---
type: Video
title: "First Tourist in North Korea’s Capital After 5 Years 🇰🇵"
description: Getting into a country that is still closed, by registering as a marathon runner — then two days of Pyongyang on a guided itinerary, including the metro encounter that the guides visibly stage.
tags: [north-korea, dprk, pyongyang, guided-tour, propaganda, metro, marathon, authoritarian-states]
timestamp: 2026-08-05T20:00:00Z
resource: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUmEcL3Feo0
video_id: TUmEcL3Feo0
upload_date: 2025-04-09
duration: 1633
---

# First Tourist in North Korea’s Capital After 5 Years 🇰🇵

The **first** video of the [North Korea](/countries/north-korea.md) trip — the
arrival and the first two days in [Pyongyang](/places/pyongyang.md), before the
marathon day covered in
[I Ignored Western Media and Went to North Korea 🇰🇵](/videos/GJBeJGf6syc.md).

The premise is the access. North Korea's borders had been sealed for five years,
opened for about two weeks, and closed again; Harry gets in by registering for
the Pyongyang Marathon, which makes him a competing athlete rather than a
tourist. He says on camera that he is not a tourist and that tourism is still
closed, and that he has never run a marathon in his life.

What follows is a guided itinerary — the founders' monument, the metro, the
Workers' Party monument, a bar — filmed under four rules he recites to camera.
The most valuable material is the part where the management of the visit becomes
visible: on the metro the guides physically bring people over to be talked to,
and Harry, who has just told the camera that these are real people rather than
paid actors, watches it happen and says so. See
[expect a script on camera](/tips/expect-a-script-on-camera.md).

*Obs: the subtitles are auto-generated and render proper nouns very unreliably —
the leaders' names, the beer, the monuments. Names are used below only where the
video is unambiguous; the local beer brand is described rather than named,
because the transcript gives it three different spellings.*

*Obs: the video carries an eSIM sponsorship read and a travel debit card link in
the description; neither provider is recorded here. The description also credits
several other travel creators on the trip.*

