2012 the worlds press was full of reports about north korea dictator kim jong il had died in december 27th and now everyone was wondering what north korea would be like under the leadership of his son 28 year old kim jong un. An old asian proverb says seeing with your own eyes is better than hearing a 1000 reports so in early 2013 my friend philip and i decided to visit north korea the 1st challenge lay in actually booking the trip. We normally plan our trips abroad ourselves but individual tourism doesnt exist in north korea even booking the entry and departure arrangements are dealt with by a state agency. Before entering the country we had to sign a paper declaring that our visit had no journalistic purpose. We had to get permission if we wanted to take photos and film and sound recordings were forbidden. All the following material was shot on a camera with a built in video function. I hid the blinking red recording light with black sticky tape. We were only vaguely aware of the hot water we might end up in but we still wanted to smuggle as much footage as possible back to germany. But then we still hadnt really worked out what to do with it. There are several ways to get to north korea we decided on a 25 hour train journey from beijing to pyongyang. When we arrived in pyongyang we were met at the station by 2 guides they were to be Something Like our guards for the next 7 days. Young yang has 3000000 inhabitants and only 2 hotels for foreign visitors we were booked into the choreo hotel. It looked like we were to be given a private guided tour of the nations achievements we would be driven from door to door and not allowed to go out without our guard. Units and its do you have your client tickets flights back to germany yes you are 80 kids. Get sick heres from pyongyang to beijing. Ok and here from beijing to munich. To look its you will not need hospitals within north korea its not true does it when you have a north korean guy and you dont need a passport you can go anywhere but youre not allowed to leave the hotel without your guides as. I said i feel. I can show you all the places of interest. And that is what we will do just if you get into this you know there was a lot of excitement in the hotel lobby it was the 27th of july 2013 victory day. Many International Guests had come here especially for this event it marks the end of the korean war which lasted from 1951953. The fighting was brought to a close by the signing of an armistice agreement. But north and south korea are technically still at war. According to south korean media reports this was the 1st time that victory day had been celebrated with a military parade since 1903 with thousands of soldiers marching past and driving by in tanks. Gasoline. Vehicles with loudspeakers had been driving through the city all week. Even days later. Took some getting used to north koreas armed forces were on the present. That. Night we were always alone in the bus because we had booked in individual trips because that means we had the whole tour bus to ourselves apart from our on the present minders leith. North korea get support from the World Hunger Relief organization have you heard that is a true. Shoal. Nearly all developing countries getting help. But i dont really know the launch system he doesnt play such a big role model the 6th fleet. I dont know where world hunger aid actually operates from. I dont know where the whole people live off. The. Mean you dont see them now no. We soon realised that conversations of this kind were barely possible. Whenever we started a discussion with one of our guides the other one would often jump in and stop it. And we got the feeling they werent only keeping tabs on us but also on each other of course we couldnt ask that at least not if we wanted to leave the country in one piece with our footage. Once we got back home we asked dr lou to defrock a professor of east asian economy and society at the university of vienna about it if anyone can explain how north korea works its him this is north korea as it was mentioned. In north korea people who deal with foreigners are rarely able to do so alone but always at least in pairs and the whole point of this is mutual surveillance they both also have to write reports about their encounters the reports are then compared and checked to see if there are any inconsistency so that you can never be sure whether you is a north korean who has had contact with a foreigner have gone unobserved that is also a very effective system of selfcensorship. North and south korea are separated by the socalled d. M. Z. The Demilitarized Zone on the way there we hardly met any cars coming toward us which wasnt surprising because nobody can cross the border in either direction anyway. Due to those use the Demilitarized Zone is a 2 kilometer wide strip on either side of an imaginary demarcation line in other words a 4 kilometer wide strip of stretching about 250 kilometers across the Korean Peninsula from one coast to the other it was created to guarantee the ceasefire in the korean war and is now still the defacto border between the 2 koreas. Get into the school year i mentioned earlier at one point you can walk or drive through the d. M. Z. And get directly to the demarcation line zones you know there are the sky blue barracks where cease fire negotiations took place in 1951 to 53 and where talks between both sides is still taking place today the border runs right through the middle of these barracks so you have a kind of neutral area so to speak. Where officials can talk to each other without officially having to enter each others country know. Those on the island. But we still didnt really understand how reunification was supposed to work. What did the citizens of this rigidly socialist state with its on the present leadership cold imagine a unified korea would look like. Would it be a capitalist country. Didnt want that when south and north reunite we wanted to be one nation and one government with 2 systems that we want our own sovereignty and a peaceful reunification bringing together the entire nation i do not suit einstein was just 2 systems socialism and capitalism 2 governments just. To give. Thanks of concern to you think you could work this