Eating Parle-G and Watching 'Baghban' in Pyongyang

It’s a typical traveler’s scenario: you sit in a train full of expat workers headed back home, who don’t speak your language, their bags packed with comically large portions of fruit and perishable groceries—avoiding eye-contact while clicking photographs. A friendly individual sits next to you making small talk in English. He mentions his hero, Raj Kapoor, while you sip your chai. Right before you put away your newspaper, you ensure the folds don’t crease the image of the Great Leader, so as not to disrespect him when you step off the train from China, and step foot in Pyongyang.

India shares cordial political and trade relations with North Korea—a fact that isn’t popular with most Indian tourists. But Bengaluru software consultant Vivek Pandey, 33, was inspired by VICE's documentary on the Hermit Kingdom to start researching his options in 2016. While planning a visit with his wife Shyamakshi Ghosh and their three-year-old son, Pandey was surprised how simple the process could be.

Several companies offer tours from China—most famously Koryo and Young Pioneer. A three-to-four-day package tour with a group costs about Rs 1 lakh, while private tours can cost upwards of Rs 4.5 lakhs (not including travel or visas). Passports aren’t stamped when entering or exiting the country, and the visa is merely a printed invite from the tour company.

Though friends, relatives, and colleagues tried to warn Pandey about possible problems, he only really began to worry when the tour companies advised him that visiting with a child may not be the best idea. So Pandey chose an expensive individual tour package with Young Pioneer, in April 2017.

“The tour operators were very professional and helped me completely to book my package via email,” Pandey told me. “You pay 50 percent fees in advance online, attach copies of passports, discuss tentative dates, and reach China. From there, the tour company invites you to stay a night in a designated hotel in China. You’re told what to expect and how to not be an idiot”—this includes talking about your religion or trying to cut out from your tour—”and then you’re picked up from the hotel in Beijing to reach DPRK via two train rides.”

When he returned, Pandey chronicled his family’s adventure in an AMA on the r/India subreddit. Aditya Kajwe, a young software developer with PayPal in Chennai, was inspired. He contacted Pandey, then researched his own trip in October 2017. Against the wishes of his father, he chose to travel solo from India with a group of American and British tourists with the company Koryo Tours.

“Apart from their speeches and obvious national pride, as with any government tour company, I found nothing surprisingly odd from the moment I landed,” Kajwe told me. Most companies offer a three-day package, like the one Kajwe took, which included visiting the bronze statues of the Mansudae Grand Monument, the Tomb of Kongmin, the Kumsusan Palace, museums that showcase America’s crushing sanctions and North Korea’s superior might over South Korea; more monuments; and the Demilitarised Zone.

Kajwe felt “The airport, food, people the city, everything was uneventfully regular. Imagine a fairly well-built city in India, reduce the population, change architecture to reflect the 60s and the 70s, and that’s pretty much what it’s like—with just a little hint of paranoia.”

He added, “I don’t think everything you read and see in the news about North Korea is right. But then again, since our visitation sites and movements were extremely restricted it could also be an elaborately rehearsed act too, you never know” said Kajwe.

Tour operators happily arrange pure vegetarian meals—as Pandey and his wife requested—but also barbecued dog meat, which Kajwe tried (and regretted). Both of them liked the plentiful and strong beers, and thali-like small servings of various rice, tofu, vegetables, and chicken dishes. In the hotel, they watched censored old broadcasts of Al Jazeera, and some nationalist movies in Korean.

Kajwe discovered traces of India as well. “I found Parle G biscuits, manufactured in Mumbai, in a grocery shop there,” he told me. “I was still puzzling how, when I saw Amitabh Bachan’s blockbuster movie Baghban being played in a giant screen in the park area. Koreans love family-oriented, patriotic very old Bollywood movies!”

Pandey found North Koreans to be "reserved but polite and non-threatening. Visit for an experience in a surreal parallel society, as a tourist, and form your own opinions.” He thinks “North Korea needs an image makeover, because not everything you see in the media is a fact.”

He’d advise Indians to contact the embassy in Pyongyang “and let them know you’re coming. It’s also a wise idea to tip locals and your guides via cigarettes and beauty products, so stock some before you leave,” he said.

All electronic devices and literature are checked for any religious or cultural references before entering the country, and you can’t risk stealing anything when leaving either. There are official souvenirs that you can buy, ironically using US dollars. Pandey got some postcards, a handmade poster, a jacket that says “Welcome to Pyongyang,” and some fridge magnets.

“Don’t attempt anything sneaky and listen to your tour company and you’ll be fine,” said Kajwe. “At the end of the day, I think I got more looks because I was brown with a beard and looked like a Muslim, which would happen just about anywhere.”

He added, “They hate their neighbors and praise their motherland—and try to change the poverty porn image everyone has of the place by inviting tourists. Which country wouldn’t want to do that?”

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