The ban on UK visitors in the DPRK has been removed for the summer, according to an e-mail announcement from Koryo Tours. This was the last of the restrictions that the world was waiting for North Korean authorities to lift. Citizens from the UK will be able to travel to ...Click on a label to read posts from that part of the world.
North Korea
Brits welcome in North Korea for Arirang
The ban on UK visitors in the DPRK has been removed for the summer, according to an e-mail announcement from Koryo Tours. This was the last of the restrictions that the world was waiting for North Korean authorities to lift. Citizens from the UK will be able to travel to ...American journalists get the max in North Korean court
Laura Ling and Euna Lee, reporters with Current TV, were sentenced to 12 years of hard labor this morning – the maximum sentence under law. The five-day trial yielded a verdict of guilt for the "grave crime" of illegally crossing into North Korea, the Korea Central ...PhD student Curtis Melvin uses Google Maps to uncover North Korea's secrets
North Korea has a reputation as one of the most secretive, authoritarian, repressive countries in the world. But that doesn't stop Curtis Melvin, a PhD student at George Mason University, from trying to shine some light into the country's dark corners.
Using knowledge ...A peek inside the North Korean courts
There's something chilling about journalists being detained and tried in a foreign country ... a prospect made all the more uncomfortable when you throw the "Dear Leader" into the mix. But, do we really know what's about to happen? Well, aside from the fact that they're ...June 4 trial date for American journalists in North Korea
Arirang gets green light in DPRK!
It is confirmed: the Arirang Mass Games will be held in Pyongyang, North Korea this summer. The event will run from August 10, 2009 through the end of September, highlighting the precision for which the DPRK performers have become famous. According to Koryo Tours, Americans ...Foal Eagle protests divert air traffic around North Korea
Korean Air and Asiana Airlines are followed by Air Canada and Singapore Airlines in routing flights around North Korean airspace. The change comes as a result of North Korean warnings that it "cannot guarantee the safety of South Korean passenger jets" if the United States ...More details on American access to North Korea in 2009
It may not be time to celebrate, but you can certainly be optimistic (with a dose of caution). Koryo Tours has received an update from its partners in North Korea about the upcoming Arirang (i.e., "Mass Games" event). The Mass Games are expected to be held in August and ...Destination on the edge: golf on the DMZ
The small golf course in Panmunjom is often called the most dangerous in the world. Nestled between North and South Korea – which are technically still at war – sending a ball off the fairway means that it probably won't be retrieved. Welcome to the strangest ...The adoption travel experience
Several of my close friends and family members were adopted, adopted a child, or are in the process of adopting a child from Asia. In fact, my sister is months away from traveling to China to pick up her daughter, and our very own Gadling writer, Jamie Rhein has a daughter ...North Korea border disorder and other trivia
It's surprising; I know. There are competing accounts of how open North Korea is to outside tourists right now. Koryo Tours, as usual, is cutting through the rumor and gossip to give travelers as real a sense of possible of how, where and when you can go to North Korea. ...North Korea Mass Games may happen in 2009
Rumors earlier this year suggested that the North Korean Mass Games ("Arirang") were being pushed back to 2012. The magic in that number is that it's the 100th anniversary of the birth of the deceased but still-serving president, Kim Il Sung. Koryo Tours' recent newsletter, ...Spy games: A look at North Korea's covert operations (part 2)
Read part 1 of this post here. And for additional reading, be sure to check out former Gadling blogger Neil Woodburn's excellent series, "Infiltrating North Korea," from last year. I also reported from North Korea for The Washington Post and The Christian Science Monitor ...Spy games: A look at North Korea's covert operations (part 1)
In celebration of the latest James Bond flick (granted, it was Die Another Day that featured blatant stereotypes about North Korean goons) and a longish piece in this week's Harper's on North Korea's propaganda machine, I thought I'd give a history lesson into a period of ...I stand corrected: Air Koryo planes are not made of bamboo
So last month, fresh out of detention in North Korea and noticeably high from the experience, I went on NPR and claimed, among some other rather dumb stuff, that "Air Koryo [the official North Korean airline] was literally made out of bamboo." Yes bold claim, especially with ...Gadling Take FIVE: Week of October 4 - October 11
Browsing through Gadling's offerings this week are posts about places from the people who have had first hand experience.
Jerry's trip to Pyongyang brought him an unexpected "history lesson on [his] own [Chinese] cultural heritage." His posts are an opportunity to ride ...Pyongyang Journal: Misadventures in the Democratic People's Republic of Disneyland (part 2)
Part 1 here. On Day 2, he focused on the "three frees" of Korean society: education, healthcare, and housing. Because we had a two-hour bus ride to Mt. Myohyang, home to a 400-room fortress where gifts to the DPRK are proudly displayed, he invited questions. "How much grain ...Pyongyang Journal: Misadventures in the Democratic People's Republic of Disneyland
Ox-drawn carts squeak by towering marble monuments – with slogans like "Live forever our father" [Kim Il Sung]. Remnants of four-lane highways snake parallel to a single train track that handles all traffic through the northwestern corridor. Schoolchildren in tattered ...Where did the commies go?
With September came the near fall of another Communitst leader, as Kim Jong Il, dictator over North Korea vanished from the limelight, joining his Cuban counterpart Fidel Castro in the murky depths of unknown, fiercely hidden ailments. The realist in me knows that both ...Gadling's Jerry Guo writes in the Washington Post about his "Excellent North Korean Adventure"
We here at Gadling don't like to brag, but between Neil Woodburn's Infiltrating North Korea series and Jerry Guo's new article in the Washington Post, we've got North Korea covered.
This past Sunday, Jerry wrote a dispatch from the kingdom of North Korea, and concluded ...
