Football with the Dear Leader

So it all started one day at work back in September 2003.  I was reading the news on the BBC website, and was interested to see an article there written by a journalist who had just filmed a documentary series, ‘Holidays in the Axis of Evil.’  Across three episodes he visited Iran, Iraq, and North Korea, and it was the latter country that this particular article was discussing.

The article mentioned how a few Western tourists managed to go in every year, mainly attracted by the country’s reticence to open up so that it remained ‘like a Stalinist theme park’.  There were statues and paintings of the two Korean leaders everywhere; if you went to a restaurant, you were never sure what you were going to get; and people were watching you wherever you went; yet what no-one realised was that it had unspoilt beaches, beautiful mountains, and the biggest Sports stadium in the world right in the middle of Pyongyang.  To me, it seemed to have a completely unique character, even when compared to the hardly bland cities that I’d been to in Asia over the last few years, and yet no-one ever seemed to visit.  The article did mention one tour company who specialised in getting people in to the country and showing them round; and so, in my usual way, I read this and thought - “I’d like to go there”.

The article had a link onto a website for the tour company, Koryo Tours, and so I had a look.  I had a read through their website, and the more of the imagery that I saw, the more unusual it all looked, the more fascinating the place seemed, and the more I wanted to go.  But then the clincher was under their ‘special interest’ page, where there was another quote that caught my eye – ‘we have contacts in the football world, and love to take football teams in to play in Pyongyang.’ Hmmm – that’s interesting…

Our Sunday league team was playing in HK the following week, so during our usual post-match debrief in the (sadly now departed) Perfect Pint bar, I asked a couple of the team if they were interested.  I had fully expected everyone to turn round and say ‘you’re mad’, but they didn’t; they took a bit of convincing that the whole thing was actually possible, but once I reassured them that the Tour company could get us in, and more importantly out again, then there were people who were keen.  I followed it up with an email round the team and some friends the following week, and again I got a lot of responses.  Suddenly now we had a football tour on our hands.

Having read the Tour website, I was hoping that we would be the first team ever to go into North Korea.  I soon found out though that this was not to be the case, as at much as the same time as I was making the initial contact with Koryo, they were putting the finishing touches to their first tour.  Beijing Celtics FC, who, not surprisingly, are a group of expat-Irish living in Beijing, were due to go in shortly after to play a match against a local Korean team, and they had the privilege of being the first amateur team ever to go in.  This meant that we would not be the first in, but even being only the second team ever was hardly a bad effort; plus they got to test run everything first, so that we had a bit more to rely on by the time that we get there.  So second ever wasn’t bad.

One of the things that we needed to achieve in order to get the tour off the ground was to find a sponsor, as in addition to the somewhat expensive cost of the tour, we also had to fly to Beijing and back first in order to link up with the flights into Pyongyang.  The Beijing Celtics had a lot of support from DHL, helped by the fact that DHL are one of the few Western companies to do a lot of business in North Korea.  So we all looked around and wondered who we could approach.

As it turned out, we were very successful on the sponsorship front.  I managed to persuade SCB to give us some money towards the tour costs, after taking my career in my hands by emailing our CEO directly; another of our players, Del, managed to persuade his company Synovate to give us some money for our shirts, and then Mes Amis, one of the bars in HK which we don’t even normally go to, phoned me out of the blue to offer sponsorship for us also. They gave us branded t-shirts and polo shirts, to go with the match kit bearing the logos of SCB and Synovate; we were beginning to feel like a Formula One drivers, we were wearing so many logos, but what the hell, it was making the tour more affordable for the rest of us, so full steam ahead.

Another idea that we had was to try and hold some sort of fund-raising event for the tour costs.  I put forward a suggestion of having a quiz night, but this didn’t seem to gain a lot of enthusiasm from the team.  It was suggested by one of our other players that maybe we should have a ‘gentlemen’s evening’ instead, inviting the sort of ladies who usually hang around Wanchai street corners at 2am and requiring the pub to install velvet curtains on the front door.  This would have seemed to be more in line with the usual football tour philosophy, but in the end we left it open for further discussion, and surprisingly enough it never transpired.

One of the things that we’d agreed to as part of the sponsorship deal was to try to win some publicity for the tour.  The Beijing Celtics had press coverage round the world, so we thought we’d at least have a crack at Hong Kong.  One of our guys, Jarl, works on the radio, so I had a chat to him as to whether he could help us with any coverage; two days later he came back via email with a great reply – “I have a friend, Tony, who works in TV, and he wants to do a story on you.”

So local channel ATV sent a camera crew down to one of our games, and filmed us playing; then a couple of days later I met with Tony and got interviewed for TV – I tell you, sometimes being organiser has its fringe benefits.  Our local threatened to show the interview on their big screen, but I’m not sure seeing my face on a big screen TV is a particularly pleasant experience for anyone; however when I finally watched it, in the end it all seemed to come across OK.  Not surprisingly the interview was only very brief, but I think I sounded like I was making some kind of sense, and thankfully you couldn’t spot from the footage that I had a massive hangover when it was recorded.

