By Alek Sigley, founder of Tongil Tours and postgraduate student at Kim Il Sung University. Readers may be surprised to learn that Pyongyang has its own (unofficial) Heineken bar. I was most surprised too, especially given that I discovered it purely by chance. The story goes back to late April. It was the weekend and the weather was beginning to warm and myself and some of the other Kim Il Sung University foreign students wanted to take this opportunity to explore more of downtown Pyongyang. I had asked one of the veteran Chinese students (who had completed her undergraduate and was half way through her master’s– spending over six years in Pyongyang in total) for some restaurant recommendations. I jotted down her list, and on this particular weekend we voted to try out a Chinese-style hotpot restaurant near the Potonggang Ryugyong Shop (which sells a lot of high end imported… [Read More]

By Alek Sigley, founder of Tongil Tours and postgraduate student at Kim Il Sung University. This is a diary entry from Saturday the 19th of May, 2018. Today’s weather was beautiful. The temperature, warm, and the sky, perfectly blue and clear, and a deep, dark blue at the edges. Sometimes there’s a bit of white haze, presumably due to the coal plant, but today I couldn’t see any at all. The little white balls of fluff from the poplar trees were floating about everywhere, lending a magical atmosphere to outside. It was a perfect spring day. Victor (a Kim Il Sung University foreign student from France) and I decided to go for a walk in Moranbong Park, a huge park and forested area along the Taedong River in the centre of Pyongyang (Pyongyang’s Central Park perhaps?). We left at about 10:30am. We walked there from the dormitory, past the West… [Read More]

By Alek Sigley, founder of Tongil Tours and postgraduate student at Kim Il Sung University. This is a diary entry from the 5th of June, 2018. Today one of the tongsuksaeng (Korean students who lives in the Foreign Student Dormitory with us) took Victor (a French foreign student) and I outside. Victor’s wife is a South Korean fashion designer, and she asked Victor to get a Chima jeogori (traditional Korean women’s dress) tailored for her in Pyongyang. So our tongsuksaeng friend brought us to a tailor he insisted was “the best in Pyongyang”, the Sonbong Exhibition Exhibition Hall (선봉전시장). The three of us got into a car outside the dormitory. It seemed to be an unregistered taxi. The driver was friendly. He told us that he drives foreign language instructors to the classes they teach at the nearby Pyongyang University of Foreign Studies, which includes Italian and French teachers. This was… [Read More]

By Alek Sigley, founder of Tongil Tours and postgraduate student at Kim Il Sung University. In the stationery section of any store in Pyongyang you’ll likely find several different colourful notebook designs emblazoned with the above Mindulle (민들레; “dandelion”) logo. This is North Korea’s most prominent manufacturer of notebooks. The Mindulle factory has even been visited by Kim Jong Un in 2016 on one of his “on-the-spot-guidance” visits. Mindulle notebooks are reportedly distributed free of charge to students in kindergarten, elementary school, high school, and university. Thus they have become a motif in North Korean propaganda, representing the benevolent “love for the younger generation” (후대사랑) of the Party and the leaders. Mindulle notebooks can also be purchased in the stationery section of stores. Tourists can sometimes find them in the Kwangbok Department Store. When my classes at Kim Il Sung University began in April, I ended up picking up some… [Read More]

Continued from Part 1. The next bridge south down the Taedong River is the eponymous Taedong Bridge (대동강다리). It is located on the other side of Kim Il Sung Square and the Juche Tower to Okryu Bridge (the two bridges are an equidistant from the central axis that cuts through Kim Il Sung Square and leads to the Juche Tower). It was built in the 1920s by the Japanese imperial government which ruled Korea as a colony at the time. The next bridge to the south is the Yanggak Bridge (양각다리). This is the bridge that provides access to Yanggak Island, where the Yanggak Island International Hotel, the hotel where most foreign tourists stay, is located. After crossing this bridge from the east bank of the Taedong River, I ended up near Mirae Scientist’s Street. I decided to take a short detour and check out the area along the banks… [Read More]

By Alek Sigley, founder of Tongil Tours and postgraduate student at Kim Il Sung University. This post is from my first semester at Kim Il Sung University (April-July 2018). Ever since arriving in Pyongyang at the beginning of April, I had wanted to get a bicycle. Not only would a bicycle save me time on my journey to class and back home to the dormitory, it would in the long run also save me money when going to other parts of the city, as taxis were a bit expensive (largely due to the fact that sanctions make fuel expensive). Cycling would also be a great way to see and explore more parts of Pyongyang, and allow me to go much further afield than on foot. So in late May I went with two other students in the Kim Il Sung University Foreign Student Dormitory, Xai from Laos and Han Sol… [Read More]

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]

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]

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]

By Alek Sigley, Tongil Tours founder and postgraduate student at Kim Il Sung University. One of the perks of being a student in Pyongyang is that you can pretty much go wherever you want inside Pyongyang, with few restrictions and without the need for a guide to accompany you. I had previously travelled to Pyongyang about a dozen times with tour groups, but after exploring the city on foot after coming to Kim Il Sung University, I was able to see a whole other side to the city. There’s a multitude of shops, restaurants, and leisure facilities, as well as interesting and unique architecture to discover walking the city, many of which are not accessible to tourists and people visiting Pyongyang on short term stays. While tourists are generally able to see the city along its main streets and thoroughfares, we are able to go inside its blocks and go… [Read More]