In 2012 the worlds press was full of reports about north korea dictator kim jong il had died in december 2011 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 to. 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. Pollutants do you have your client tickets flights back to germany yes your kids. Yes it appears from pyongyang to beijing. Ok and here from beijing to munich. Didnt look you will not need to hospitals within north korea if you want to does it when you have a north korean guide you dont need a possible so you can go anywhere but you are not allowed to leave the hotel without your guides as. I said i do. I can show you all the places of interest. And that is what we will do just if you get through this. There was a lot of excitement in the hotel lobby it was the 27th of july 2013 victory day. Many International Guests have come here especially for this event it marks the end of the korean war which lasted from 1950 to 1953. 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. Horribly of gasoline. Vehicles with loudspeakers had been driving through the city all week. Even. Took some getting used to north koreas armed forces were. Ha ha. Ha ha. Ha. Ha. Ha night we were always alone in the bus because we had booked an individual trips because that means we had the whole tour bus to ourselves apart from our on the present minders anything not to speak to north korea get support from the World Hunger Relief organization have you heard that is a true. Schol. Nearly all developing countries getting help. But i dont really know a lot of them he doesnt play such a big role looking at the 6th fleet. I dont know where world hunger aid actually operates from. I dont know where the whole people live on. At least a few months he didnt mean you dont see them now no. We soon realised that conversations of this kind were barely possible. Whenever we started our 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 who to get proc 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 in north korea as it was mentioned you might also notice that one hour 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 with reports of them compared and checked to see if there are any inconsistency so that you can never be sure whether you as 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. Do you do 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. Given as this clear creek is. At one point you can walk or drive through the d. M. Z. And get directly to the demarcation line zones do you know there are the sky blue barracks where cease fire negotiations took place in 1951 to 53 and way talks between both sides is still taking place today for 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 line. 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. Did you know 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 know not soon einstein supplies to 2 systems socialism and capitalism to governments just. To give. Thanks of consent if you think it could work its done to the ins with this to just listen to me he 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 into the south korea can remain capitalist and we can still be socialist but both united. And you think it will. Be best for a force to have a good you imagine relinquishing socialism in the interest of reunification of the verdant ones as it is could you imagine that you understood that if you didnt have it it will foster. Just about legible to the new but its just hypothetically as and often a force just an idea hostile to. This mans acts. And theyre good. Since you define it you would reunite but you would have to go of socialism in order to be reunited all students and stuff about it 1st would you do that which was to me my own so no. Do you believe south korea would ever adopt socialism to become one nation again its a decision. You dont manage to have a month. Our question went on answered nobody had overheard our conversation and our watchdog had only expressed loyalty to the regime nevertheless a new guide turned up in the evening if 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 in 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. Young is an instance he fought in quickly out before the korean war young yang was a homogeneous old sitting in the creek is the in the man who has but after the war they changed the entire city beyond all recognition and vanity completely sweeping away the old structures would. Be an ownership rights one a problem because the state on everything anyway i mean is the best kind of a plan 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 all 2 story buildings that. 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 cold are everywhere. Again we came across portraits. Figures or statues of the 3 generations of Supreme Leaders. I mean have you down to a statue. In this respect our visit to the 20 meter. Hill was an absolute highlight. The deep. So we saved ourselves the trouble of questioning. And did everything we were told to do after all it was strictly forbidden to film the knowledge of the guides. So we didnt want to attract any unnecessary scrutiny. But its ok dont point. He. Just. For. Greg will lay the flowers there please and come back to us then we will bounce together i i i. 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 was. I. Next stop kim il sungs square 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 whos founded the jew che ideology in the fiftys now it has grown into a quasi religion and the deceased cams are worshipped 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. The school to give. And i said your religion i am in my side here in myself yourself do you believe you need a melody and a chorus and all you see im actually christe but theyre not the best cross probably go with me for thats the most boring us believe the call to Christian Communities whats in the east let me close here scott its what you know country we believe to idea ok so you know kind of the church ids its not a religion the only it is the religion it means many americans. Have you read some of them. Maybe many of them many are endangering the university of west just as in subjects is one substance ok ok so what does it say. Our social east east the one that. Is the one that initiate the church idea how socialism is our socialism is our own lives and it is men sentenced and she says it is just. A strange the owner of everything and your master and then what decides everything gets into the. Yeah we have a similar history as your country and all countries who do flaunt relief tonight its because of several what casar was released last christmas create what issues for the whole team i do know is sort of politics im not interested in politics invoking the economy with the idea it either is for a different message in whats in sunscreens kept in the east yes they only think about money but you know countries who kept essentially we want to think of our men here already leader our party but didnt care please please please what we didnt care of you only think of money so the idea is very different and economies are so difficult just different they maybe have it developed its i mean economy intimately and its also korea and livingston that is much. Well you are then honest if you think so its high yes i think sylvia says how do you know how do you know i think weve a little bit of interest at times with her weve done thats the most curious route that whats for and whats not to be looked at but afterward maybe 10 years later it need to be looked at my watch and you know what t. V. News and some foreigners say thats the sense for a trip to the teats whats economy i think i think youre a very strong very measured thinker and thats made it clear to the labor where english Interest Rate managers are going to have time. 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 all wrong was starting. Already 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 wrong 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. Fun. 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. Feel. 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 arrive we meet our watchdogs for the next 2 weeks. Yeah yeah yeah things yeah celebration of the green was really really not. A lot seemed 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. The. Very muted one. 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 as 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. I. I. On the escalator i notice a very pleasant contrast to our stations at home the lack of advertising. Nothing was screaming out at us to buy things instead of advertising posters the walls were faced with a lab really designed mosaics although their color from 0 tepes 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 sixtys and now has around 30 stations during our visit i started to feel even worse and had an accident on the esca