The final build up to the tour date became more and more frenetic, as we had to arrange our visas, sort the kit, get all the tickets, then two people dropped out because of work, not helped by my having to go on two business trips in the two weeks before we left; but somehow we held it all together, and as it got closer, everything pretty much fell into place.

Friday 21st May

The big day had finally arrived.  After all of the hype of the few days leading up to it, I was actually feeling quite calm by this point, and was beginning to look forward to going.  All of the playing kit was however still sitting in boxes strewn around our office, which was a bit of a problem for getting it on the plane; and as for the t-shirts and polo shirts, well the guy at the printers reckoned they’d be delivered by 3pm.  I was leaving for the airport at 5.15, but I was sure there’d be plenty of time.

Of course they didn’t make it on time, so they were eventually delivered in sealed cardboard boxes direct to the check-in desk, where the printer met me quite casually, seemingly oblivious to any possible stress that this might have caused.  Thankfully the boxes were sealed tight, so they were chucked straight in the hold without being opened; to my relief, everyone else was there on time, so we met up, checked in, and hit the road to the airport.

Now in the lead up to the trip, as I started telling people we were going to North Korea, many people showed a number of the predictable reactions about the country, the main one being that there was no food there.  Now we had checked before leaving, and had been told that it was all OK, but we aren’t taking any chances, so the 14 of us descend on the airport shops like a horde of locusts saving up for the weekend.  One shop in particular got cleaned out of industrial-size tins of peanuts, and the giant sized Toblerone that I bought could have doubled up as a baseball bat.

Having rushed around all day to get to the airport on time, we were thrown a bit when the plane was delayed, for reasons that no-one was quite sure about.  But that just gave us a chance to finally relax in the bar, and for one player Fabio to drop a pint glass in the first five minutes; start as you mean to go on, he was our goalkeeper.  Eventually we got on our way, and after a few hours on Dragonair’s finest we finally made it to the hotel in Beijing.  Which could best be described as ‘basic’.

Saturday 22nd

It didn’t seem very much later when we had to be up again to get on the bus the next morning, a feeling which seemed to repeat itself most of the days of the tour, come to think of it.  It was straight back to the airport for the Air Koryo flight direct to Pyongyang.

By this stage, the tournament had expanded into being four teams – two local, ourselves, and a team of Dutch expats from China.  So on arriving at the airport, we met up with the Dutch team for the first time.  Both teams sort of eyed each other up warily; they were all tall, fairly fit looking, and had barely a beer gut in sight; plus there were 18 of them.  We only had 12 players, and weren’t quite in the same physical condition, but we did annoy them with our matching tour shirts, so the honours were about even.

The Dutch brought a ball with them and started kicking it around in the departure lounge; we thought about joining in and trying to emulate the old Nike advert where Ronaldo & the Brazilian team flick, curl, and head the ball through an airport, but decided that the cost in broken windows and damaged equipment might be a bit steep, so we let them get on with it.

No delays this time thankfully, Air Koryo was ready and waiting, so off we go.  The plane was an old Russian number, with some sort of faux-wood panelling on the walls and seat belts that didn’t work.  No-one seemed too concerned with a safety briefing though, so we just let the pilot get on with it, and tried to wind up our guys that don’t like flying.

The plane journey ended up being a bit noisy, but was otherwise uneventful; I even risked the in-flight meal.  There didn’t have much in the way of multi-channel video entertainment, so I wiled the time away with a complimentary copy of the Pyongyang Times, North Korea’s state-run English language paper. 

And what a quality paper it was.  No page 3 girl or lurid headlines about micro-celebrities’ love lives here, just a solid story on the front page about Kim Jong Il visiting a gardening centre and giving out some expert advice on how to grow trees.  There were some articles about the recent train crash, mainly showing how many other nations were rushing to help their good friends in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, rather than worry about the small details of how many people actually got killed.  One of the general interest pieces came under the headline “Worker quite good at making devices”, telling the thrilling story of a factory worker who used his spare time to invent gadgets that helped improve the factory process.  A bit. 

All of the international stories though followed a similar theme, that of the DPRK bravely standing up to the evil forces of the US, despite the threat of imminent nuclear war.  This set the trend for the rest of the week, that the US was the great enemy, and that the country should pull together to face up to this terrible aggressor.

Pretty soon we were in sight of Pyongyang and touched down at the airport.  We were interested to see two Japanese jumbos on the tarmac, as the Japanese Premier Kozumi was making a landmark visit that day.  There was even a red carpet for him, but alas not for us, and we were shepherded in to Customs.

