Sometimes one needs to take a step out of their comfort zone to experience another world and another way of thinking.
The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) is a country that only comes up in the media for its supposed development of nuclear weapons or for the latest crazy comment or act from the “Dear Leader,” Kim Jong Il. In reality, most people know very little about what day-to-day life is really like inside the country, which doesn’t allow any foreign media to enter.
For us at Urban Samurai, this unknown world was the main appeal of making the effort to get in to the DPRK. As one can imagine, getting in is not an easy task. After flying to Beijing, one must go to Shenyang in northeastern China. Shenyang is where we were able to get our temporary visas for the DPRK. The United States doesn’t officially have a relationship with North Korea so the North Koreans wouldn’t stamp our passports. From Shenyang we flew Air Koryo aboard a 20-year-old Russian plane on a 45-minute trip over the border to Pyongyang, North Korea.
