First published at NK News on the 16th of January, 2019. By Alek Sigley, founder of Tongil Tours and postgraduate student at Kim Il Sung University. A recently-produced glossy points to changing trends in the DPRK I’ve recently had a few North Korean fashion magazines come into my possession. These magazines cannot be found in any of the bookstores in Pyongyang that are intended for foreigners, such as the bookstores inside the international hotels or the specialist foreign languages bookstores such as the one on Kim Il Sung Square. They can be purchased from roadside book stalls, or ones attached to subway stations, and other such places that foreigners generally do not frequent. This, to some extent, supports their authenticity as documents which provide a measure of insight into everyday life and fashion culture in the DPRK. They speak of the continued development of the country’s consumer economy, and the emergence… [Read More]

First published at NK News on the 10th of January, 2019. By Alek Sigley, founder of Tongil Tours and postgraduate student at Kim Il Sung University. “I’ve had many unique experiences, experiences of a kind nobody has really written about before” Greetings NK News readers! My name is Alek. I’m an Australian postgraduate student at Kim Il Sung University, North Korea’s top university. Some of you may have already seen my blog about my life as a foreign student in North Korea, From Perth to Pyongyang, which I started in April last year on the website of my tour company, Tongil Tours. Or perhaps you’ve seen me on Twitter, where since November I’ve been tweeting about my experiences under @AlekSigley. I’m very excited to announce that from now on my posts will debut on NK News, bringing them to a whole new audience on the internet’s best place for North… [Read More]

By Alek Sigley, founder of Tongil Tours and postgraduate student at Kim Il Sung University. This is a diary entry from the 24th of September, 2018 It was the traditional Korean autumn harvest festival of Chusok (also commonly referred to as Han’gawi/한가위 in the North) today and all we Kim Il Sung University foreign students had a day off from class, so we decided to go out, have lunch and explore the city a bit. This time Erik (a newly arrived foreign student at Kim Il Sung University from Sweden) and I are joined by two of the Chinese students on a one-year long exchange program funded by their government. We end up spending a pleasant afternoon eating an excellent lunch in one of Pyongyang’s best restaurants and exploring a part of downtown Pyongyang with colourful and unique architecture that is seldom visited by foreigners. Around noon, we ride the… [Read More]

By Alek Sigley, founder of Tongil Tours and postgraduate student at Kim Il Sung University.  Earlier this semester Howard (my South Korean-Canadian friend who studies his undergraduate degree at Kim Il Sung University) and I were excited to discover three locally produced breakfast cereals in the supermarket we frequent near the Foreign Student Dormitory. To the best of our knowledge, these are the first breakfast cereals ever produced in the DPRK. They were cheap and would provide us with a good alternative to the tasteless gruel offered for breakfast in the dormitory. We’ll review each of these and three more in turn. But first a little background. The cereals are made by the Kyŏnghŭng company, which produces a range of snacks including biscuits, chocolates, cakes, instant noodles and crisps, as well as beer. Kyŏnghŭng also runs several snack stalls across the centre of Pyongyang and a carwash near Kwangbok Street…. [Read More]

By Alek Sigley, founder of Tongil Tours and postgraduate student at Kim Il Sung University. On Saturday the 15th of September I got together with some of the Chinese exchange students at Kim Il Sung University to go and try the Corn Specialty Restaurant (강냉이 제품전시장) in East Pyongyang. The result is what will be the corniest of my blog posts yet. Located not far from the diplomatic compound, the restaurant features a shop on the first floor that sells a large variety of corn-based snacks, and a 2nd floor restaurant that specialises in dishes that feature corn as an ingredient. While culturally Koreans prefer rice, the DPRK state has put great effort into promoting corn and potato-based foods, since these grow easier in the North’s cold climate and mountainous terrain. Every district of Pyongyang has its own corn specialty restaurant, but these are generally not open to foreigners. This… [Read More]

By Alek Sigley, founder of Tongil Tours and postgraduate student at Kim Il Sung University. As mentioned previously, Kim Il Sung University is located in a prime location. It, and the Foreign Student Dormitory we live in are on one end of Ryomyong (“dawn”) Street, the DPRK’s most recent large-scale residential construction project. This project renovated the street with a host of new apartments, including the tallest apartment block in the country, the 70 Storey Apartment (70층짜리 아빠트), and space for scores of shops and restaurants. In this post I’m going to introduce some of the more interesting shops and restaurants I discovered during my first semester at Kim Il Sung University (April-July 2018). Most of these are down the other end of the street from the dormitory, by the 70 Storey Apartment. I’ll omit the ones I’ve already talked about, but you can read about them in the separate… [Read More]

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]