As for most of the week, we weren’t quite sure what to expect at this point, but we all made it through without any problems.  A number of other people on the flight were having their bags checked on the way in to the country, for any banned items – such as professional looking cameras, in case you are a journalist; illicit or non-approved literature, i.e. anything not pro-DPRK; and any non-approved communication devices.  We were deemed as not being a threat and were waived through, although we did all have to hand in our mobile phones; these were held at the airport during our trip, with us picking them up on the way out.  Mobile phones are banned in the DPRK, and you could get arrested for carrying one; although to be honest I can’t believe that you’d ever get a signal anyway.

Eventually we grouped up outside the terminal building; the two flights of the day had arrived now, so whether or not everyone in the airport was going home shortly after, I don’t know.  Anyway we counted the numbers, we checked the bags, the sun was out, we all felt good…we were in!! Welcome to Pyongyang.  I couldn’t help but give a little smile that we’d actually made it; that we really were in the Democratic Peoples’ Republic of Korea (it turns out that they don’t like it if you call the country North Korea, you have to use the full name).

Our first stop on the itinerary was to go to the statue of Kim Il Sung at Mansudae Park (2).  There were plenty of statues of the Dear Leader throughout the trip, but this was the biggest and the most official.  As a team we had to line up in front of it; a couple of us walked forward to present bunches of flowers in his honour, which were conveniently sold round the corner; then we walked back; finally we all bowed in unison.  The statue was flanked by two monuments of workers and revolutionaries in heroic poses, in true Communist fashion; the Stalinist theme park quote suddenly began to make a lot of sense (5-9).

For those of you not quite up to date on your DPRK history, Kim Il Sung is the “Dear Leader”, who led the country after the end of the Korean War.  He ruled for the best part of 40 years, until he died in the early 90s, and his son, Kim Jong Il, took over the reins.  It was interesting that there was iconography of both Leaders throughout the week, yet Kim Il Sung seemed more dominant in terms of the number of statues and monuments that we saw.  He would be the one that touched the people and that they were happy to follow; in comparison, Kim Jong Il has only ever spoken one line in public (“Strength to the Korean Revolutionary Army!”), and is never seen or heard.  No-one knows where he lives, what he does day to day, or whether he is really in control of what is going on.

Anyway, once we had paid our respects, we were allowed to take photos and wander around a bit, as the statue is in a park with a number of other official buildings, such as the main Government building and the People’s Grand Study Hall.  The first thing that struck us as we were walking round was that there was no-one around; all the streets were quiet, there were a few people on bikes, but no cars, and those people that were around are keeping a distance away from us.  Whether they were nervous of us, they thought we were nervous of them, or whether they were under instructions, I don’t know, but we were very much left alone to do as we pleased.  One of the team described it like ‘being something out of the Truman Show’.

Our next stop was to the Juche Tower, which was built in honour of Kim Il Sung’s 70th birthday, with one stone for every day of his life; it is around 38 stories high, and looks out over the entire city.  At the top we realised just how clean Pyongyang is; you can see from the photos that visibility was fantastic, no pollution or smog here (11-13).  Being a predominantly low rise city, we could see out in every direction out to the mountains behind; you don’t say that very often in Hong Kong.  Well, actually, most of us could look out; the two of our team who were afraid of heights didn’t dare go near the edge or look over.

As hopefully the photos demonstrate, there were some interesting sites on the skyline.  The most obvious one was the huge pyramidal tower that rises up above the whole city; this was the Ryugyong Hotel, designed to be a centrepiece 105 storey hotel in the centre of Pyongyang, with 3000 rooms and no less than five revolving restaurants.

However it has never been finished.  After the fall of the Soviet Union, and China turning its mind to more pressing matters, external support and funding for the project dried up, and the structure was abandoned as a concrete shell.  The worst part of it is that because the concrete has been exposed to the elements for 20 years, it is rumoured to be structurally unsound, such that it could never safely be used in the future.  It is a shame for the Pyongyang locals that such a structure so dominates their skyline, as you know that it would have been hyped as a triumph of the DPRK as it originally went up.  Despite the presence of a crane on top, there was no work being done on it; you could see it from wherever you go in the City.

The other major structure, which certainly has been finished, was the May Day Stadium.  This is where they hold the regular games and shows, the ones where 100,000 people come out on the pitch to dance in unison, and the seated crowd of as many people again turn the coloured cards over in perfect harmony to make displays across the whole stadium.  Originally we wanted to time our trip to coincide with such a performance, but it was not possible to do so; in addition, foreigners are not allowed to go.  But what a sight it must be.

On the bus to the hotel we were introduced to our two guides for the week, Mr Lee and Honey; Honey managed to provoke huge laughter from Fabio, when she says her name in Korean – its literal translation into Italian was apparently extremely rude.  Mr Lee and Honey were to accompany us wherever we went for the week, and the understanding was that we are to ask their permission before taking any photos.  We were also not allowed to take any photos from the bus when it was moving.  This provoked a few nervous glances between us at the time, but in the end nearly every time we asked about pictures, Honey & Mr Lee just said ‘of course’ and we went ahead.

