These are the photos from my last 24 hours in North Korea.

After departing a kindergarten song-and-dance performance in Nampo, our tour bus took off on the road back to Pyongyang. It looked like a dystopian Oz, if the Yellow Brick Road had been bombed.

Mr. Hang, our tour guide, kept our spirits up on the bumpy ride by telling us we’d be treated to a professional singing performance later, among other “surprises.”

Our first stop in Pyongyang was the Okryugwan Restaurant, a famous cold noodle restaurant highly touted by Mr. Hang. It was overlooking the river with delicious, slurpy noodles, and soju, or Korean rice wine. The only other patrons in the restaurant wore dark, tieless suits, looking rather like commanders on the Death Star.

I generally frown upon food porn, but these noodles were a work of art.

On the way out of the restaurant, a couple of us guys were allowed to finish some large bottled beers. It was quite exhilarating to drink a beer outside on a mild, breezy day in Pyongyang. Even in America, it isn’t easy to drink outside.

Next we were scheduled to see the most famous monuments of the Kims. The tour bus drove further into the city, on what were normally clear streets. But today, it was flooded with people, all milling about downtown.

Mr. Hang was shaken by this development. He stared wide-eyed, nervous, rubbing his head and looking tense. After conferring with Ms. Jeon and Jessica, the other North Korean and German tour guides, respectively, it was determined that we would have to walk to our destination.

A little elated from the lunchtime beers and soju, Mr. Hang’s obvious discomfort did not have the unsettling effect on me, a tourist in North Korea, as it should have had. Stepping off the tour bus back into the warm sunshine, I said hello to a nearby North Korean family, staring at us in shock. They smiled in response. In a moment the entire block was gawking at us.

Mr. Hang nervously insisted we stick extremely close to him. No daylight could exist between us. I hadn’t seen him so uncomfortable since soldiers sat on the bus with us. Through an alleyway across the street, through throngs of people occupying the remaining space, we could see a block of red.

It soon became obvious what we would have to cut through to reach our destination. Mr. Hang reiterated his demands to us as we emerged on the other side of the alleyway.

There were 10,000 people parked in the street, with 20,000 eyes rapidly flicking onto us. Evidently they were between practice sessions of a military parade for the nation’s leadership.

You could have heard a pin drop 100 feet away as we navigated a small path through the assembled mass of people. No one seemed interested in budging an inch for us. Nobody reciprocated my Korean pardons and apologies.  No one whispered a word.  Not a single smile.  All stared.  Perhaps they were practicing some hostile demonstrations today.

It was quite a relief to make it to the green on the opposite side of the street, as the massed Koreans slowly lost interest in us and Mr. Hang lifted his moratorium on photos.

Walking on toward our destination, I could not help but notice the awkward lawns in front of the high-rise buildings, without ground floor shops or billboards, restaurant signs or corporate logos. In the center of the city, it was bizarre, commercially speaking.  It was the blank slate of a nation without capitalism.

Then we walked by here:

“What’s this building?” I asked Ms. Jeon.

“That is the Korean Parliament building,” she answered.

“What does the parliament do in [North] Korea?” I asked.

“I think the same as in your country,” she answered.  O_O

Up the hill, we reached our destination:

This is the Mansudae Grand Monument.  These statues, we were told, were the “holiest” site in North Korea.

Newly married couples often come here for “blessings” and “good luck,” Mr. Hang explained. And when Kims died in 1994 and 2011, this area was swarmed with mourners.

Behind us, the massive court opened up toward Pyongyang, rolling down steps a mile away toward the Worker’s Party Monument. The city was meticulously arranged around its monuments in a manner not unlike Washington, D.C.

Once again, Kim Il-sung’s polished suit and grandfatherly smile belies the legendary horrors of his half-century of rule over the people of North Korea.

I couldn’t help but ask the tour guides why Kim Jong-il was depicted so casually, while his father, like most world leaders, donned a suit.  There can’t be many bronze sculptures of ski coats in the world.  They explained simply that this was his style. The question of why a world leader would dress like a teenager on his way to comic-con turned into sarcasm: “Here, we are far north of the equator. Sometimes it is cold.” I had entered a loop, and an explanation was not forthcoming.

