Visiting North Korea to see the Arirang Festival

Annyong he, this is Yomoken

※Annyong he means good bye in Korean, one of the few words we learnt in Korean.

This is a report of the famous Arirang Festival.

※ For those of you who are not aware of it, the Arirang Festival is a massive festival that do mass games and make human letters.

The Arirang Festival goes on for 2 months. Did you know about it?

I thought it takes place once a year on some kind of Memorial Day, for the general secretary to come out in front of the people. 

But that is not the case. During the 2 months it takes place around 3 times a week and is always included in the schedule of foreigners visiting the country.

Maybe you could just say that foreigners come to DPRK to see the festival. 

Some say that it is a government policy for acquisition of foreign currency, but there are not THAT many foreigners visiting as for it to be called as a policy. (from my instinct, there was about 100 foreigners on that day)

The venue is May Day Stadium, a sporting complex.

Not the Kim Yong-il Stadium which the World Cup Qualifier match was held at.

By the way there are heaps of local DPKR citizens attending as spectators.

Apparently there are many visiting from cities far away

Us foreigners are considers as VIP so we can enter without lining up in the row.

And the admission fee we paid was∙∙∙

100 Euros!!!

Still 2^nd class ticket. Soccer wise category 2.

There are 4 tiers for tickets and go from low priced to expensive,

3^rd class seat=80 Euros

2^nd class seat=100 Euros

1^st class seat=150 Euros

VIP seat=300 Euros

※Basically, all sales against foreigners in DPRK are done in Euros

Such expensive admission prices, you actually may be able to call it a policy for acquisition of foreign currency. ww

Locals did not have such nice tickets like us, just tickets made with cheap thin paper. The price must be extremely low.

The seats with a table in green in the back are VIP seats, not much difference.

While we were waiting the human letter makers team entered the back stands

The back stands are filled with people.

They are students. They look white because they are holding white panels for making the human letters.

Closing up on the picture above, this is how it looks.

People are lined up neatly and even the aisles are occupied. Against fire and safety laws?

When they flip there panels after the signal from the main stands, large human letters appear.

No words needed from here, enjoy with pictures and videos.

The leader’s portrait is made with human letters.

Light is shown above the human letters

The number of people dancing on the field is massive.

Children take part as well.

This many when they gather.

In fact, 120000 people take part in one Arirang festival.

It reminded me of the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics last year.It is like doing that once every 2 days.

Some day in the future if the Olympics are held in North Korea or the reunited Goryeo Republic, the opening ceremonies of that would be massive as well.

Now, it is not much but we have made a video from our coverage of the Arirang festival so see it here.

A 3 night , 4 day tour entered by land from China. Just that and the expense of 100000 yen. Plus that, you must pay a minimum of 80 Euros to watch the show. But it was an 80 minute show well worth paying for.

It made me hope that a day comes when the festival becomes more easy to access for everyone.

I think it is a tourist attraction that can attract a huge numbers.

In the end, when we were exiting the stadium, we bumped in to performers who were just dancing a while ago.

All of them were still in a excited state and even were waving to us foreigners.

I left the venue felling that I truly want to visit this again sometime in the future.

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We arrived at North Korea by a sleeper train.

Annyeonghaseyo ! This is Atsushi.
Annyeonghaseyo is hello in Korean.

This report is about our North Korea tour of 3 nights 4 days.
This is a long report, so please read when you have a time!

At the very first day of tour, we met a Chinese tour guide who can speak Japanese and went to Dan Dong station.
(Dan Dong is located at the border between China and North Korea)

It's a brand new.

I had to go through immigration to cross over the boarder line.
I said goodbye to the Chinese tour guide here.

I passed the immigration and moved to the platform.

The platform loos modernized, but the trains were old-fashioned.

The destination was displayed in Chinese 

and Hangeul as the train goes across the border.

The passenger was waiting for the door's opening.

Most people wore badges.
It is strange that it is a sleeper train, though it is not a night train.

Because there was not enough space , 

we had to bend down when you sit on a bed.

It was three-tier beds, and many luggages were put in the empty bed.

The North Korean carried various goods into their country from China.

Look at this tiny bed.

It's too small for the giant Ken, 187cm tall. hahaha

It was 15 minutes late behind schedule and left Dan Dong.
At this point, we were not accompanied by any tour guide.

We were going to meet a tour guide at Pyongyang terminal, so we were totally free now!

We decided to take advantage of this opportunity!!

I captured on the film the moment we entered North Korea.

＜Subtitles translation＞

①We took a sleeper train from Dan Dong to Pyongyang.

②All of passenger had a lot of luggage for sell those goods in North Korea.
(They bought it in China)

③Why was the construction of this bridge suspended?

④because U.S.A. bombed the bridge during Korean War.

This video must be very valuable!
Sinuiju is a town of the border of North Korea side.

We arrived there at around 10:00 and undertook immigration check.
However, we didn't go to the immigration gate.

A lot of people wearing military suits got into the train and started examining everyone.

We handed in immigration cards, the form of super-flu countermeasure, passports and Visas.

They didn't stamped on the spot.

Instead, they collected all the passports of passengers and disappeared to somewhere.

This is the VISA I received from the travel agency before the immigration.

Then, security check was conducted.
They opened every single bag and inspect'em very carefully.

Took about 5 min per person.

We left Sinuiju at 13:15 because they checked all passengers in three-car train...

Give me a break.! We stuck at the station more than three hours.
Now I understand why they have so many beds in the train.

Anyway, my passport was returned with NO stamps on it.
A separated green VISA was given instead.

The stamp was on the backside.

The fact that the stamp wasn't set to my passport indicates that it has four days blank on it.

It might be happened that the entrance day is indicated one or two days delayed from the departure day because of time lag.

But, I've never heard of three days behind.

There are more than 100 stamps placed on my passport.
It's so tough to find the four days blank.

But Ken had just updated his passport just before this journey began.
So it's almost brand new passport, whose blank is so outstanding.

At last, we passed the immigration and stepped onto North Korean soil!

The train is made up from more than 10 units.

The scenery from the train is very nostalgic.

This was the only time we're allowed to walk around freely while we were in North Korea.

So, we talked to anyone in this train.

At first, I was afraid of doing this.

My first priority was to find a person who speak English.

(The guy in the film was the one.)

Then, surprisingly, we met a North Korean who can speak Japanese!!

The two guys were grim-looking but they were very friendly.
They even introduced us to another group having a party.

Sorry. I can't put the photo that I took with everyone. 

North Korean treated Heineken to unemployed Japanese drifters.
Fact is stranger than fiction.

I will report our North Korean journey in another day.

It's getting dark after a while.

At last, we arrived at Pyongyang Station at 19:30.
It took about 9 hours from Dan Dong Station.

It was already dark.

Two tour guides (43 and 39 guys) were waiting for us.
Their first words are "How brave you guys are. Do you realize the international situation?"

"Of course, we do." we answered.

Then we headed for a hotel and had dinner there.
We went straight to the bed.

Thank your reading this quite long diary.

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