Our hotel was the 40 storey ‘Yanggakdo Hotel’, named for Yanggakdo (“Sheep’s Head”) Island where we were staying, slap in the middle of the Taesun river through the centre of the city.  We walked into the huge dim atrium of the hotel, to see absolutely no-one there except a couple of people behind the desk and a very sad looking turtle in an aquarium.  But the rooms were ok, and we even had BBC World on satellite.  (Although half way through the week this was mysteriously switched off for two days.)

Saturday night was our first meal in the hotel, and we were pleasantly surprised.  North Korean food is still very similar to South Korean, plenty of barbecued meats, kimchi - spiced pickled cabbage, the Koreans love it - rice, and vegetables.  More importantly, there was plenty of it, and access to imported beers also.

One of the facilities of the hotel was a nine-hole pitch and putt golf course next to it, one of only two golf courses in the whole of the DPRK apparently.  The golf course had a clubhouse-come-bar attached to it, and it was to there that we decamped after dinner along with the Dutch team.  The bar had Sapporo beers, and the Dutch had a guitar, so away we went.

It soon turned out that the Dutch were pretty tuneful, singing a number of songs in succession.  Well, I say a number, but what usually happened was that someone would start, lose their way halfway along, then they’d all start singing ‘eye eye yippee yippee eye’ to the tune of She’s Coming Round the Mountain.  Every time they did this.  Eye eye yippee yippee eye.  Every time.

Eventually someone else got a word in, and the local waitresses had a go.  As we found out across the course of the week, the North Koreans put a lot of pride and effort into their music; nearly everyone we met could sing and/or play an instrument.  So the waitress took the guitar and gave us a couple of Korean songs, singing with a beautiful voice, and then the bar manager had a go also, again faultless.  We didn’t know what to say.

So then everyone started looking at us, what were we going to do?  Well we looked around confused for a bit, then I finally chipped in with a suggestion – Sailing by Rod Stewart.  Well everyone seemed to know the words, but the key bit was that I also knew the actions, helpfully learned from an episode of Men Behaving Badly about five years ago.

Lyric                   Action

I am sailing          rowing a boat

I am sailing          more rowing

Home again         hands pointing over your head, like the roof of a house

Across the sea            one hand across in front of you left to right, wavy up and down

I am sailing          even more rowing

Stormy waters           wave your arms around and jump up and down in your seat

To be with you   point at the person opposite

To be free            both arms out open wide

Well, you had to be there (14).

Anyway, 20 seconds later that was done so we needed another.  Again we were looking around scratching our heads, when one guy Mark came up with a moment of inspiration.  He looked at Fabio as our resident Italian, and said ‘how about the old Cornetto song?’  Fabio looked back at him completely bewildered, but everyone else knew exactly what he meant.  Well, I tell a lie, everyone except our midfielder Peter, who is only 19 and so was too young to remember.

Just one cornetto…

Give it to me…

Delicious ice cream…

From Italy

With nuts…

And chocolate too…

Give me Cornetto

From Walls ice cream!!

Add in a few actions of a gondolier punting his way down a Venetian canal, and there you have it, a tour song for the week.  Fabio just looked at us all like we’d gone loopy.

When we got turfed out of the bar, we wandered back towards the hotel, which was a bit more risky than it sounded, as the car park at night seemed to be taken over by cockroaches.  Living in HK I’ve seen a few in my time, but these were some sort of specially bred Korean super cockroaches, and we really didn’t want to mess with them.

The other facilities in the hotel were specifically designed for foreign visitors only, with the locals not allowed in.  Thus there was a karaoke bar, with some fairly up to date music; a casino; and a massage parlour.  Sure enough it wasn’t long before we were into the karaoke; the Koreans may have been able to sing, but we can’t, and between us we killed pretty much every song that they had.

Sunday 23rd

Somewhat groggily we were up early for the bus for the trip to Kaesong and the Demilitiarised zone.  The Demilitiarised zone (DMZ for short) is a 2km area either side of the North Korea / South Korea border; the border runs the width of the Korean peninsula, with the DMZ also running from coast to coast.  Under the terms of the agreement at the end of the Korean war, neither side is allowed an armaments into the zone, and, give or take a few farmers on the Northern side, the zone is kept completely empty all the way through the country.

The DMZ was about two hours from Pyongyang on the motorway.  The motorway journey was fairly monotonous, because all you could see from the road on either side were fields, with people manually farming and harvesting the crops.  There were very few buildings, no big cities, certainly no advertising or businesses going on, just fields, occasionally offset by some hills or mountains.  There wasn’t even any traffic; we stopped halfway down for a break, and the Dutch guys played football in the middle of the road.

