Fifty photos from Barbara Stein's group tour to
Pyongyang,
Democratic People's Republic
of Korea (DPRK)
September 1-3, 2011
On September 1, 2011 Ted and I began our three-day/two-night tour with a two-hour flight on an Air Koryo Russian-built Tupolev 204-300 jet
from Beijing to Sunan International Airport in Pyongyang, the capital of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK).
The first evening, after checking in at the Yanggakdo International Hotel, we attended the Arirang Grand Mass Gymnastics and Artistic Performance. More commonly known as the "Mass Games," according to Guinness World Records, these are the world's biggest choreographed spectacle, with over 100,000 performers (80,000 on the field and 20,000 in the grandstand) . The games are held at the Rungrado May Day Stadium. See www.pbase.com/bolla49/arirang for more photos.
About 20,000 participants in the grandstand manipulated flash cards (R) in order
to display various images
such
as this portrait of Kim
Il-sung (L) and the various landscapes and exhortations
shown
above.
On the morning of September 2 our tour began with a visit to the Monument to
the Victorious Fatherland Liberation War, otherwise known in the West as the
Korean War.
L
& center: We
continued to the
Victorious Fatherland Liberation War Museum, which features a large wall mural of
Kim
Il-sung.
R: A female museum guide lectured to our group about the War.
The museum contains various U. S. and Korean war materiel from the
Victorious Fatherland Liberation War ...
... and also a Russian-style circular
panoramic painting (L) of the Victorious Fatherland War. Afterward we
drove to the USS
Pueblo (R).
Captured in 1968, the U. S. naval vessel is now a museum. These
bullet holes (center) on the USS
Pueblo are
highlighted with red paint.
L: Ted and I posed across the river from the
Tower of the Juche Idea
("self-reliance"). Center: Ted snapped me sitting with fellow
participants on our tour bus. R: A policewoman directed Pyongyang's
very sparse traffic near
Kim Il-sung Square downtown.
L & center: A
bulgogi (Korean BBQ) lunch was served to
our group on a
riverboat. R: Afterward
we drove to
Mangyongdae Native House,
Kim Il-sung's birthplace.
Then we rode on the
Pyongyang metro,
passing through five stations. Open from 6 AM to 9 PM, this is the
world's
deepest subway system (the stations can double as
bomb shelters), with two intersecting lines.
Pyongyang's buildings: L: Pyramid-shaped
Ryugyong Hotel and
office building (under construction),
Center:
Arch of Triumph, R:
TV Tower.
We ascended the 150-meter-high
Tower of the Juche Idea
("self-reliance"),
which
commemorates the 70th birthday of
Kim Il-sung. Although we had to pay EUR 5 (about
USD 7)
each to ride the tower elevator, at least the panoramic city views from the top were superb.
L: The
Yanggakdo International Hotel, where we stayed,
is the tower at the
tip of the island beyond the bridge. Center:
Pyongyang
is compact,
with little urban sprawl. Agricultural fields begin just beyond the
built-up area.
R: From the
Tower of the Juche Idea
we spied these older, single-story buildings tucked in between residential
towers near the city center.
L: From the
Tower of the Juche Idea we could see
Rungrado May Day
Stadium where the
Mass Games
are staged. The final destination on our tour with a political message was
the Party Foundation Monument (center and R). Erected in 1995, this
sculpture celebrates 50 years of rule
by the Workers'
Party of Korea.
The hammer, sickle
and writing brush represent the worker, the peasant and the intellectual.
In the early evening, after stopping at a department
store, we were given some free time at Pyongyang's
Gold
Lane Bowling Alley, where we wrote a few postcards.
After dinner
at the Hot Pot
Restaurant, we drove to an amusement park where non-Koreans were
charged EUR 2 or EUR 3 per person (USD 3 or
USD 4) for most rides. During our 75 minutes there I took a number of photos of locals. This
was the final stop in our 14-hour day of touring, which
included three meals, two of which were taken outside the hotel.
Early on our final morning Ted took this photo of
Pyongyang from
our room on the sixteenth
floor of the
Yanggakdo International
Hotel.
The
Tower of the Juche Idea
is visible in the
distance, to the
right of the bridge. After breakfast our group took a bus to Pyongyang's
Sunan International Airport and flew back to Beijing on a Tupolev TU-204-100B.
To book this and other exciting tours and cruises, please contact:
Barbara Stein, Senior Agent
Post Haste Travel Virtuoso
4415 Sheridan St., Hollywood, FL 33021-3513
Tels. 800-881-7690, 954-966-7690.
Fax 954-966-7706.
worldcruisers@gmail.com
December 30, 2011