wimpykid

I applied for a visa a few months before visiting, basically had to prove that I wasn't a journalist. We were not allowed to leave our guides the entire time we were in the country and they seemed to keep a close eye on who we interacted with.

The creepiest thing I experienced were the loud speakers in the city of Kaesong, when we asked our guides to translate what it was saying, they explained that the speaker was talking about the life of Kim Il Sung and the great revolutionary struggle. It was like something straight out of an Orwell novel!

I'm actually queer and sort of accidentally alluded to the fact when my tour guide asked if I had a partner/wife. She said "I think it's good you have a best friend, I think it's even better you have a best friend for life". It was really sweet I thought, considering they don't have much in the way of LGBT rights over there.

Probably not, after 7 days it began to feel a bit oppressive and to be honest, I got really sick/bored of hearing about the Kim family every 10 minutes.

I'm not sure if anyone actually believes the propaganda. It was pretty full on in the towns and cities we visited, with revolutionary slogans also posted on the motorways and roads we travelled on. I did ask my guide if Kim Jong Il really potted 8 "hole in 1"s on his first ever attempt at playing golf. He said that's exactly what happened with a pretty serious/sincere look on his face.

The only small time we were able to interact with citizens was during a walk in a large park in Pyongyang. The entire thing seemed orchestrated from the beginning, the whole scene reminded me of something out of "The Truman Show", seriously bizarre.