There were two main stops when we got to the DMZ.  The first was at Panmunjom, which is the site of the signing of the treaty that put an end to the fighting in the Korean War (15-17).  It didn’t actually end the war though, it was just a ceasefire; technically the North and the South are still at war with each other.  We were shown round here by an army colonel who took great pride in explaining what everything was, and how everything happened, and basically how the North saw off the US to win the war.  Then it was back on the bus to go down to the border.

To get to the border we drove through the DMZ itself.  With no-one having been in it for 50 years it’s actually a bit of a nature reserve these days, with all sorts of flora and fauna living untouched by human hands.  The rumour on the bus was that there were tigers living in there somewhere, although I didn’t see them.  There is one single road through the DMZ, and at the Northern end of it there are huge boulders by the side of the road, that can be rolled into it at a moment’s notice, to block the access for any tanks that may be coming through.

The border itself consists of a series of huts, blue and white, the North owning one colour, the South the other (18-19).  All the huts straddle a paved line across the tarmac, which represents the border itself, and there are guards on both sides.  Each side also has a sort of ‘command centre’ behind the huts, with video cameras (and, presumably, hidden weapons) everywhere.

We approached the border from the North side, herded by our guides and the colonel.  The photos hopefully show what we saw: that all the North Korean guards were in their display uniforms, stood rigidly to attention lest anyone try to make a break for it, whilst on the other side the South Korean guards were in fatigues and were ambling around.  We were directed into one of the huts, which had a big table across the middle - this is the table that the ‘negotiations’ are held round.  The hut has a door at the far end that leads to South Korea and all that it holds; two North Korean soldiers with presumably very little sense of humour stood guard in front of it.

I also noticed a telling moment out of the window, when one of the South Korean guards walked right up to the border line, with his North Korean counterpart within touching distance across the other side, then turned back to his mate on the South, smiled, and had his photo taken with his rival just behind him.

In the afternoon we were taken briefly to the park in Kyesong, which is the nearby town.  We managed to walk straight into the photo shoot for a couple who had just got married, so before we knew it a couple of us were ushered into their wedding photos; that’s one to show the kids in years to come.  And on the way out there were a group of school girls practicing playing the accordian; we stood and listened for a minute as they launched into a traditional tune.  Their playing was of such quality that someone actually questioned whether or not this is all a show, with these girls and the wedding couple deliberately placed here by the authorities for us to see on our walk round; our guides assured us that it was not.

Our final stop near the DMZ was a military bunker to look at the wall that the South Koreans have built on their side.  The wall itself wasn’t quite the Great Wall of China to look at – for a start so much vegetation has grown up around it, you can’t actually see it anyway – but the accompanying talk and history was certainly of interest.

From the bunker we could see the radio towers on both sides that block out any transmission of TV/radio/mobile communications from the other side, and we could hear the loudspeakers shouting out propaganda across the border into the other side.  I believe that these have finally just been turned off this week, after 50 years of blasting out at each other.  The wall itself stands as the side of a triangular container that holds weaponry and tanks of the Southern army for use should there ever be a conflict.  It turned out that a couple of our team had been to the DMZ from the South side also, and that there there was a similar display that pointed out all of the Northern missile silos trained on the South.  Another retired Northern army general gave us the talk on the Southern fortifications, and he took time to blame everything on the US again.  The idea of reunification came up constantly during the week; it was all America’s fault that the two halves of Korea could not be together.

Our final stop of the day was at the English Book Shop, which will happily sell you official literature such as the teachings of Kim Jong Il, as well as some revolutionary posters, one of which now adorns my study.  This exorhorts me to work together for the good of the people every time that I can’t be bothered to answer any correspondence or forget to send someone an email.  I also bought a couple of lapel pins, one in particular for our team’s favourite pub barmaid, who is forever complaining that we never buy her any pins to go with her collection.  Well I bet she hasn’t got one from Pyongyang before.

 Monday 24th

This was why we were there: it was football day.

We had heard a rumour before we arrived that we’d be playing in a 30,000 seat stadium; this turned out not to be quite accurate, as we were actually playing NEXT to a 30,000 seat stadium (http://www.travel-images.com/korean143.jpg, is there nothing you can’t find on the internet??).  But we were there on the training pitch for the Yanggakdo Stadium anyway, the Dutch were there, a team from the Korean travel company (KITC) were there, and a team from Pyongyang University…were late.  But they’d be there soon.

The Dutch were up against the KITC guys first, and we watched avidly to see how they shaped up.  The Dutch went into an early lead, which led to more singing of ‘eye eye yippee yippee eye’ from their subs, but their confidence was hit a bit when some of the uni lads arrived and guested for KITC, and turned out to be a bit useful.  The Dutch tried to hang on, but couldn’t, and KITC nicked one back to draw the game.

