By Alek Sigley, founder of Tongil Tours and postgraduate student at Kim Il Sung University. In this post I’d like to introduce the Kim Il Sung University Foreign Student Dormitory (류학생숙소), which was my home for the previous (and current) semester. I won’t be discussing the rooms, since I did that in this previous post on my arrival in Pyongyang. But I will go over the rest of the building and its facilities so you can get some idea of what it’s like to live there. The dormitory is a 12 storey building that was built along with the rest of Ryomyong Street and opened in early 2017. There are service facilities located on the 1st (ground), 2nd, and 3rd floors. Some of these are accessible by Koreans from the outside. Foreign student rooms are located on the 4th to the 8th floors. Above that there are more rooms but… [Read More]
Archives for September 2018
Attending 70th Anniversary DPRK National Day Events as a Kim Il Sung University Foreign Student
By Alek Sigley, founder of Tongil Tours and postgraduate student at Kim Il Sung University. The 9th of September marked the 70th anniversary of the 1948 founding of the DPRK state. 70th anniversaries are usually celebrated with even more fanfare than usual in Korea, and we foreign students were lucky to receive invitations to three important events held over the 9th and 10th of September. Namely; the military parade and Pyongyang citizen’s parade held on the morning of Sunday the 9th of September, the first performance of “The Glorious Country” (빛나는 조국), the new mass games and successor to the Arirang Mass Games on the evening of the 9th, and the torch parade during the evening of Monday the 10th of September. We were given relatively little notice about the events until the day itself. We knew they would be happening but were unsure of whether only a select few… [Read More]
Back in the DPRK
By Alek Sigley, founder of Tongil Tours and postgraduate student at Kim Il Sung University. This is a quick update for readers of my blog. First off, I’d like to apologise for the lack of new content recently. But more is on the way soon! I had summer break from mid-July until the end of August, during which, as mentioned in a previous post, I stayed with my wife in Tokyo. Late August was especially hectic as my parents visited Japan to meet my wife’s family for the first time. While they were here I took them sightseeing to some of the must-see spots in Japan. So there you have it, I’ve become a tour guide for not only North Korea (and South Korea too occasionally), but Japan now too! We went to Tokyo Skytree to enjoy a stunning view of Tokyo with Mount Fuji looming in the distance. Then… [Read More]
