North Korea, there are thousands of rumors about this country, and perhaps none of them are true, until they come to what is perhaps the most magical country in the world.

It is said that a few years ago in North Korea, tourists were monitored for their every move and were only allowed to move around certain areas and photograph certain scenes. Now I am a little relaxed, but I still need to be in the sight of the tour guide at all times, I can't go to points outside the itinerary, I can't try to communicate with the locals, and it is even more taboo to leave the group without permission.

It's still not easy to take photos as much as you want, especially in border areas such as Panmunjom in Sinuiju. Registration is required for all electronic products. If you are found to be suspicious of taking portraits, you will be forced to hand over your phone and open the photo album to view all photos and videos, and the so-called inappropriate content will be deleted directly.

I will also be proficient in opening the WeChat swipe dialog box, and check whether there are movies or bad information in the collection bar, and I am even familiar with the operation gestures of the full screen, and I don't know where I learned it......

Without airplanes, North Korea is crossed by the Yalu River from Dandong. After that, the phone was completely cut off from the outside world. Other countries have roaming signs for local communications, but where there should be signals and network icons on the screen, there is nothing.

The legendary green car will take more than five hours to drive to Pyongyang, and the distance is actually not too far, but the speed is really urgent. At the end of March, there were farmland and ravines for a few hours outside the window, except for some whitewashed yellow and green tube buildings, which were tiled houses, barren and lacking in beauty. After taking a nap, the scenery has not changed much. The sky is not blue, and the most intuitive feeling is an indescribable depression.

Outside the car window, people were digging sand in the river and carrying them on their backs. On the roof of the train sat escorts, and the front of the wagons were made in Huaxia that were retired decades ago, and they were dilapidated. The roadside cordon is paved with cobblestones, so people can easily walk to the railroad tracks.

Someone was washing clothes in the gutter. The road was sprinkled with ash instead of cement asphalt, and children were playing with hoops on it, and there were no cars running anyway. Almost everyone rides bicycles like 28 bars, and the occasional motorcycle can be said to be at the level of a local tyrant.

As soon as I arrived at the Pyongyang train station, I saw a tour guide coming to pick everyone up from afar. An experienced guide, a fledgling guide, is responsible for all matters during his stay in North Korea, except for eating and sleeping, he is almost inseparable.

In the international foreign exchange market, the renminbi is about 1:140 against the North Korean won, but the exchange rate recognized in North Korea is about 1:14, so for every foreigner, you are buying North Korean goods and services at ten times the price.

Chinese tourists can only shop in designated stores, and can only use yuan, so you understand that you can't buy particularly cheap and affordable specialties at all, at most, they are cheap.

The population is about 25 million, but the tour guide will tell you that there are more than 70 million people in the country, because the North Korean people have never recognized South Korea as an independent country, and the two Koreas are only temporarily divided.

There will even be people who swear that the population is 80 million, and it turns out that this person counts overseas Korean compatriots, including Huaxia.

Okay, in this regard, North Korea, like South Korea, is a master of map defense and a spiritual giant, as the so-called is not a family, and does not enter a family.

Only 1 percent of the Korean people believe in Buddhism, and 99 percent believe in Juche. To put it simply, people are the masters of their own destiny and the power to open up their own destiny.

Instead of using the A.D. year, the Juche year is used, with 1912, the year of the birth of ***, as the first year of the Juche, and this year is the 105th year of the Juche. Putting aside the argument of idealism and materialism, objectively speaking, this idea is still quite inspirational, and it is the same as the inspirational chicken soup for the soul article that we young people love to read.

Therefore, if you see the Korean people anywhere, you will find that they are full of energy, radiant and unusually large, and sometimes they have to be ashamed of themselves compared to the performance of the Korean men's and women's football teams in the World Cup against the imperialist powers.

In addition to the scattered red and special scenic spots in Pyongyang, it takes three hours to go to Kaesong, the ancient capital of Goryeo, and Panmunjom on the border between South Korea and North Korea.

There are four sentry posts along the way, and when I am half-asleep, I see the guide get out of the car and hand a piece of pink paper to the guards, guessing that it is something like a pass, and it is probably not allowed to move across the city at will here. However, most of the things in the country rely on distribution, the people have no savings, the tour guide's salary is 400 yuan a month, even if you want to travel, there is no money to spare, and going abroad to play is like a fantasy.

I prefer to see the street scene of North Korea, what the locals are doing and what kind of life they are living. The photo taken through the car window has the feeling of an old line-bound villain book cover. Restrained cult of leaders, cookie-cutter gigantic buildings, metaphorical sculptures, street slogans and propaganda materials, the inexplicable power of the collective, and the conservative attire and indifferent faces of the people.

At night, Pyongyang is brightly lit, the streets are wide and clean, the modern high-rise buildings are lined up, and the urban planning is good, which is not inferior to any quasi-first-tier city in China. With cafes, clothing stores, and movie theater-like buildings on the streets, it's hard to imagine that it's North Korea, and it's hard to associate it with the countryside along the train.

I heard that people who can live in Pyongyang have more or less status. In a trance-like world like Truman, I don't know if we are ordinary citizens or part of the created image of the city.

Pyongyang's most exclusive hotel, the Ryugyeongkan, watched a show and met the wedding banquet of the locals. All the guests are neatly dressed and have excellent temperament, and they look like people at first glance. The same big fish, big meat, warbler sings and dances. Except for the statue of Jin, he is completely different from the people with sallow faces on the streets, and he looks like a wealthy middle-class intellectual.

When it comes to food, you can't really say that food and housing are bad. Foreign tourists enjoy super-national treatment, although it cannot be compared with the dazzling array of delicacies in China, but they still feel that the best are taken out to entertain international friends.

A bottle of drink is oddly marked 3,000 won – apparently this is not a normal price, and it is unknown who it was sold to. The night tour passes by a number of state-run shops and food stalls, none of which are locals, and it is forbidden to take pictures. However, I later bought local ice cream at the hotel shop, and it tasted sweet and condensed milk, not to mention the quality, so I just had to taste it.

The so-called highest-class Giethoorn Hotel is now a good guest house in China, and you can imagine how magnificent and luxurious it was when it was built in the early 90s.

At the end of the day, I believe that the country is really developing, but at the same time, it is also tough to hide the bad side. Pyongyang is a modern city that can be called a modern city in all fairness, with no dilapidated and chaotic scenes in sight.

The same set of bright photos are hung in the corridors of each hotel: department stores, ranches and modern assembly lines, Maxiling Ski Resort, roller skating teenagers in parks, summer camps and other citizens' lives......

There is no sense of disobedience in any developed country!

Wonderful Book House