So then we were on against the Uni team.  They were all about 20, slim, fit, quick, but also about 5’2”.  So there was a fair clash of styles going on, and to be fair in the first half they clashed harder, taking an early lead.  In the second half I should have equalised, but missed a horror of an open goal, the embarrassment of which was only lessened a few minutes later when Baby Peter did the same.  Thankfully our elder statesman Barry knew what he was doing, scoring near the end so that we got a draw also.

The two Korean teams played out a third draw, leaving us to face the Dutch. Well we’d been watching them all week, listening to their yippee bloody yippee songs, we wanted to win this.  So, unfortunately, did they, and the so far friendly nature of the tournament went out of the window a bit as both sides got stuck in.  By this point of the day we had three of our players out injured (not through the actions of the Dutch, I have to stress, just old age), and had pressed our tour guide Mr Lee into emergency service as a centre forward.

We finally got our noses in front in the second half, when I proved that even I can score from a yard by heading the opener (26), provoking our agreed team celebration, where we all ran to the corner flag and pretended to be gondoliers.  We thought we were going to hang on for the win, and were looking forward to telling the Dutch where they could stick their yippees…but it wasn’t to be, as they equalised in the last minute…and started singing again.

We took a break for lunch and sat mingling with all the Korean guys.  They knew a bit about Western football, they had heard of Michael Owen, and they all knew the story of the North Korean team in the 1966 World Cup.  Just a group of guys sitting around having a beer and talking about football.

It took some effort to get going again after lunch, but we had one more game to play.  The Dutch squeaked another draw against the Uni boys, meaning that if we could beat KITC we could win the tournament.  Things didn’t start very well, when they scored early, but by half-time we were level and confident.

So it was frustrating when they scored again…until out of the blue, our Irish guest player Stuart nailed a shot into the top corner from 25 yards for an equaliser, and set off on about three laps of honour in celebration.  And then just before the end we won a penalty, our centre forward Andy buried it, and we came out on top 3-2. We’ve won the Cup!  It may only be a minor tournament in the football world, but we’ve never won a trophy before so by God we’re happy.

We ate that evening in the revolving restaurant at the top of the hotel, which was a bit strange because most of the lights in the city were off, so we couldn’t see anything.  But before it started revolving, it did give us the opportunity for a top shout – “Start the Revolution!”

We ran the gauntlet of the mutant cockroaches again, and retired back to the golf club bar, where we regressed to singing a lot.  The British Ambassador to North Korea turned up for a drink – nice bloke - so we made him drink out of the Cup as well (30), then we all headed off to the karaoke again to sing “We are the Champions”.  A lot. (33)

Although we did stop for one photo on the way back; the nearest hole to the clubhouse on the golf course had a bunker just short of the green, but this was no ordinary bunker, oh no.  It was five feet deep.  You wouldn’t need a sand wedge to get out of that, you’d need a stepladder or some crampons.  Just to prove the fact, we all stood in the bunker to have our photo taken with our heads popping out of the top.

Tuesday 25th

The Victorious Fatherland Liberation War Museum was the first stop of the day, which basically told the story of the Korean war…from the North Korean point of view.  The main consensus amongst us was that we didn’t really know the story of the Korean war from anyone’s point of view, and so a few of us made a note to read up a bit of background when we got home.

As with all the sites we visited, another guide met us when we got there, to show us round that individual site.  Our guide at the war museum, as with many, spoke immaculate English, unless you asked her a controversial question, in which case she pretended not to understand.  She stuck to the official line all the way through of how the valiant Northern soldiers rose up under the inspired leadership of Kim Il Sung to push back the imperialist Americans.

Next to the museum were more monuments and statues dedicated to the war effort.  These started predictably, with soldiers in heroic poses, but verged towards the more surreal the further you got down the line; the last one had a soldier who has lost both his arms in the conflict, lobbing a hand grenade with his teeth, whilst his colleague operated a machine gun, presumably with his feet.

After that was the USS Pueblo, a US spy ship captured in North Korean waters, which gave an excellent opportunity for the Koreans to make fun of the US for being hapless enough to let one of their vessels get caught.

We had been told that next we were having lunch on a floating restaurant, but we weren’t convinced about this, as all week we hadn’t seen a single boat go up or down the river.  In fact we did go on a boat, but it didn’t go out more than 50m from the shore before turning round and going back again, and in the process crashed into the jetty and pulled it away from the shore.

In Pyongyang they have no traffic lights.  Not one.  What they do have is a traffic lady (38) on every crossroads, directing traffic and controlling the flows.  They are dressed in very formal uniforms, behave very sternly, and being one of the more high profile jobs available, the ladies tended to be attractive.  So one of our favourite games to play while we were travelling around on the bus developed into us making frantic efforts to wave at the traffic ladies as we drove past, to see if we could crack the veneer of officialdom and get them to react to us.  A smile was worth one point and a wave two…well some we won, some we lost.

