Pyongyang — a city of three million people. Wide boulevards. Tall buildings. Monuments. And — almost no one on the streets.
This is the first thing that strikes you. Not the ideology, not the portraits of the leaders, not the propaganda. The emptiness. A city built for millions, yet only thousands are visible. Streets as wide as runways — and bare. Few cars (a private vehicle in North Korea is a rarity). Few pedestrians. But traffic controllers: young women in uniform, standing at intersections with batons, conducting traffic that barely exists.
The architecture is monumental. Everything is large. Deliberately large. Larger than necessary. Larger than anywhere else. Kim Il-sung Square — 75,000 square metres, capable of holding hundreds of thousands for parades. For comparison: Red Square — 23,000 m². Tiananmen — 44,000 m². Pyongyang’s is the largest of all.
The Arch of Triumph — 60 metres. Taller than the one in Paris (50 m). Built in 1982 from 25,000 granite blocks — one for each day of Kim Il-sung’s life at the time. Your guide will make a point of saying: “Our arch is taller.” And they will be right.
The Juche Idea Tower — 170 metres, a column of white granite crowned with a flame that burns through the night. 170 metres = 150 (roughly one metre per birthday of Kim Il-sung up to his seventieth year) + 20 metres of flame. The mathematics of ideology. An observation deck at the top — reached by lift — and all of Pyongyang spread below: the Taedong River, its six bridges, the boulevards, the rooftops of apartment blocks in pastel shades — pink, blue, green. And on the horizon — the Ryugyong. The pyramid. 330 metres. Unfinished. Silent.
Everything was built for scale. For impression. For the “wow.” And it works. Whatever you think of the regime, you stand in Kim Il-sung Square, you look at the Grand People’s Study House (modelled on the US Capitol, only larger) — and you feel the scale. Physically. Like pressure.
But between the monuments — there is life. Not the kind shown in Western documentaries (grim, grey, hopeless — as if the whole country were a single camp). And not the kind shown in North Korean propaganda (happy, flourishing, perfect — as if problems did not exist). A third kind. Real. Quiet. Not obvious — because you have to see it rather than read about it.
Children in school uniform — neat, with backpacks, red scarves at their necks — walking along the pavement, chattering and giggling. Like children everywhere. A woman with a shopping bag crossing a vast boulevard — not at a crossing, diagonally, because there are no cars anyway. A man in a suit reading a newspaper on a bench — the very same Rodong Sinmun he reads every day, because there is no other. An old woman selling flowers at a park entrance — chrysanthemums, yellow and white. A young man wheeling a bicycle — old, Chinese, no gears. Ordinary life of ordinary people — in an extraordinary place. Life that BBC cameras never capture. And that Korean state television never shows.
The Mangyongdae Schoolchildren’s Palace — a building where thousands of children study after school. Music, dance, calligraphy, science, sport, embroidery, computers (yes, North Korea teaches programming — on the domestic Red Star OS, a Linux clone). If you are lucky, you will see a concert. And it will astonish you.
Children of eight or ten play accordions, kayagums (a Korean zither), drums. They sing in chorus — in harmony, clean, without a single false note. They dance — with a synchrony that is impossible without thousands of hours of rehearsal. They smile — brilliantly, identically, all at once. It is breathtaking. And — at the same time — unsettling. Because a child should not smile on schedule. But the smiles look real. Or seem real. Or — you cannot tell the difference. And that is yet another question North Korea does not answer.
The Hwasong Beer Bar — yes, North Korea has bars. And this is one of the most unexpected moments of the journey. You walk in — and find yourself in an ordinary bar. A counter, taps, glasses, tables. Local Taedonggang beer — seven varieties, from pale to dark. Named after the Taedong River that flows through Pyongyang. The brewery was set up in 2002 — the entire equipment of the shuttered British brewery Ushers of Trowbridge was purchased and shipped to North Korea. The taste is decent; some visitors say it is good (its RateBeer rating places it above many European beers). The atmosphere is relaxed: people sit at tables, drink beer, talk. Like any bar in the world. Only with portraits on the walls. And no Wi-Fi.
The Central Zoo — another place where ideology fades into the background. Children laugh and drag their parents toward the monkey enclosure. A couple eats ice cream on a bench — he in military uniform, she in a bright dress. An old man feeds ducks by the pond. A group of schoolgirls takes photos on a phone (yes, North Korea has smartphones — domestically produced, with a local intranet rather than the internet). An ordinary zoo. Ordinary people. In an extraordinary country.
The Tomb of Tangun — another stop, another layer. Tangun is the mythical founder of Korea — according to legend, the son of a heavenly god and a bear who became a woman. North Korea regards the tomb as real, and the scale matches: a vast white-stone structure, reconstructed in the 1990s. Historians debate its authenticity. North Koreans do not debate. For them, Tangun is an ancestor, and Korea is the world’s oldest civilisation (5,000 years). You will listen. You will nod. And again — you will think.
In the evening — a boat ride on the Taedong River. An optional extra, $30 for an hour on a pleasure cruiser. The lights of the embankments reflect in the water. The bridges are lit up — six bridges, each in its own colour. On the riverbank — joggers, strolling couples, families with children. An ordinary evening in an extraordinary city. Ordinary life — except that you are watching it through a lens you cannot remove.
Pyongyang is a city of contrasts. Monumental and empty. Ideological and human. Austere — and yet, if you look carefully, if you shift your gaze from the monuments to the people, to their faces, their hands, their shoes — alive. Alive in its own way. Differently. Not like Moscow. Not like Tokyo. Not like New York. In its own way. And that “own way” is reason enough to come.