In my recollection of public photos of Kim Jong-il, smiling was not his style either.

His mother died when he was six.  Reports suggest both his father and son are more revered than he, for his rule was marked by a devastating famine.  He was seldom seen smiling – he has a colder image than his father or son.  Kim Jong-il could never be a normal politician.  It’s easy to imagine his father treating him cruelly, viewing his son’s flaws as a threat to his legacy.  Considering all this with some armchair psychology, a more complete picture of Kim Jong-il starts to come into focus, regardless of the efforts of state media: an angry, bitter, social misfit, who would wear a ski coat to a diplomatic event, and airlift lobster to himself while his nation starved.

These are ultimately just my theories. But in North Korea, two narratives come into focus – the impossible one they feed you, and the one you build for yourself.

The next stop was another short walk, to the Korean War Museum, or Final Fatherland Liberation War Museum.

The museum was a bizarre, heavily propagandized experience. There were egregious displays and provocative, falsified dispositions about the course and nature of the Korean War. I recommend reading my post about it here.

From the hill on which sat the museum, we were carted by bus down to the riverfront to see the Worker’s Party Monument. The hammer, sickle, and brush represent the three pillars of Kim Il-sung’s brand of Korean communism: the hammer for workers, the sickle for farmers, and the brush for intellectuals.

The monuments face the leaders from across an expanse of the centrally designed capital. According to the tour guides, the message they intended to convey was, long live the party, and long live the leaders, the two inseparable elements of the North Korean state.

Why are these elements so inseparable? This I asked to Ms. Jeon, who responded that because “one created the other,” they cannot ever be separated, and further, of Kim Il-sung, ““He is our leader. We are his children.”

And the party was the script.

The views within the capital were undeniably imposing, undergirded only by the acknowledgement that the resources that built it were taken from the mouths and homes of Korean people.

Nearby, in a news and print shop, was the last blast of propaganda the state would throw at us.  Pictures were forbidden again.  There were photos and newspapers adorning the walls, of the Kims with various world leaders. Many were recognizable, including President Jimmy Carter. Perhaps the North Koreans sought to display their leaders as world-renowned heroes.

The detrimental effect here was the last portrait, of Kim Jong-un, not with any great world leader, but nonetheless with perhaps the greatest foreign dignitary to have graced the young Marshal with his presence:

There was one more great adventure thereafter, to Pyongyang’s only beer bar.  It was easily the most exciting moment of the trip – the bar is no exhibit.  It was packed with North Korean elites, mixing and socializing before the Seventh Congress of the Workers’ Party was set to begin.

The bar included some socializing between the North Koreans and the visiting travelers, culminating in a drinking contest between this boxer and myself:

Who emerged victorious? Read the story here to find out!

Dinner was another bulgoggi barbecue.  The last night in North Korea for this Koryo Tours group included hanging out on top of the freakishly tall Yangakkdo Hotel, sharing drinks with fellow travelers.  Perhaps it was the bonding effect of such a unique and dramatic experience, or maybe it was just a really great group, but we all got along very well.  The conversations we had throughout the week were increasingly rich, diverse, unfiltered, thrilling.  The North Koreans probably have a recording of them somewhere… I wish I did too.

The next day, we bussed through a city full of propaganda song and proclamation, breezed through security and flew back to China.

Less than 24 hours after holding court in a Pyongyang beerhall (seriously, read that story), I was stamped back into Beijing.

I proceeded through the gate into the airport. In front of me blared signs for a KFC and a Starbucks. With little exception, they were the first corporate logos I’d seen in a week. Busy, rude people stormed past in every direction. In a few more days, I’d be back in Japan.  I was back.

With a sigh, I headed for the subway.

More photos:

Thank you for reading my posts on North Korea.  All photos property of Gregory A Nasif unless otherwise specified.  Email with any questions: [email protected].

@gregnasif