Later in the afternoon saw us come across a class of kids practicing their football skills, so after some careful words with the teacher we all joined in.  Fabio encouraged some of the younger kids to take penalties against him, and although he’ll say he let them in deliberately, the scoring rate against him was actually pretty high.  To be honest, again the kids were very skilful and weren’t shy at all about showing off the tricks that they had.

On a similar theme, our last stop was at the Schoolchildren’s Palace.  In Pyongyang, the children go to school from 8am until 2pm, then do clubs & activities for four hours every day.  The best of these get sent to special clubs, such as those at the Schoolchildren’s Palace. We wandered round different rooms, each with kids undertaking some artistic endeavour – there was calligraphy; guitar playing; piano; table tennis; a quite freaky taxidermy room; and electrical repairs (not very exciting.  Imagine if you got sent to that, and your mate got table tennis).(42)  In all the music rooms, as soon as we walked in, the kids stopped what they were doing and went into a five-minute recital for us, usually immaculately played.  In the piano room, one particularly small girl made a couple of mistakes on what was still a hard piece, and her teacher scolded her for getting it wrong.  On the way out, we asked how old the girl was – she was seven.

Wednesday 26th

A trip that we had been looking forward to for a few days, we got to travel on the Pyongyang subway.  No travelcard here, all foreigners get in for free; forget Piccadilly Circus or King’s Cross, you want a station with a proper name – Glory Station, or Revolution Station, or Victory Station.  And as for naff mobile phone adverts or posters for the latest movie on the walls, no chance; let’s have a station with platform-long revolutionary murals, and chandeliers hanging from the ceiling.  I don’t think the photos do the stations justice.

The trains weren’t in perfect condition, but they were clean, tidy, and not very busy, albeit with the obligatory pictures of the Leaders in every carriage.

At this point of the day, most of the team were to head for home, with only Andy, Stuart and myself staying on for an extra few days.  The final stop before we split was at the “Triumph Arch”, which – shock!- looks exactly like the Arc de Triomphe; although in the same way that the Tokyo Tower is a taller replica of the Eiffel Tower, I’m sure the Korean version is larger than the French original.  We said our farewells, and Andy, Stuart and myself headed for the hills.

The hills being the mountains an hour or two north of Pyongyang, where there was another tourist hotel, kept in beautifully manicured grounds.  It seemed however though that having spent so much time and effort on the grounds, the hotel itself was lacking a bit; whilst it was all built very nicely, the hot water only ran for certain hours a day, the electricity was a bit temperamental, and the bathroom had been lifted straight off a jumbo jet, complete with orange plastic walls.  The corridors didn’t have any lights in, so walking up and down these empty dark corridors late at night called to mind memories of “The Shining”; I half expected gallons of blood to come pouring down the corridor, and I kept well away from the waittresses who were twins.

Prior to reaching the hotel, we had stopped at the Grand Cemetary of the Martyrs, which was a shrine to over 100 leading revolutionaries in the Juche cause (the North Korean ideal of self-reliance), including Kim Il Sung’s wife, the Mother of the Nation.  Cue more flowers and bowing.  The main point of interest here was that there was a very elegantly dressed lady at the cemetery with a camera crew in tow, and after prompting our guides we found out that she was apparently a famous North Korean singer.  When she asked us what we were doing in DPRK, we gave our stock answer – “we’re footballers”, so she agreed to have her photo taken with us, presumably thinking that we might be important as well.  A bit later I tried to walk across the background of the karaoke film that they were making, so as to be in the corner of the shot, but alas I was stopped by one of the film crew.

We spent the afternoon walking up through the hills, which was very pleasant…again the air was clear, beautiful weather, no-one around, and we could see for miles.  In fact the only evidence that anyone had been up there at all, was that there were revolutionary inscriptions literally carved into the side of the mountain.  One sang the praises of the beautiful mountain, but there were others such as “Long live the Dear Leader” in four-foot high letters chiselled out of the rock.

For dinner that night, we had the option of the main restaurant, or the revolving restaurant.  The North Koreans do love their revolving restaurants, although why they should have one in a hotel in the middle of the countryside, when they don’t have much electricity, and all you can see out at night is dark, I’m not sure.  We opted for the main restaurant.

The options after dinner were basically karaoke, or…karaoke.  Now up until this point I had managed to keep my record intact of never ever having done karaoke on my own; although earlier in the week I was spotted up on stage a few times, it was never less than a trio effort and the greater world had been protected.  But this time there was to be no escape, especially when we realised that in the bar there was just the three of us, Honey & Mr Lee, one Japanese tourist, and a couple of waitresses, and no-one else.  I thought that as it was inevitable, I’d get it out of the way early, and so had another crack at Sailing, thinking that if nothing else I could at least get everyone else to do the actions, and that might distract them from having to hear my singing.  And so I did do it, waving my arms around as I did so, and even making up some new actions for the later verses as I went along; although I’m not sure that everyone need much distraction from hearing me warbling, as I was singing so quietly I could barely be heard anyway.

