Inside North Korea

Tourists to the world's most secretive nation should not expect any privacy, writes an anonymous source in the Times. If you're allowed in at all, you'll find that wherever you go, you're "watched carefully by official guides", who report your every move to the secret police. People stare openly at the sight of a Westerner: the only time you're alone is in your hotel room. Everything about Pyongyang is "built on a giant scale": the concrete housing blocks, the parade squares, the empty 10-lane motorway. Official tours (which you have to join to get in) incorporate trips to factories and acrobatic shows, and involve eating mediocre food and bowing before "endless monuments" to Kim Il-Sung. On Mount Myohyang, the International Friendship Exhibition displays gifts from "ragbag despots" including Gaddafi, Castro and Mugabe: it seems ironic to be celebrating international friendship in a country whose citizens are forbidden to travel abroad.

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