Inside North Korea: from Pyongyang to Mount Paektu

Two American journalists were given the green light to embark on a weeklong road trip across North Korea to the country’s spiritual summit, Mount Paektu. Here's an account of their journey...

In this June 20, 2014 photo, North Koreans seen resting next to the railroad tracks in a town in the North Hamgyong province. The Associated Press was granted permission to embark on a weeklong road trip across North Korea to the country’s spiritual summit Mount Paektu, but on the terms of Pyongyang as government 'minders' accompanied them the entire way. David Guttenfelder/AP PhotoShow less

LAKE CHON, North Korea // When North Korea opens its doors, it does so for a reason.

So it was when the authoritarian government granted permission for a road trip so extensive that few North Koreans – let alone a pair of American journalists – could imagine taking it.

We drove 2,150 kilometres in a country that has barely 25,000 kilometres of road, and only 724 kilometres of those paved. By the time we returned to the capital a week later, our Chinese-made Great Wall SUV had a few new scratches and one less hubcap.

Our official destination was majestic Mount Paektu, with its jagged peaks surrounding a crystal-blue crater lake. North Korea is pursuing a plan to create dozens of special foreign investment and tourism zones, and this is one of the places it most wants to promote.

The easiest way to get there is to fly, but we had been granted permission to drive. This, we were told, would mean travelling through places that no foreign journalists had been allowed to see before.

Still, the trip was on North Korea’s terms.

Even on the loneliest of lonely motorways, we would never be without a “minder”, whose job was to monitor and supervise our activities. We were not to take photographs of any checkpoints or military installations, or talk to people we happened to see along the way.

For the most part, we were not to detour from our pre-approved route, which, to no one’s surprise, didn’t include nuclear facilities or prison camps.

Though we would not get to know the people along the way, the country itself had a great deal to say. And no place is more symbolic of the North Korean psyche than Paektu.

North Koreans venerate it for its natural beauty, but more importantly because it is considered the home of the North Korean revolution. It is dotted by reconstructions of “secret camps,” where guides dressed in period costume recount the legends of Kim Il-sung’s battles against Japanese imperialists.

Before we left Pyongyang, the capital, we were warned, half-jokingly, not to get lost. Mount Paektu straddles North Korea’s border with China.

“If you wander off into China,” we were told, “you will be shot”.

Wrested out of our beds for our ascent up to the summit after four days on the road, we fumbled without lights to pack our equipment, made our way down our hotel’s candlelit staircase and climbed into our car in the pouring-down rain. With no signs to guide him, our driver steered silently into the night.

Many people have been amazed by nighttime satellite images that show North Korea as dark as the ocean, set against a north-east Asia brimming with light. There is nothing in the world like experiencing that darkness on the ground over long stretches of the North Korean back country. Possibly more than any other populated place on the globe, North Korea is terra incognita.

As we drove towards the dawn, two armed soldiers emerged from the darkness, signalled for us to stop and for our minder to get out. The rain was coming down harder as they stood in the blurry pool of our headlights.

We had gotten lost, but we weren’t in China. We were going the wrong way down a one-lane, one-way road.

The soldiers waved us on. With North Korean tourism still in its infancy, we were safe.

We wouldn’t see another car until we reached the snowy, wind-whipped parking lot below the crater, where two small vans full of shivering Chinese waited for a guard to wake up and lead them to Lake Chon.

* Associated Press