Northern exposure: a tour through North Korea’s top end

North Korea has been open to tourists since 1987, but it is only in the past few years that the hermit kingdom has seen visitors arrive in any significant number. Those who come from further away than northeast China do so for a glimpse of one of the most isolated and feared states in the world and, almost invariably, that entails a trip that takes in Pyongyang, the DMZ (the demilitarised zone between North and South Korea) and the mass games.

Carefully choreographed tours present Pyongyang as a modern city with skyscrapers and fashionably dressed folk toting mobile phones. There may be power cuts but no one, it seems, is starving.

Beyond the capital, however, North Korea looks very different. To experience a more raw version of this complicated country, you can now head to the remote northeast, a mountainous region that hugs the borders with China and Russia. While 5,000 non-Chinese tourists visited Pyongyang last year, only about 300 came to the far northeast. Chinese tourists, on the other hand, arrive in droves: about 20,000 a year.

“What can we do to get more Western tourists to come here?” asks Kim, an earnest local guide.

He wants foreigners to come to the northeast for the same reasons they might choose to holiday anywhere else: to experience nature – perhaps even head out on a seal-watching boat trip – relax and enjoy the local food.

No one in this tour group of 10 wants to tell him that people come for all sorts of reasons – for the outlandish propaganda, the extreme otherness of the experience, the shock factor – but a relaxing holiday is not among them. The idea seems laughable – until you get here.