International Railroad Discussion > DPRK (North Korea) misc

Typical Pyongyang summer afternoon in front of the main train station. The plaza is packed with cars, buses and vans. The afternoon train from Beijing has arrived and there are buses and vans for arriving tour groups, picking up worker groups returning from holiday in the country, families picking up soldiers and sailors on leave and business people returning from China, Mongolia, Russia and Europe.

Most of the cars visible in the second image that aren't Mercedes or Toyota's are products of Pyeonghwa Motors, a joint venture between the DPRK and a South Korean car company owned by the Unification Church of all things.

Near Hamhung on the DPRK's north coast a narrow gauge commuter train. I believe this was built by the Japanese when Korea was occupied by Imperial Japan. Hopefully someday this line will be made available to tour groups. Just about everything else is these days.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 10/21/14 13:54 by GettingShort.

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A typical Pyongyang streetcar, elderly but in good repair, and most of all packed. Sense my last trip to the DPRK Pyongyang's streetcar system has been made available to tour groups.

Another Pyongyang streetcar on a day when the pollution from China was extra bad. Taken from the plaza in front of the Monument to The Party Founding, in the background can bee seen the Mansudae Grand Monument with it's statues of President Kim Il-sung and General Kim Jung-il, rising in the distance is the unfinished Ryugyong Hotel with the statue of the Chollima Horse to the right.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 10/26/14 05:19 by GettingShort.

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So as of today they are still holding two Americans there for no good reason. Fortunately one was freed today. So why on Earth would anyone want to go there to support this repressive evil regime with their tourist dollars. So many other places much safer places in this world to visit. But happy you had a nice time and lived to tell about it.

andersonb109 Wrote:
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> So as of today they are still holding two
> Americans there for no good reason. Fortunately
> one was freed today. So why on Earth would anyone
> want to go there to support this repressive evil
> regime with their tourist dollars. So many other
> places much safer places in this world to visit.
> But happy you had a nice time and lived to tell
> about it.


Good points but on the other hand one man entered the country as a tour group leader, abandoned his group and went off to proselytize, something he was warned not to do on past occasions. The other young man was clearly deranged. He traveled to the DPRK with the intent of being thrown in prison so he could write a book. Most likely will be returned, though at least initially his family had no interest in having him returned, when the Korean's get tired of paying his room and board and figure out he scammed them. On the other hand he's said to be doing well and will probably learn something useful like how to repair tractors on a collective farm. I don't intend to sound flip, but that is how the Koreans are handling him, they seem to have the notion that hard work will do him good old fashioned though that might be. I've been told this recently by contacts there.

When you visit someone in their home you live by their rules, that includes putting down the toilet seat and not harassing them with your personal religious delusions. At least 6000 westerners and as many as 20000 Chinese visit the DPRK every year, a number growing by over 50% a year, and only three or so, naturally all Americans have had real problems there. You have to go out of your way to find trouble, it takes some real work, the Koreans shrug off a lot of stuff, especially opinions, so it takes something really overt to get yourself in hot water.

As far as contributing to the regime, the cost of trips to the DPRK is very competitive between the companies offering tours, especially the big three, Koryo, Young Pioneer Tours and Juche. After figuring in the cost of airfares or train fares between Beijing and Pyongyang, the cost of hotels, guides, food, the rental of a bus or van, cost of a driver and the very big one, fuel, guides from the KITC and the tour companies expenses and profit margin there's very little left over to be skimmed. This is especially the case for the sort of tours offered to westerners, the tours for Chinese tourists are a different matter and they constitute 2/3 of all tourist travel to the DPRK.

I understand and appreciate you opinions and misgivings, Trying to see things from the other guys point of view is always the best way to go.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 10/21/14 15:07 by GettingShort.

andersonb109 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> So as of today they are still holding two
> Americans there for no good reason. Fortunately
> one was freed today. So why on Earth would anyone
> want to go there to support this repressive evil
> regime with their tourist dollars. So many other
> places much safer places in this world to visit.
> But happy you had a nice time and lived to tell
> about it.

I guess your new found social conscience has developed since your own tourist visits to Russia, Zimbabwe, and other places with equally poor human rights records that you've happily shared with us on TO.

Dave

Mark Twain: Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.
- Innocents Abroad

James Somerville
Anchorage, AK

Always enjoy your pics and comments...

DavidP Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
>
> I guess your new found social conscience has
> developed since your own tourist visits to Russia,
> Zimbabwe, and other places with equally poor human
> rights records that you've happily shared with us
> on TO.
>
> Dave

Well, to be fair, Russia's ever-worsening human rights under Putin comes nowhere close to Zimbabwe or, especially, North Korea.

