Did you have any interaction with everyday North Korean citizens which you felt wasn't simulated and, if so, how did that pan out?
Interaction with lots of citizens but as I've mentioned before, with most of them not speaking English and me not speaking Korean it's going to be as limited as in any other foreign country where there's a language barrier. Also - how do we define 'everyday' citizens? Those in the fields, those cutting the grass verges with scissors in Pyongyang, the staff in the department stores and stamp centre, your own guides, museum guides, raw military recruits, schoolkids, staff at bars, in restaurants, hotel staff... Other than the very youngest children, who knows to what degree they are truly subscribed to, believe in their system and so, by extension, are acting (or not)?
I don't want to detail many of the interactions for reasons I've already mentioned but let's just say that some people dropped big hints that they know that the system isn't all it's cracked up to be.
Most of the personal interaction seemed to be honest and from the heart. The only time I recall hearing someone really struggling with the official line was the poor young army girl guiding us around the Victorious Fatherland Liberation War Museum. When she started her long account of what happened and was met with blank, disbelieving or just pitiful faces (and presumably gets the same reaction from all outsiders, bar
maybe some Chinese) she certainly seemed to be struggling. I couldn't tell if she was just a little exasperated that she does that day in, day out and feels no one believes her or because she is well enough informed to know that the story she tells isn't true (or at least is accepted to be inaccurate by most of the outside world). Top marks for persevering with the story though.
There were other awkward moments in museums/on visits when you ask a suitable question (much of the storyline in a lot of these places doesn't stand up well, if at all, to any rational analysis) and then the guides huddle together in a mild panic for several minutes trying to cook up an answer (whilst you scratch your bum, gaze at the ceiling, make faces at the young recruits to see if they'll crack), as if they've never been asked similar questions before. As in other places (eg the FBI museum in DC) there are also exhibits in museums that the guides ignore but those objects tell their own story to those with sufficient information to piece it together. I enjoyed playing spot the Stalinesque revisional antique-photoshop image manipulation in some of the museums. In fact a lot of it wasn't very subtle.
All of the contact was interesting, intriguing even, fun and some downright hilarious. At times you had to bite your lip as you were screaming with laughter inside (situations could be so comically strange) but you didn't want to be confined to your hotel room (at best), let alone risk a free trip to a re-education camp (some foreigners have been imprisoned for openly cracking jokes about the Dear Leader, albeit for a few days or so then thrown out of the country).
The DPRK was everything I imagined it could be and more. All very surreal (for an outsider), somewhat kafkaesque. Orwell meets Gilliam's Brazil meets the Truman Show; as I've said, it felt like you were in a Python sketch sometimes, the bizarre logic that you were subjected to...
Met some beautiful, geniune people, but sometimes you could almost cry for them. It was one of the most amazing places I've ever visited (and I've been to some odd ones) with memories that make me smile time every time. But ultimately it's quite hard to really convey the true nature of the place to anyone who has not been there - you just have to go there and experience it yourself (ironically, perhaps, it is probably one of the safest countries in the world for tourists).
The whole country is a complete mindfuck. But a very beautiful one.
