Day 5 - b) film studios, stamp shop, Henry Rollins

Wednesday September 8, 2010

We had a packed afternoon schedule so had just 45 minutes of rest at the hotel before we were due on the bus. However on the bus Tim was missing... A furious call up to his room revealed he had fallen asleep. He boarded the group B bus to a Bronx cheer.

Our first port of call was the Korean Film Studios. We inspected the outdoor sets, with streets dedicated to such themes as ancient Korea, Japan in the 1930s, South Korea in the 1930s, China, and the Korean countryside. On the ancient Korea set tourists had the opportunity to dress up in period costumes:

Tour members dressed in period costumes.

Walking onto the South Korean movie set.

After inspecting the sets we were led to an editing theatre to view some short North Korean films. From what I could ascertain one of them was an emotional 60th birthday party, and another espoused the benefits of potato production. Good stuff.

Just outside the stamp shop. Make of this what you will.

Next stop was the stamp shop. The 20 metres of footpath between our bus and the shop was our first experience of walking on the streets of Pyongyang. A visit to a stamp shop would be mundane in any other country, but the colourful North Korean propaganda made for good souvenir shopping. In fact the staff at the shop were overwhelmed and many people missed out on their purchases as we ran out of time. Posters and postcards were popular, as were the "See you in Pyongyang" t-shirts.

After shopping we were driven to the area near the Mansudae Grand Monument and the Chollima Statue for a short city walk. Unfortunately this part of the city was not all that busy (perhaps that was the plan) but nevertheless it was nice to walk amongst the locals.

It was during this walk that we had our first Henry Rollins sighting! Rollins was on a private trip arranged by Koryo Tours and steamed past us in an abrasive manner cursing and muttering something about running into other tourists. His Korean guides could hardly keep up with him as he marched past on some sort of a mission. I guess Rollins expected Pyongyang to be the one place in the world where he could be anonymous, so was bitterly disappointed to run into other westerners! This was not the last we would see of the American singer/songwriter/poet.