## Key moments

- [00:30] **Why this trip is unusual**: five years of sealed borders, a two-week
  reopening, then closed again without warning.
- [01:00] **He states the problem with the format up front** — North Korean tours
  are built as controlled experiences, and filming freely will be difficult.
- [01:31] **"I am not a tourist. I am a runner."** He enters as a registered
  competitor in the Pyongyang Marathon, having never run one.
- [02:02] A five-day tour with a group of over 200, some running and some not.
- [02:32] **Arrival.** Long bag searches and a lot of questions, which he
  describes as thorough and friendly; a great deal of military around, and
  constant uncertainty about what he may film.
- [03:35] **The first impression contradicts the expectation**: clean, grand,
  quiet — with propaganda visible from the moment they leave the airport.
- [04:06] **No Wi-Fi and no data for visitors.** North Koreans have phones and a
  censored internal network; the guide describes TV, newspapers and online
  shopping on it as a growing sector.
- [04:06] **The history as Harry gives it**: the DPRK established in 1948 after
  the Second World War, isolated after the Korean War, three generations of the
  Kim family, an ideology of self-reliance — and, in his words, a country that
  cannot in practice survive without trade with China and Russia.
- [04:36] [Cameron Mofid](/people/cameron-mofid.md), who has been to every country
  in the world, says he has never been more shocked than by how good this city
  looks — and gets a joke at Harry's home town in return.
- [05:08] In the hotel, a photograph of the leader's visit, with a line on the
  floor you are not to cross.
- [05:38] **The hotel room**, which he tours at length: 1970s throughout, found
  already unlocked, a fixture on the wall he can't identify and jokes about, a bed
  he compares to concrete, real plants, a balcony, a thermometer reading 22°, and
  an old bathroom that works. His verdict is that it's a good hotel.
- [07:13] **The city was rebuilt from nothing.** Everything visible is about sixty
  years old, because the city was destroyed by bombing in the war.
- [07:43] Morning two, and the balcony view is a factory.
- [08:15] **The four rules**, recited from memory: don't leave your guide, no
  photographs without asking, no disrespecting the leaders, no distributing
  religious material.
- [08:45] **Flowers for $5** to lay at the monument.
- [09:23] **The founders' monument**, the most sacred site in the country: statues
  of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il, flanked by monuments to the independence
  struggle against Japan. The statues have been altered over the years to look
  more smiling, and don't closely resemble the men.
- [09:53] **He names his own nerves and then questions them** — that he expects
  consequences for any mistake, and that this may be a preconception the coverage
  put there rather than anything in front of him.
- [10:24] **A local on what the monument is for**: whole families come on national
  holidays and birthdays, and it is a proud occasion.
- [10:54] The same person on the leaders: he remembers Kim Jong-il, who died when
  he was 13; he has been photographed with Kim Jong-un in a group, and describes
  feeling drawn to him whenever he appeared.
- [11:26] **Self-reliance explained as a personal ethic** rather than a state
  policy: when something fails, you look for the reason in yourself and overcome
  it by your own effort, and children are raised to do it.
- [12:27] What he wants a visitor to understand: that the leader is the source of
  the people's strength, and that those who have met him are envied. Harry's
  contrast is that British politicians change too often to know.
- [13:58] **The metro** — described as the deepest in the world, and a fare of
  around 100 won, which he calls next to nothing.
- [14:59] **"These are not paid actors, these are real people."** Said with
  evident relief at being able to film freely.
- [15:29] **And then the mingling is staged.** Told to mingle with locals, he
  notices no locals are turning round; the guides then bring people over. He names
  what is happening on camera, with the joke that they have now created the
  actors — and doesn't push it further.
- [17:36] Soviet-feeling platforms: mosaics, a statue of the leader inside the
  station, and carriages he is told were built in Germany.
- [18:09] **A 19-year-old talks to him properly**, which he calls the best
  interaction he got.
- [18:39] The platform newspaper display turns out to be international news —
  Japan, Russia, Iran.
- [19:09] Being hurried on, which he attributes to six years without tourists
  rather than to secrecy.
- [19:44] **The Monument to the Workers' Party** — hammer, sickle and calligraphy
  brush, for workers, farmers and intellectuals.
- [20:15] **The turn.** He says he came with bad preconceptions and is starting to
  change his mind, and reaches for the line the trip ends on:
  [a government and its people are not the same thing](/tips/separate-a-government-from-its-people.md).
- [21:16] **On how clean it is**, at length and unfavourably to British cities.
- [21:48] **And then he argues the other side himself** — that he is being shown
  what they want him to see, that this may be one curated district — before noting
  they have driven and walked a lot of it.
- [22:18] **A bar on a Friday night** and the city's own beer.
- [22:48] **A brand-new street named after an intercontinental ballistic
  missile**, which he is told is a source of pride because of its range.
- [23:18] **The beer is brewed on British equipment** — a UK brewery went bankrupt
  and its plant was bought and shipped over. He is also told the leader has been
  to this bar three times.
- [24:19] Cameron breaks a glass, and the group leaves.
- [24:50] Walking the new street: a screen blaring at enormous volume, and
  balconies that are all empty with no lights on. He asks aloud why the buildings
  seem unoccupied and gets no answer.
- [25:21] **The line he was given on arrival**, which he confirms: you come with
  hundreds of questions and leave with thousands.
- [25:51] **His verdict on day two**: he judges a country by its people rather
  than its government, and the North Koreans have been friendly and kind.
- [26:23] **The qualification that makes it usable** — he has had many good
  conversations off camera, and people freeze the moment a camera comes out. He
  says it is the nature of the place and that the real conversations have to
  happen offline.

## Pages from this video

- [North Korea](/countries/north-korea.md)
- [Pyongyang](/places/pyongyang.md)
- [Cameron Mofid](/people/cameron-mofid.md)
- [Expect a script on camera](/tips/expect-a-script-on-camera.md)