An armored ZIS-110 automobile, gifted to Kim Il-sung by Stalin. A silver cup from Muammar Gaddafi. Crocodile leather from Fidel Castro. A basketball autographed by Michael Jordan, presented by Madeleine Albright. 117,000 gifts. In 100 halls. Inside a mountain.
The International Friendship Exhibition is one of the strangest places on Earth. And one of the most impressive — regardless of how you feel about the DPRK.
The Myohyang Mountains — the “fragrant mountains” — form a scenic range 150 kilometers northwest of Pyongyang. The drive from the capital takes three hours, through rice paddies, past villages, past propaganda billboards along the roadside (there are no commercial billboards in the DPRK — only agitprop). The mountains rise like a wall: dense forests, waterfalls, crystal-clear rivers. The air is different: clean, moist, smelling of pine and wet moss. After Pyongyang, it feels like exhaling.
And — inside these mountains — a concrete bunker. Enormous. The size of a shopping mall. Cut into the rock. Bomb-proof (again). It holds gifts presented to the DPRK’s leaders by heads of state, governments, and organizations from around the world.
The exhibition consists of two buildings — one for gifts to Kim Il-sung, the other for gifts to Kim Jong-il (and, presumably, by now for Kim Jong-un, though a separate building has yet to be built). Both are underground, carved into the mountain’s bedrock. The entrance is through massive doors bearing the DPRK coat of arms — heavy as bank vault doors. Beyond them: air-conditioned corridors, marble, carpets.
The total floor area is estimated at between 28,000 and 70,000 square meters (figures vary — the DPRK publishes no exact numbers, and independent estimates are based on satellite imagery of the entrances and visitor accounts). More than 150 halls. By various estimates, between 60,000 and 220,000 gifts. The official figure is 117,000, but it hasn’t been updated in years, and gifts continue to arrive.
Your guide will take you through ten to fifteen halls (visiting all 150 in a single visit is impossible — it would take days). Each hall represents a country or region, decorated in that country’s style: the Russian hall features birch trees and samovars, the Chinese hall has dragons, the Arab hall is lined with carpets. The gifts are arranged in display cases, lit from within, each labeled with who gave it, when, and on what occasion.
Each hall is a country or region. Russia, China, the nations of Africa, Latin America, Europe, the Middle East, Southeast Asia. The gifts range from monumental to tiny. The ZIS-110 — an armored limousine, Stalin’s gift to Kim Il-sung — stands in the central hall, black, polished to a mirror shine. An armored railway car, given by Mao Zedong. Crocodile leather from Fidel Castro. Elephant tusks from Africa. A silver cup from Gaddafi. A crystal vase from Ceaușescu. And — a basketball autographed by Michael Jordan, a gift from Madeleine Albright, then US Secretary of State, during her 2000 visit.
The rules are strict. At the entrance, you must put on shoe covers (mandatory — the floor is polished to a mirror finish). Backpacks and bags go into a cloakroom. Photography is forbidden. Absolutely. This is one of the few places in the DPRK where photos are banned outright (in most other places they’re permitted, and guides will even help you find the best angle). On the way out, there is a guestbook, and you will be politely but firmly asked to write something in it. Your guide stands nearby. Most people write something neutral: “Impressive collection” or “Thank you for the guided visit.” That is enough.
The feeling inside is that of a museum multiplied by a bunker, multiplied by a temple. Silence. Conditioned air. Marble. Carpeted corridors. And scale. Hall after hall, corridor after corridor, floor after floor. You could walk for hours and still not see everything.
The idea behind the exhibition is to demonstrate that the whole world respects the DPRK’s leaders. Every gift equals recognition. Every hall equals a country that is a “friend.” Propaganda? Undoubtedly. Manipulation? Of course — gifts are given out of diplomatic courtesy, not admiration. But the scale is striking regardless of your political views.
150 halls. Decades of diplomacy — from Stalin to the present day. Thousands of objects — from postage stamps to armored railway cars. All of it inside a mountain, in a rock-cut bunker that would likely survive a direct nuclear hit. The temperature inside is constant — 20 degrees Celsius, year-round. Humidity is controlled. Like a museum storage facility — only on the scale of an underground city.
Like the metro. Like so much in the DPRK — built to last forever. In case forever turns out to be shorter than planned.
And 100 kilometers away, moored in the Pothong River canal, sits the ship belonging to the man who chose humiliation over death. Bucher surrendered the Pueblo to save his crew. The DPRK turned his ship into a trophy exhibit. The gifts in the Myohyang Mountains are about diplomacy. The Pueblo is about war. Both are about the same thing: how states construct their narratives. From gifts, from trophies, from other people’s choices.
The strangest exhibit? Everyone who has visited disagrees. Some say Mao’s armored railway car. Some say an inlaid casket from Saddam Hussein. Some say the basketball from Albright (Kim Jong-il was a serious NBA fan — and that’s not a joke). But for most Russian visitors, the most striking hall is the Russian one. Stalin’s ZIS-110. A set of matryoshka dolls. A model of the cruiser Aurora. Soviet medals and orders. Letters from Khrushchev. Gifts that tell the history of two countries — from friendship to the cold shoulder and back again.
After the exhibition, a walk through the Myohyang Mountains. “Myohyang” means “fragrant mountains” — and the name is justified: pine, moss, damp leaves, wet earth. Trails through dense forest, past waterfalls, over wooden bridges across streams. The trees — oaks, pines, maples — stand like walls. In autumn — October, the time of this journey — the forest burns red, yellow, orange. The Korean autumn is famous for its colors, and Myohyang is one of the finest places to see them.
The silence here is not the silence of Pyongyang. Pyongyang’s silence is artificial — the absence of noise that should be there. The mountain silence is natural — the presence of nature that needs no sound. Birds. A stream. Wind in the canopy. A silence that holds peace.
The night is spent at the Hyangsan Hotel, in the mountains. Simple, clean, with a view of the forest from the window. Far from Pyongyang, from monuments, from armored doors, from ideology. Just forest, a river, and stars. And the feeling that the DPRK is not only what the news shows.
And the next day — back to the city. To the city that looks like a stage set. To the city that keeps its silence.
