By Alek Sigley, Tongil Tours founder and postgraduate student at Kim Il Sung University. While exploring Ryomyong Street with Han Sol, a Korean Canadian in his 3rd year of undergraduate at Kim Il Sung University, and Sasha, a Korean Uzbek on short term exchange for the summer from his university in Moscow, I discovered this beautifully decorated musical instrument shop. Located in the lotus flower-shaped Green Architecture IT Center (록색건축기술교류사) just above Miniso, it is named the Ryongnamsan (룡남산) Shop, after one of the DPRK instrument brands it stocks (perhaps it is run by the company much in the same manner as the May the 1st Stadium brand specialty store, which is situated not too far away). But it sells other local instrument brands, as well as imported items such as Yamaha equipment. The manager of the store came out and greeted us enthusiastically, chatting with us, asking where we… [Read More]

By Alek Sigley, Tongil Tours founder and postgraduate student at Kim Il Sung University. In North Korea there’s a brand that specialises in ice cream and bottled drinks that is as far as I can tell, much loved by local people. It uses one of the country’s most recognisable architectural landmarks for its name and logo– the May the 1st Stadium, where North Korea’s famous mass gymnastics celebrations are held. The May the 1st Stadium (5월1일경기장) brand manufactures its products in its own plant, and sells them in shops and snack stalls all over the country, as well as in a newly-opened specialty store on Ryomyong Street, on the other end of the road from the Kim Il Sung University Foreign Student Dormitory. According to the Choson Shinbo newspaper, the May 1st Stadium brand began in 2006 as a work unit within the stadium itself, where the Arirang Mass Games… [Read More]

By Alek Sigley, Tongil Tours founder and postgraduate student at Kim Il Sung University. This past semester I had class every Monday, Tuesday and Friday at 2:30 in the afternoon. It took me about twenty minutes to walk to my classes in Building No. 3 of Kim Il Sung University from my room in the Foreign Student Dormitory. Here I will go through photos of my thrice a week journey explaining what I saw along the way. I’ll start from after having just left the dormitory, since I plan to introduce the dormitory itself in a separate post later. At about 2pm each class day, I put my notebooks, textbooks, printouts and stationary into my backpack and exit the dormitory. There’s a small car park area that usually has a taxi or two waiting around for customers and several stalls (매대). On the right there is a “Refreshing Drinks” (청량음료)… [Read More]

By Alek Sigley, Tongil Tours founder and postgraduate student at Kim Il Sung University. I just wanted to give a little update to the readers of this blog, and at the same time apologise for the lack of new posts the past couple of weeks. I’ve already completed my first semester at Kim Il Sung University, and returned to my wife’s apartment in Tokyo, where I’ve been since mid-July. It was kind of an intense experience leaving Pyongyang after being there for three and a half months straight. Suddenly I was able to use the internet to my heart’s content, eat foods which I’d almost forgotten the flavour of, be outside past 9pm (we had a curfew in the dormitory), use a credit card, see and use vending machines, purchase from a 24 hour convenience store, and be surrounded by advertisements, foreign tourists, and people wearing diverse fashions. This was… [Read More]

By Alek Sigley, Tongil Tours founder and postgraduate student at Kim Il Sung University. While living in Seoul for two and a half years I came to much love the South Korean take on American fried chicken. This is known as “chimaek” (치맥). The “chi” is short for “chicken”, and the “maek” comes from “maekchu” (맥주), which means beer. It is called so because the fried chicken is usually eaten as a side dish (anju) to beer. Some sour pickled white radish, cut into cubes and served with the tangy pickle juice, completes the holy trinity. The fried chicken itself is often the “original” (후라이드), unseasoned and unsauced style, served with some tomato sauce (ketchup) and mustard. But other popular styles with more of a Korean twist include the yangnyom chicken, which is covered in red Korean chilli sauce (gochuchang), soy sauce chicken (kanjang chicken), which is marinated in soy… [Read More]

By Alek Sigley, Tongil Tours founder and postgraduate student at Kim Il Sung University. This is a Diary Entry from Sunday the 17th of June, 2018 After sleeping in a bit, I went down at about 11am to find Han Sol, my Korean-Canadian friend in the Foreign Student Dormitory who is completing his undergraduate degree at Kim Il Sung University. It was a Sunday and to break routine, we had decided to go outside somewhere that neither of us had been for lunch. I had heard of a restaurant that had kaiten (conveyor belt) sushi, so I got the name from friends so that I could tell the taxi driver to take us there. Taeposan Restaurant (대보산식당) it’s called. We went outside to hunt for a taxi. Being Sunday, a lot of people were outside relaxing. In our neighbourhood we saw two pet dogs. First a tiny puppy with a… [Read More]

By Alek Sigley, postgraduate student at Kim Il Sung University It’s been over a week since the historic Singapore summit between the leaders of North Korea and the United States of America. As a short follow-up to the last post I’d like to share some further thoughts and impressions in relation to the meeting that have come to me since publishing the previous post. On Thursday last week (the 14th of June) I came back to my room in the Kim Il Sung University Foreign Student Dormitory rather late after visiting a friend in the diplomatic compound. I had ridden my bicycle to East Pyongyang and back and on the way there, it rained heavily. I had a set of rain clothes but used the pants to cover my backpack which I placed in the bicycle’s basket, so I ended up soaked! After visiting my friend and attending to some… [Read More]

By Alek Sigley, postgraduate student at Kim Il Sung University This Tuesday all the world’s eyes were on Singapore as it became the venue for history’s first meeting between a leader of the DPRK and a sitting US president, namely, between North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un and President of the United States of America Donald Trump. As a foreign student at Kim Il Sung University, I could see that there was intense interest in the summit among Pyongyang locals, who followed the extensive domestic media coverage of events with keen interest. In the lead up to the summit some of the Korean students in the dormitory (tongsuksaeng) had asked me what the foreign media was saying about the summit. I had started receiving the text of media articles about the summit from friends on WhatsApp (I only have internet on my phone at the moment and can browse the… [Read More]

By Alek Sigley, Tongil Tours founder and postgraduate student at Kim Il Sung University. This is a diary entry from Saturday May the 12th, 2018 There’s not a lot of events for foreigners to attend in Pyongyang, so when the foreign community does get together to organise its own activities there’s active participation and solid attendance. On Saturday May the 12th I went with some of the other students of Kim Il Sung University to an event held at the Russian embassy. The event was an international food fair for charity organised by the Pyongyang International Women’s Association. Proceeds went to supporting nurseries in rural North Korea. Each participating country had its own stall selling drinks, snacks, and knickknacks. I saw stalls for Cuba, Egypt, India, Iran, Laos, Romania, Russia and Vietnam. It was a nice, diverse, crowd, and I met attendees from Germany, France, and Canada there too. The… [Read More]

By Alek Sigley, Tongil Tours founder and postgraduate student at Kim Il Sung University. My wife Yuka and I held our wedding in Pyongyang on May the 4th. We weren’t entirely sure of what to expect, but the wedding turned out extremely well. A few years back our Korean business partner, a good friend of ours, suggested that if we get married we hold our ceremony in Pyongyang. Years later we’ve finally made that happen! See this opinion piece I wrote for Independent Australian for more of the back story. I want to write a full blog post with pictures, but I haven’t got the photos from the guests yet, and that’s presently a little hard for me to do in my current internet situation. There’s also a specially made video. I will share those in the summer when I leave the DPRK for my summer break. But for now,… [Read More]