Seven people, ten days and a rating of 4.9 out of 5 — that is what a journey to the most closed country in the world looks like. It is the kind of door that normally stays shut.
There is nothing to compare North Korea to: Antarctica is remembered for its nature, Namibia for its desert and Morocco for its colors, while the DPRK exists in another dimension entirely. The rules here are different and so is time, and the normal and the abnormal trade places.
The route runs ten days and starts in Moscow, from where you fly to Pyongyang via Vladivostok. The flight is operated by Air Koryo, the only airline of the DPRK, on an AN-148 or a TU-204. Two hours out of Vladivostok, and you are in a country that does not appear on Google Maps.
A rating of 4.9 out of 5, a group of seven, the most closed country in the world and a door that normally stays shut. Would you walk through it?
Four days are given to Pyongyang, and each one holds a week’s worth of impressions. The metro runs 110 meters underground, where crystal chandeliers stand next to armored doors and marble next to bomb shelters. Kim Il-sung Square covers 75,000 m² and hosts the very parades you have seen on television; in person it is three times the size of Red Square. The Triumphal Arch rises 60 meters out of 25,000 granite blocks and makes no secret of being taller than the one in Paris. The Juche Tower reaches 170 meters with its flame on top and opens up a panorama of the city, including the Ryugyong pyramid: 330 meters, 105 floors, forty years unfinished and not marked on a single map.
The USS Pueblo, a spy ship captured in 1968, is moored in the canal: bullet holes still mark the hull and NSA equipment rusts inside. An incident that almost led to a nuclear war has become a museum exhibit, and you can walk its deck.
The Victory Museum holds tanks and aircraft, with circular dioramas unfolding along the walls. At the Children’s Palace, children play accordions with a synchrony that takes your breath away. The Hwasong bar pours seven varieties of Taedonggang, brewed on equipment from England, and the taste turns out better than expected. Pyongyang even has an Orthodox church, Holy Trinity, built in 2006, with domes and an iconostasis. After that come the Art Museum, the Embroidery House and the Stamp Museum, which explains why the DPRK counts as a world exporter of collectible stamps, and the day can end in the park on Moran Hill.
The Myohyang Mountains are two days in another world. The drive from Pyongyang takes three hours through rice paddies, villages and propaganda billboards along the roadside, and then you are somewhere the air smells of pine and wet moss. Inside the mountain hides the International Friendship Exhibition: 117,000 gifts in 150 halls, from Stalin’s ZIS-110 to Albright’s basketball. Shoe covers are mandatory, photography is forbidden, and the scale is staggering regardless of your political views.
Pohyon Temple was founded in 1024, and its twelfth-century bell rings with a vibration you feel in your ribs. It keeps 80,000 wooden blocks carved with sacred texts and a pagoda hung with 104 bronze bells, and its frescoes have darkened with incense. A thousand-year-old temple in an atheist state is a contrast that cannot be explained, only seen.
A hike through the mountains leads past waterfalls, through forest and silence. In October the mountains burn with autumn color: maples red, oaks gold. You spend the night in a mountain hotel, far from Pyongyang and its monuments.
The group is 11 people plus a trip leader. A Russian-speaking guide is assigned by the DPRK and accompanies you everywhere, which is a mandatory condition. He will tell you the official version of history, you will hear another one, and both turn out to be part of the experience.
Everything is included: the Vladivostok–Pyongyang–Vladivostok flights, the visa, full board, excursions, entrance tickets, transfers and insurance. You pay once and think about nothing after that. The DPRK has no ATMs, no mobile internet (your phone works only as a camera) and no independent walks, but absolutely everything is arranged for you.
Ten days cost $2,790 and give you a feeling you cannot buy anywhere else: you were INSIDE. You did not read about the DPRK or watch a documentary, you rode the metro yourself at a depth of 110 meters, stood on the deck of a captured American ship, drank beer in a bar that is on no map and listened to the bell of a Buddhist temple a thousand years old.
Air Koryo flies from Vladivostok to Pyongyang on an AN-148 or a TU-204, Russian aircraft bought by Pyongyang. Two hours in the air, and you are in a country where there is no mobile internet (your phone will not connect to any network and stays a camera and a notepad), no ATMs (cash only, and not accepted everywhere) and no independent walks (always with a guide, that is the law). Does that sound restrictive? Certainly, but it is precisely these restrictions that make the experience unique: you are completely disconnected from everything for the first time in years.
The $2,790 covers everything: flights, visa, full board (breakfast, lunch and dinner every day), all excursions, entrance tickets, transfers and insurance. Tips and souvenirs are paid separately. The souvenir shop in Pyongyang is one of the few places where you can buy anything at all: collectors’ stamps, postcards, posters, embroidery and the famous ginseng. North Korean ginseng is considered among the finest in the world thanks to the mountain climate, the clean soil and the absence of chemicals.
Bucher went home in 1968, while the monks stayed at Pohyon. The ship still sits in the canal, the temple still stands in the mountains, the metro still runs 110 meters underground, and the Ryugyong still stands unfinished, invisible on maps and visible from everywhere.
Everything stays in its place and goes nowhere. In the DPRK nothing leaves: not ships, not gifts, not regimes, not temples. Here everything is forever — or until it ends, and nobody knows which comes first. That is exactly why a journey to the DPRK turns out to be an experience rather than a sightseeing trip.
You will come back through Vladivostok to a world where the news, the trends, the exchange rates and the memes change every day. In ten days it has not changed, but you have, because you have been somewhere everything is arranged differently and where “staying” means a choice rather than passivity. Bucher chose to stay in captivity for the sake of his men, the monks stayed in their temple for the sake of their faith, and the DPRK stays in isolation for the sake of… what?
You will bring that question home with you, and it will not go away.
In North Korea nothing leaves: not ships, not gifts, not regimes. Everything here stays forever — or until it ends, and nobody knows which comes first.
October 15–24, 2026. North Korea. A historic journey. From $2,790.
