of fuel.
 

 

After about ten minutes had passed inside the border, we arrived at North Korean immigration. There were five very well dressed men and women looking down upon us as we went through immigration from a mezzanine floor. Comparatively, the six staff processing our passports were unkempt and a little haphazard. We tourists then boarded the same buses with some new passengers. Four North Korean “tour guides” had also boarded each bus, and every time they said anything we were encouraged to applaud by the women who I had come to decide were almost certainly genuine tour guides. Not one of the “tour guides” looked directly at us and all of them were dressed very smartly compared to those processing us in immigration. 
 

The procession was led into the KIZ by three four-wheel drives, one of them being a 1980’s Mitsubishi Pajero which I found amusing due to the intense animosity North Korea bears towards Japan. Aside from the dishevelled workers, there was no apparent difference in appearance between the KIZ and an industrial area of Seoul. The same pavers that are found on the footpaths of new districts in Seoul have been used, and the architecture is very modern. However, reminding me of where I was, every fifty meters on the side of the road, there was a KPA soldier watching on sternly.
 

As we moved closer to Kaesong City, there were more frequent giant red Korean Workers Party slogans placed on the hill side in the style of the Hollywood sign. What first made me realise that the signs were slogans was the exclamation points following every sequence of Chosungul characters. For a nation rejecting the Western imperialist yoke, I thought it was interesting that the Workers Party had decided that the exclamation point to be a universal.
 

The only vehicles on the roads in Kaesong City were the ones in the motorcade. If I let my eyes follow the scenery without looking particularly hard at anything, Kaesong City seemed very clean and well kept. Women and children waved and smiled as us from their apartments as we went passed and the light shone on the trees along the main street most pleasantly. However, I noticed that if I stared at a particular scene for a small length of time, a lot more was revealed to me. Peering beyond a buildings façade, children were slumped next to dilapidated walls and older men looked on at us from alleys with gloomy expressions. Everything was painted a pastel base colour, canary yellow, terracotta pink, aqua blue and the ever present vomit green. Many tiled roofs looked to be collapsing. The women and children on the streets did not look or wave at us like those in the apartments, but instead, solemnly walked or rode bicycles from the 1950s along as though the motorcade didn’t even exist. Perhaps the motorcades had become such a regular occurrence that they were numb to us.
 

As we continued out of Kaesong City, a pristine countryside emerged. Algae free streams ran through paddocks of corn and rice. Soon the sun emerged from Korea’s constant long white cloud, and shone spectacularly on the boulders jutting out from the mountains that had quickly enveloped the motorcade. A sun shower came and made looking at the pot holes in the road, the hillside paddocks containing broken farming equipment, the electricity poles that had collapsed due to their wooden structures rotting, and the housing that could best be classified as squalid hovels, like imagining a rustic nostalgia that one sees only in sepia.
 

Like in the KIZ and Kaesong City, KPA soldiers were regularly stationed along the route. I noticed some bikes milled together, but there were no people to be seen. These groups of bikes began occurring more frequently the further away we were from the city. Not once though, were there any regular people in the vicinity of the bikes, or working in the farms at all for that matter. At this point, we were forty minutes inside North Korea and my Columbia comrades were discussing iPhone applications. It seemed fitting to think that the people who had parked their bikes were discussing applied agrarian reform at the local Workers Party headquarters.
 

The first destination was the serene Pakyeon waterfall. Indeed it was the kind of serene you see on advertisements for a gimmicky Thai getaway. Everyone was suitably impressed. After the ensuing photo session, people started to go up along a path nearby the waterfall. I wasn’t sure what it led to, but decided to follow along anyway like a good Kimist. Stalls were dotted along the path, selling tea, lemonade, sweet rice biscuits and kimbap (Korean sushi). The stalls were worked by stunning women wearing hanbok (kimono). Not one would look out of place gracing a cover of a glamorous magazine or a billboard advertising a product that included added purity, 100% freshness or something of that ilk. I bought some water from one of the stalls, and the woman handled my US dollar gingerly. She also seemed surprised that I could ask for water and say thankyou in Korean.
 

Further along the route, I paused to look at some interesting Workers Party signs carved into the frequent boulders. After taking some photos I turned around to see sitting behind me a few men from the four-wheel drives leading the motorcade. All were in striking white shirts, black pants and ultra-shined shoes, but what was most noticeable was the glint of animal they had in their eyes. I had never seen savage eyes like these before. I became slightly haphazard because we were about to greet each other. I didn’t want to say what was on my mind, but feared that it would come out anyway in an involuntary moment of truth. “So, Jong-il eh? Working out OK? When’s your next election?” were my immediate thoughts.

What actually came out was only slightly better. “Anyi Meeguk!, Anyi Meeguk” I spluttered, which means “No American”. They looked slightly confused, and then laughed. They repeated what I said much faster and in a different accent to what I’ve been used too. Two approached me calmly and one grabbed my ID card that swung freely around my neck. “Ahh, Hoju!” (Australia) he said and took a step back; his fierce eyes and vast array of gold teeth were turning my thoughts primal. He then said, “job?” inquisitively and I said “teacher and student.”

 After saying this, they all looked at me for a few seconds smiling which, for me, was quite awkward, so I tried to apologize for my lack of Korean. This broken apology only made them laugh more and so with the apparent good vibrations, I moved away from them while gesturing that “Heih”(the Sun) had made it too hot.