kind of indians with just him is nuisance and you could work in fact it has to. I think it can work because nobody will be oppressed so im saying i can everyone can own their own property just to the south korea can remain capitalist and we can still be socialist but both united. And you think it will or it will be the best way for could you imagine relinquishing socialism in the interest of reunification of the burdens as it is could you imagine that you understood that if you did have it even faster. And. Less enjoyable to think about it just hypothetically as a movement of force and just an idea of hostile to. This mans acts. And to. See who defined it you would reunite with what you would have to give up socialism in order to be reunited all students and stuff about the 1st would you do that if it was to me. Owns a dud. Do you believe south korea would ever adopt socialism to become one nation again its just that he didnt manage to have a month. Our question went unanswered nobody had overheard our conversation and our watchdog had only expressed loyalty to the regime nevertheless a new guide turned up in the evening. We could only assume that the old one had decided to avoid us. That was a bit odd because in fact we got on well with our guides we even found out about their private lives. I said being on the road with tourists for up to 2 weeks at a time must have been exhausting and inquired how they coped with it. One guy had said his marriage had collapsed so the job actually suited him. Another told me about his 4 year old daughter we missed and who like my niece like disney films basically the same discussions we had at home. But at least we could get a personal glimpse into North Koreans every day lives. The u. S. Air force dropped an estimated 450000 tons of bombs and more than 30000 tons of napalm on north korea during the war some 90 percent of pyongyang was destroyed you can see the scale of the devastation and todays cityscape. We berliners may be familiar with socialist architecture from east germany but pyongyang looks like a combination of the 1970 s. And some futuristic Science Fiction vision. At 1st glance we couldnt make out any sort of social infrastructure at all and would have been lost without our guides which wasnt the sort of thing we normally experienced. Once we were back in berlin we talked to Philip Morris who is an architect and also the editor of the architectural and cultural guide to pyongyang. So young isnt it starts for them quickly out before the korean war you know young yang was a homogeneous old sitting in the creek is the in this man who he is but after the war they changed the entire city beyond all recognition of vanity completely sweeping away the old structures would the. Ownership rights when a problem because the state on everything anyway i mean is the plot of the moment this was great for the City Planners who could finally plan things the way they want to create utopias. So thats what happened here these narrow winding alley thats replaced by wide main roads and modern the story buildings of the. Architecture and ideology are inextricably entwined in north korea beyond yangs new urban design took its orientation from the tate on the river and laid down myriad axes connecting the most important monuments by line of sight. The most important visual access links the socalled grand monument of monsoon hill with the one commemorating the foundation of the north korean communist party. Summary street is the citys main artery. It connects the victory arch with monsoon hill. And the Symbolic Center of pyongyang kim il sung square. From there you can look across the river to juge a tower in the eastern part of the city. Symbols of the kim dynasty as personality cult are everywhere. Time and again we came across portraits life size wax figures or statues of the 3 generations of Supreme Leaders i mean have you ever bowed down to a statue wearing a parka. In this respect our visit to the 20 meter tall grand monument on months to hill was an absolute highlight. All visits follow a strict procedure. The deep is obligatory so we saved ourselves the trouble of questioning this out loud and did everything we were told to do after all it was strictly forbidden to film without the knowledge of the guides. So we didnt want to attract any unnecessary scrutiny. Ok dont point. He. Just. Greg olay the flowers there please and come back to us then we will bounce together. In addition to kowtow ing you also have to buy a bunch of plastic flowers each time you visit frequently fake pink or red orchids later we noticed the flowers were collected up and brought back to the stand to be sold again. I. Next stop. Where which covers an area of 75000 square meters and is used as a Parade Ground its an incredible amount of open space in the middle of the city. Numerous small white dots and numbers have been painted on the ground so that everyone knows what to do during a parade. If you look across the river you can see the tower the monument to north koreas official cult of selfreliance. 170 meters tall it commemorates the great achievements of the countrys 1st Supreme Leader kim il sung who founded the judiciary ideology in the fiftys now it has grown into a quasi religion and the deceased kims are worshiped like deities. As you can imagine the jew che ideology is at the very heart of the north korean system it also gives its name to the calendar used here which is calculated from the year of kim il sungs birth. School to believe. And i said your religion im in my set here in myself substantially if you dont know any words and all you see im actually christe but theyre not the best cross probably go with me for you thats the most boring us believe the Court Christian communities whats in the east let me close here scarred for you no country would believe to idea ok sir you know kind of the church ids its not a religion the only good is the religion it means that their beliefs have you read some of them he made many of them many of them and ensuring the university of west ok as in subjects is one substance ok ok so what does it say you. Are socially east east the one thats on. Is the one that initiate the g. G. Idea how socialism is how socialism