Palin - North Korea Journal

ABOARD B.A. FLIGHT 39 TO BEIJING. WINDOW SEAT. Its seven in the morning as I push the shutter up after a night of patchy sleep. Craning forward I can see below me the brown, dusty, spectacularly barren Mongolian desert. This must be the Gobi. Everyone else has their shutters closed, but for me the choice of snoozing or the Gobi Desert is a no-brainer. These are the lands where invasions began. It was from this hard-baked maze of mountains that Genghis Khan led his warriors to conquer much of southern Asia. He certainly left his mark. I remember once reading that such were the great Mongol leaders insatiable appetites, that one out of every 200 men alive today is related to him. I look around the cabin, but its hard to tell. Theyre all asleep.

As we draw closer to Beijing, a thickening cloud base obscures the magical, mysterious desert and our long descent is through a daytime darkness, which doesnt let up until the ground appears right below us. Before we know it were thumping onto the tarmac.

Were met by Nick Bonner, who has led the way in North Korean tourism and whose company Koryo Tours has assembled our itinerary. Neither ITN, with their record of investigative journalism, nor Channel 5 must be mentioned. Both are seen as tools of the British government, therefore lackeys of the Americans etc., etc., though as I am to discover in these bewildering times, being a lackey of the Americans turns out to be not so bad after all.

Washed and freshly clad, I walk from my hotel down the wide eastwest highway that slices through the city. Beijings Thames, Nick Bonner calls it, except here its a river of traffic, poisoning the air all around it. The nearer I get to Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City the thicker the crowds become, and the heavier is the police presence. Im beginning to feel trapped so I turn round and make my way back. Just off the main drag I find, tucked away between the tower blocks, a small park with twisted willow trees and elaborately painted pavilions with glazed tile roofs.

In Beijing, as anywhere else in the world, there is a mass tourist route and an adventurous tourist route. This peaceful little garden encourages me to stray from the beaten track and return to the hotel through labyrinthine back streets. Im rewarded with a series of busy little markets with food and tea shops and collections of quite surreal bric-a-brac.

I SLEPT WELL, WITH THE HELP OF TWO MELATONIN AND general exhaustion.

Must set the comforts of the Hyatt Hotel behind me today. Though most visitors fly into North Korea, were taking the slow road, by overnight train to the frontier city of Dandong, and then onto DPRK rails south to Pyongyang. Despite my fondness for trains I know that the journey ahead, particularly with a frontier crossing to negotiate, will be a test of stamina. Neil the director, Jaimie on camera, Jake his assistant, Doug our sound recordist, and I meet up mid-morning at the Koryo Tours office for a briefing. Our very first shot is my arrival. I shoulder my travel bag, wait for the cue then walk up to the door of the office as if Id never walked up to it before. As Jaimies camera follows me, I am once again both traveller and travel presenter, back in that no mans land between real life and storytelling, that I havent experienced since filming in Brazil seven years ago.

Surrounded by the rich collection of socialist-realist posters and the artwork accumulated in the twenty-odd years hes been visiting North Korea, Nick gives us a foretaste of what to expect, mixing a multitude of cautions with a lot of humour. He cant predict everything well experience, but his message is that the trip should be something to look forward to. The advice-filled brochures were given ratchet up the otherness of where were going. DPRK is a conservative society. Koreans generally dress and behave modestly; Attempting to walk around DPRK without a guide accompanying you could land you and your tour company in trouble; perceived insults to, or jokes about, the DPRK political system and its leadership are severely frowned upon; and, more reassuringly, Koreans eat dog meat as a delicacy, but it is not served to tourists as a rule.

The only advice which really saddens me is the one which seems to strike at the very essence of travelling. Remember that you could place North Koreans and their families in a difficult situation if you attempt to initiate contact with ordinary citizens.

Nick gives us our North Korean visas. Theyre on separate folded cards. Nothing is entered in our passports, to avoid embarrassment when travelling to countries for whom the DPRK is the devil. Its time to wheel our gear to the station. The oppressive heat is building, though the sun remains veiled by overcast skies. Nick checks his smartphone. The air-quality index is around 220. Thats in the Very Unhealthy category. Not bad for Beijing, he says chirpily.

The first stage of our journey into North Korea begins, rather splendidly, at the multi-towered, pagoda-roofed Beijing railway terminus. A spacious forecourt is already teeming with fellow travellers. The station clock strikes three to the tune of the old Maoist anthem The East is Red, taking me back to my first visit to China in the summer of 1988, when it looked, and felt, very different from the way it does now. Gone are the Maoist overalls and the sea of bicycles, and the slogans that adorn the rooftops are more likely to be ads for toothpaste than political rallying cries.

Escalators carry an unending stream of passengers up to the departure floor. Every seat is taken in the assembly area where we await the platform announcement. The only unoccupied seats are those in a small room off to the side, where for a few yuan you can sit in massage chairs which grip various parts of the body in different combinations and wobble them about. Cautiously, I pay my twenty minutes worth and sit back. Its a weird sensation. Everyone tries to look as if theyre simply relaxing, whereas in fact they know and I know that its like being strapped to a sackful of live badgers.

As Im being pummelled by my chair, video screens on the opposite wall play live footage of todays historic meeting between the North and South Korean leaders at the Demilitarized Zone in Panmunjom, where the armistice that partitioned Korea nearly seventy years ago was signed. The handshakes, the smiles, the slaps on the back and the coy tiptoeing across a concrete strip may look corny, but theyre evidence of an extraordinary development in inter-Korean relations. I feel, though I cant be sure, that this will only be good for us and our access to one of the most tightly closed countries on earth.