Plus I think it was just Ukraine he travelled to.......


To get back to trains - the streetcars in the photos are Czech-built Tatra T3s.....I think Pyongyang received some of the last ones produced in the late 80s. While elderly, well-maintained T3s can still be found across Czech Republic, Slovakia, maybe still a city or two in eastern Germany, and a handful of cities across the former USSR (with poorly maintained ones in a bunch more).

Interesting and rare pictures, thank you!

McKey Wrote:
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> Interesting and rare pictures, thank you!

Thanks. I wish I had more rail stuff but the two tours have been general interest tours and catching any rail action was just luck. Add to that US citizens are only allowed to fly in and out of the DPRK and can't take the train from Beijing you just don't get many chances to see rail related things. No doubt this will change. Maybe next year. I'm looking at doing a 21 day tour with Young Pioneer Tours that spends all but a couple days away from Pyongyang and includes a couple rail interest items and a domestic Air Koryo flight possibly on an Ilyushin Il-18 turboprop.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/22/14 20:33 by GettingShort.

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North Korea has solved the risk of Ebola coming into the country. They have stopped the flow of foreign tourists into the country for the time being. See http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2014/10/23/north-korea-ebola-bans-tourists/17762675/

Thanks for another fascinating report from a country seldomly talked about railroad-wise.

Yes, thanks very much.

Thank you so much for the pictures and insight into traveling in North Korea.

I have had fun using Google Earth to visit places like DPRK, Russia, Iran, etc.
(Does that make me a Walter Mitty spy?)

railstiesballast Wrote:
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> I have had fun using Google Earth to visit places
> like DPRK, Russia, Iran, etc.
> (Does that make me a Walter Mitty spy?)


Even more interesting is to visit those countries if you're in a position to travel a bit. Haven't traveled to Iran but it's on my list, by all accounts it's a very interesting and friendly place for even US citizens to visit, Young Pioneer Tours takes a couple groups every year so who knows. I'd really like to take the Trans-Asia Express from Ankara, Turkey to Tehran. It still includes a train ferry across Lake Van in Turkey, how many of those are there in the world? Now that sounds like a great three day train ride. If you are going a group in Iran it's possible even for US citizens.
The world is, even in this rotten time, an interesting place to travel around. One thing you figure out right away is 99% of the worlds people don't hate the US, hell they don't give us a second thought during their day, unless we have done something especially stupid or are about to bomb them. Otherwise we aren't on their radar. We need to get over ourselves. Probably half the world's people either have relatives in the US or have visited themselves. If you meet people on their terms with an open mind, as you would any time you're a guest in someones home the experience is great.
Most people in the world know they are badly governed, harassed by their government, abused by corporations and terrorized by the police and militaries and they expect, correctly so, that we are in the same shape, and like them in no position to really change things. So they rarely hold individual travelers responsible for any of that.

Yeah, people run behind you for different reasons, like in Russian countryside still living the Soviet period they might run behind you in the hopes of catching you for bribes. This has happened. Or earlier in Latvia for the same reason, even Police were in the same bribe chain. Or in Sweden they might walk after you for getting to talk with you and share experiences, this keeps happening all the time. In Finland people are mostly just too shy to say anything, they just stare at you. Or if they are from the monopoly operator VR they still think they own all land around tracks and try to conceal their rolling stock by telling you go away, has happened this year too ;) .

Please if you have time and money, take the Turkey route East and across the lake! I fear everything is chancing rapidly there as they have a huge high speed and other rail line building program going on and this route must be in Europe - China corridor to be finished one of these years. Obviously lake crossing would not work any more for a high volume container and some volume of fast passenger traffic. Maybe you could see some of their new disguised GE lcomotion too, or some of the EMDs. Or some Chinese originating trains? Besides, what do the Iranians run these days?


GettingShort Wrote:
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> Even more interesting is to visit those countries
> if you're in a position to travel a bit. Haven't
> traveled to Iran but it's on my list, by all
> accounts it's a very interesting and friendly
> place for even US citizens to visit, Young Pioneer
> Tours takes a couple groups every year so who
> knows. I'd really like to take the Trans-Asia
> Express from Ankara, Turkey to Tehran. It still
> includes a train ferry across Lake Van in Turkey,
> how many of those are there in the world? Now that
> sounds like a great three day train ride. If you
> are going a group in Iran it's possible even for
> US citizens.
> The world is, even in this rotten time, an
> interesting place to travel around. One thing you
> figure out right away is 99% of the worlds people
> don't hate the US, hell they don't give us a
> second thought during their day, unless we have
> done something especially stupid or are about to
> bomb them. Otherwise we aren't on their radar. We
> need to get over ourselves. Probably half the
> world's people either have relatives in the US or
> have visited themselves. If you meet people on
> their terms with an open mind, as you would any
> time you're a guest in someones home the
> experience is great.
> Most people in the world know they are badly
> governed, harassed by their government, abused by
> corporations and terrorized by the police and
> militaries and they expect, correctly so, that we
> are in the same shape, and like them in no
> position to really change things. So they rarely
> hold individual travelers responsible for any of
> that.