is our own lives and it is men sin to solution easy it is just the young man is the owner of everything and there must have been what decides everything here city. Yeah we have a similar history as your country and all countries from 2 floats really from rights because of several whats the aegis of the North Koreans will scream what are the issues for you know is sort of politics im not interested in politics invoking the economy with i need to hear it either is for a different message in whats in some strange catalyst yes they only think about money but you know countries to keep the solution is the only think of our men here are a leader our party that didnt tip in space was what we didnt care the only think of money so i was very different and economies are so difficult just different they maybe have a tin of deeds i mean economy and commitment is also korea and livingston that is much. Then i ask that. You think so its high yes i think so if you know for instance how do you know how to know i think weve learned weve learned it in class the times we heard weve learned its that i was curious rather whats for and whats not to be looked at but afterward maybe 10 years later repeated up to install a t. V. News in some foreigner saying its the censorious we have to be up to its whats economy pick up for a different take your interests are all very commercial thinkers and theyre going to thank god for english there is a very great managers are going to have signed. Off to our next appointment which was one of the most exciting of our whole trip. There was a huge crowd here and there was a lot of excitement in the air. 2 soldiers led some guy away obviously against his will. But there was no time to find out more because our iran was starting. Our read wrong i have never seen such an impressive artistic performance. More than 100000 people took part in this display of dance and gymnastics. Thousands of children in the terraces held up colored cards creating a sort of mosaic effect. Then they all flipped them at the same time and formed a new pattern. The army run festival takes place in the ring grotto 1st of may stadium which is said to hold 100114. 00 people and is the biggest in the world. Arre wrong was one of the most incredible events we had ever seen we asked our guides how north korea managed to get everyone to join in and. To answer our question they took us to the socalled among young day childrens palace the next day. Among young day childrens palace is run by the youth core of north korea and offers members of the Young Pioneer Movement the chance to take part in a wide range of Extracurricular Activities some 4000 children attend its classes. Schools like this play a crucial role in north korean education. We were taken to various classrooms or groups of children were already waiting for us. Music sports dance arts and crafts the children some of them still quite young amaze us with their skills. Thing. To do for. Her. I wondered if i would have ever been able to do that at that age and how much effort it took to achieve that level of perfection. But at least i now understand a bit more about why a child would want to be part of a huge human mosaic for several hours. I. I. Mean. It didnt take us long to realize how hard it was to get any real idea of this country of staged super lives. We asked a lot of questions but could rarely choose the topics. Thats probably why we left north korea feeling we knew even less than we had when we arrived. Of course our experiences only scratched the surface of what life in north korea is really like. Nevertheless i felt i was edging a little closer to an answer i could now sense a little of what it must be like to live in a totalitarian state where you cant express your opinions openly and have to play along out of fear of punishment in fact i was really relieved when i got on the plane back to beijing. Filming in secret had been a huge strain but now it was lifted. I was left with so many deep impressions that would remain with me for a long time to come. It was an exciting trip but i didnt think i would be going back to north korea any time soon. Not that is until i found out you could also run a marathon n. P. R. Yang. After all i had recently been part of a team that had run through the desert from los angeles to las vegas running is my passion so why not a marathon in pyongyang its the only way to get around the city without a chaperone. But this year growing tensions between north korea and the us threaten to prevent us from going back there at all. As we prepared to leave both countries were engaged in an aggressive war of words. So just in case we registered on the German Foreign offices crisis preparedness website. When we arrived we meet our watchdogs for the next 2 weeks. Yeah yeah yeah dad thinks the yeah celebration with agree more were doing that but. A lot seem to have changed since our visit in 2013 new residential areas had been built and pyongyang was no longer completely blacked out. At least not on the days before and after the marathon thats a new skyscraper there right wow its huge the one with the lights in the back. Very beautiful and. During our 1st night at the hotel i started to feel sick probably something id eaten in the past 24 hours. Still we managed to visit the pyongyang subway its the deepest underground Railway Network in the world. Riding the subway in pyongyang is a highlight for every berliner at the end of the ninetys early and sold several subway trains to north korea and theyre still in service today. I feel i. On the escalator i notice a very pleasant contrast to our stations at home the lack of advertising. Nothing was screaming out of us to buy things instead of advertising posters the walls were faced with a lab really designed mosaics although their colorful motifs were steeped in official propaganda. Apart from the portraits of kim il sung and his son kim jong il the carriages were still in their original condition the windows still even had the scratches left by the removal of graffiti back in berlin the underground system was started in the late sixties and now has around 30 stations during our visit i started to feel even worse and had an accident on the escalator i