Leaving The DPRK

 

“Independence: A place that allows you to feel free”

Leaving The DPRK

We don’t often associate freedom with China; an authoritarian one party state which heavily censors the internet and the press, and highly restricts civil liberties.  China is not a very free country. Yet for me, arriving there in mid-February of 2014, it was the freest I had felt in over a week. I had just arrived back from The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

I went on a tour with a great company and had a wonderful eye opening experience. When we take tours while travelling we are aware that we aren’t actually free to do exactly what we want. This is the attraction, everything is organised and pre-planned and we can just relax and enjoy the freedom of being led. Usually, regardless of where you are touring, there are restrictions, schedules to follow, buses to take, places to be, and The DPRK is no exception. The exception on this tour was not having the liberty to express my true feelings about what I was seeing in the country.

Once our train had crossed the border back into China, the first thing I said to my fellow travelers was “well, that was a bit mental.” Their sentiments followed suit. We hadn’t been able to express our opinions very openly for the duration of the trip. Yeah, I could talk to my husband in our hotel room, or have a sneaky chat with some people on the group, but it was risky. Not risky in the sense that we would have been arrested, but we couldn’t ostracize our tour guides. They were nice people, living in the most restricted, and perhaps, volatile country in the world. For us to speak badly of The DPRK or it’s leaders would have ruined our working relationships, and potentially gotten us all in trouble, so we stayed mum.

The first thing I did, in free China, was eat fast food. No Joke. Upon arriving in Dandong, a large city of the border of The DPRK, I went to KFC. Not because the chain represents capitalism, commerce, and globalization, but because I had the freedom to choose what I wanted to eat. I went online to tell my family back in Ireland that all was well. I walked down the street alone without a guide because I could.

While in The DPRK my husband and I used predetermined code words to express feelings of misgiving. To be specific, the code words were Peyton Mannings play calls, Omaha, buffalo and hot dog. We would use these fairly often and combine them to show levels of shock or just general craziness. For example, “have you ever seen a buffalo eating a hot dog in Omaha?” showed the utmost level level of discomfort and confusion. This was used both in the mausoleum of Kim Jong Il and on a postcard we sent to ourselves which took 10 weeks to reach Bangkok. There were quite a few occasions when we used the code words to converse without realizing one of the guides was behind us.

On our tour, we weren’t free to leave the group, go off on our own, or express our opinions openly. But we were free to leave the country, and that’s a freedom that most North Koreans do not have. After the week was up, we could leave. We could go home and use the internet. We could travel anywhere we wanted. We could earn a wage. We could buy products from all over the world, receive post, vote, protest, read international publications, write travel articles, and even enter competitions.

What traveling to North Korea taught me was that I am free. I am bound by relationships, monetary commitments and red tape, but essentially I can go anywhere and I can do anything within legal parameters. My trip to North Korea reminded me just how free I actually am, and the place that allows me to feel free is anywhere but The DPRK.

About the Author:

My name is Laura Mellor. I live in Bangkok, Thailand, and I haven’t been back to my native city of Dublin, Ireland, in 15 months. This is because I prioritize travel. Any chance I get, I go somewhere I haven’t been. I work as an English teacher, which I enjoy but my real passion, my real love, is travel. I have recently started a travel blog and hope to entertain and enlighten people with tales from my trips and through my expat observations.

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