GettingShort Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The other young man was clearly deranged. He traveled
> to the DPRK with the intent of being thrown in prison so
> he could write a book. Most likely will be returned,
> though at least initially his family had no interest
> in having him returned, when the Korean's get tired of
> paying his room and board and figure out he scammed them.

The man hails from Bakersfield. I guess he figures life in a North Korean concentration camp might be an improvement over his life in Bakersfield.

And I may not take issue with him over that.

There was an interesting article in the LA TIMES recently about the increasing amount of tourism to North Korea. Don't visit there and then write something negative about the regime, or else the travel agency that took you there may get banished. From the article:

Western visitors must book their tours through an accredited company and be accompanied at all times by foreign and North Korean guides.

Between 2006 and 2012, Walter Keats led dozens of tours as president of Asia Pacific Travel. By 2012, after building trust with North Korean officials, Keats and his wife were permitted to lead groups year-round.

Then, without explanation, Keats and his wife were denied entry. He believes his blacklisting was punishment for organizing a tour for Adam Johnson, a professor of creative writing at Stanford University who was doing research for "The Orphan Master's Son," a novel set in North Korea that was awarded the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. The book contains an irreverent portrayal of the late leader Kim Jong Il, which may have upset the North Korean government.

"The way the [North Korean] system works, somebody has to get punished for any kind of transgression that takes place," Keats said.

Johnson said he has no way of knowing whether his novel was the cause of Keats' banishment. "I truly hope not. From my sense of it, everyone who deals with them eventually gets burned," he said in an email.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/27/14 03:26 by CA_Sou_MA_Agent.

McKey Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Yeah, people run behind you for different reasons,
> like in Russian countryside still living the
> Soviet period they might run behind you in the
> hopes of catching you for bribes. This has
> happened. Or earlier in Latvia for the same
> reason, even Police were in the same bribe chain.
> Or in Sweden they might walk after you for getting
> to talk with you and share experiences, this
> keeps happening all the time. In Finland people
> are mostly just too shy to say anything, they just
> stare at you. Or if they are from the monopoly
> operator VR they still think they own all land
> around tracks and try to conceal their rolling
> stock by telling you go away, has happened this
> year too ;) .
>
> Please if you have time and money, take the Turkey
> route East and across the lake! I fear everything
> is chancing rapidly there as they have a huge high
> speed and other rail line building program going
> on and this route must be in Europe - China
> corridor to be finished one of these years.
> Obviously lake crossing would not work any more
> for a high volume container and some volume of
> fast passenger traffic. Maybe you could see some
> of their new disguised GE lcomotion too, or some
> of the EMDs. Or some Chinese originating trains?
> Besides, what do the Iranians run these days?
>
>
The bit about Finland is funny and fits the impression of Finns from the few I've met. The most aggressive beggars and touts I've encountered were in Cambodia and Burma, but then I've never been to India and haven't visited North Africa or the Middle East sense my brief Hippy Trail days.
I agree the future of a service like the Trans-Asia is subject to change. That route and the new line to Georgia both figure in the new Silk Road ideas and are all bound to see change as China and Russia along with other countries along various routes seem to be getting serious.
Doesn't Iran build locomotives under license from GE? The have a fairly mature rail supply infrastructure so that wouldn't surprise me one bit and GE has a way of making sure sanctions don't apply to their transportation and energy business lines. Or Iran would do what the rest of the world does and just buy straight from China. Their passenger car builder, I believe, is working on a passenger car order from Vietnam as well as African and South American railways.

Well, here is something for you from Iran: http://www.railwaygazette.com/news/traction-rolling-stock/single-view/view/mapna-to-build-diesel-locos-under-licence.html

Vossloh has a joint venture to build diesel locos there now. Maybe GE too. I think there is a large GE factory in Kazakhstan "nearby" though. But I could not find the some years old news on East-West southern corridor through Iran. I think the capacity will be needed so maybe you could find out about this while traveling there?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/27/14 12:48 by McKey.