Northern exposure

A Hyundai executive half jokingly told me that his company's excursions are called 'Don't do it! Tours'.

He's not wrong. Cell phones, laptops, telephoto lenses and powerful binoculars are strictly verboten. Everyone must wear large photo ID tags at all times. Once inside the demilitarised zone, and in the North, photos are forbidden. You're not to point to a North Korean and, in the unlikely event you become engaged in conversation, you're to avoid any political statements, or mention the Dear Leader's need to buy better hair-care products.

On a recent crisp autumn morning, I joined a large group of South Koreans on the southern side of the DMZ. With a final inspection of our photo IDs, we boarded 15 brand-new Hyundai buses. Driving slowly in convoy, we trundled past gigantic four-metre-high barbed wire fences, over bridges with massive concrete tank traps (each mined with explosives) and, finally, past smiling South Korean soldiers inside sandbagged guard posts.

Transiting the DMZ's four kilometre-wide wilderness, where no man has set foot for half a century because of the minefields, only takes a few minutes. Once in the North we disembark for a second ID check, this time by North Korean soldiers. One of my cameras was confiscated until my return trip because it had a partial telephoto lens.

Once back on the bus, two stern North Korean soldiers boarded briefly. Lean as whippets, their faces baked by the sun, they walked from back to front, counting heads. They looked 16 but were probably 20. By law, every man must spend 10 years in military service. Women spend seven.

Continuing north on a newly constructed road lined with two metre-high wire fences, the dry, rugged terrain evoked the landscape of old cowboy films. Armed soldiers stood at rigid attention every 100 metres for 15km, every one holding a red flag. Should you decide to sneak your camera up to the window, a flag would fly up, and presumably the bus would be halted.

The new Hotel Gumgang-san was airily attractive, with cosy rooms and boasting a swanky lounge, complete with a band from Cebu. Three buffet-style meals were served here daily. While the meats were unmentionable, the vegetables were amazing - intensely coloured, superbly fresh and bursting with flavour. The reason is simple: they can't afford modern chemical fertilisers. Everything's organic.

For the entire trip, all 300 of us moved en masse. There was a splendid day hiking up staircases carved high into the mountains - the rocks that mark the summit bursting through the brilliantly coloured autumn canopy.

My favourite moment came on one peak, where I encountered a dozen halmoni (grandmothers), who were also tourists from the South. Their backs were bent by age and their faces lined, but their eyes twinkled with the joy at just being in these lovely peaks, for each had been born in the North and had been locked out of their homeland for years by war and politics.

That evening, it was off to a wonderful hot spa. The following night we were mesmerised by the antics of a North Korean circus, complete with a full orchestra in the balcony. A Russian woman sitting next to me was swept by a wave of nostalgia. 'This music - it's completely Russian. From my childhood,' she whispered.

Moralists might question the wisdom of paying money to a ruthless totalitarian regime. But the UN's World Tourism Organisation fully endorses the Hyundai programme as part of its efforts to reduce poverty.

I tried to find some North Koreans. But the Dear Leader had outfoxed me. Except for the hotel's doormen, virtually all the 500 staff employed by Hyundai are recruited from Korean communities in China's Jilin province; and even they are rotated back to China every three months.

In an economy where the average monthly salary is US$47, Kim Jong-il's regime earns US$50 for every foreigner who visits this Stalinist Yellowstone. Yet Mr Kim is cagey enough to insist that all outsiders travel in a virtual bubble, thus avoiding all possible contact between North Koreans and outsiders.

Still, I wonder what those rail-thin soldiers must think, as they come face-to-face with hundreds of South Koreans every week. Their neighbours' round smiling faces and fashionable clothing so clearly conveying prosperity. Maybe they'll start to ask: Why is there only one fat man in this land? Yet so many from the South.