Thankfully I managed to pass the mic on fairly swiftly, and no-one lynched me so it couldn’t have been that bad.  As the evening and the beers progressed, Andy got stuck in to a number of songs, Stuart was showing off by singing in Korean - off Korean lyrics, no less - and the Korean singer we met in the morning turned up in one of the videos (see, she was famous).  For me the highlight was the Japanese guy, who sang YMCA.  In Japanese.  So we taught him & the waitresses the actions to that as well; that’s what cultural education is all about.

Thursday 27th

In the morning we went to an exhibition called the “International Friendship Exhibition”, which is basically a museum devoted to all of the gifts that Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il have been given over the years.  For example, Kim Il Sung has a stuffed upright crocodile carrying a drinks tray, given to him by someone important in Nicaragua; a signed ashtray from Jimmy Carter; and a fully kitted out railway carriage that I think came from Josef Stalin.

The exhibition was a bit busier than some, as the three of us were joined by a whole bunch of army recruits, who had been given a break from their usual training for something a bit more interesting.  However we were on our own when we went in, through a pair of huge brass doors.

“These doors,’ said our guide for the museum, ‘are very difficult to open.  They have to be opened from the inside.”  Well that sounds like a challenge to me, so I took hold of the huge handles, and put my back into it…well some puny Korean soldier might not be able to open the door, but get a lump like me to put his shoulder into it, and I came close to causing a major diplomatic incident by nearly taking the door off its hinges.

As we went round, we had to walk round wearing plastic covers for our shoes, in case we…actually I don’t know why we had to do that at all, but we followed the rules and wore these plastic slippers all morning.  The gifts were quite interesting, I mean if the Kims get given all of these, then what do Tony Blair or Tung Chee-Hwa get given?  And where does it all go?  There must be some big warehouse somewhere in Whitehall with 40,000 ornamental dinner plates and memorial tankards in it; at least the Koreans get to see what they’ve received.  If they’re in the army, anyway.

Not all the gifts were particularly thrilling – there was a ballpoint pen given by ‘a Shanghai businessman’, some photos of some plants which had presumably died a long time ago, and a plate from the UK honouring the miners’ strike - so on the basis that quality control was a bit wobbly, I was determined to get a gift in myself.  We had made up some pennants for the tour to give to the other teams, and I had one spare, so I pressed on our guide to take it as an honourable gift from us to Kim Jong Il in thanks for his hospitality and letting us into his country.  She wasn’t convinced to start with, but after some bartering she eventually took it.  Now I don’t know whether or not it ended up in the bin, but I live in hope that current visitors to the exhibition can see donated vases, china, electronics (Kim Jong Il has two widescreen TVs with Dolby surround systems that just sit around all day not being used, it’s a disgrace I tell you), and hopefully alongside them they will see that there is also a small black pennant that says “Colloids FC Friendship Football Tour Pyongyang May 2004”, maybe even with a sign next to it, saying “donated by Hong Kong footballer”.

On the drive back, as with many of the times in the bus, we used the chance to chat to the guides to try to understand a bit more about their life there.  Both Honey & Mr Lee spoke near faultless English, despite naturally never having been outside the country.  Being tour guides we had the impression that they were allowed a bit more exposure to the West than maybe some others – they had seen some Hollywood films, like Armageddon and Titanic (all the ones where the US gets trashed, come to think of it), and knew a few Western singers.  I showed Honey my iPod, and the next thing I knew she had grabbed it and was singing along to Madonna; in fact she then took it off me whenever we got back on the bus for the rest of the week, and I was a bit concerned that come the end of the week I’d never see it again.

In the afternoon we had some more exhibitions and sights to go to, but we were beginning to feel a bit cultured out, so decided to try and hijack things a little.  After some delicate negotiations, we cut the museum time for a bit and went to Pyongyang’s sole ten-pin bowling alley for a couple of frames.  The alley was pretty much like any other alley really – there were lots of lanes, they served beer, the shoes didn’t fit, and there was always one very good person three lanes down that was knocking down the pins as quick as they could put them up - but yet again as we bowled side by side with the local Koreans it showed what a leveller sports can be.

Friday 28th

The morning tour was to consist of a trip to the Grand People’s Study House, a centre of learning for Pyongyang.  Apparently it contained 30m books, and cost USD100m to build, but to me, this sounded like a big library, and forgive me for thinking that maybe this wasn’t going to be the most interesting part of the day.

However we walked around, and whilst a lot of it was, well, a library, there were also a lot of classes going on.  There actually was studying going on at the Study House, as it doubled up almost as a university, running courses for local people to attend.

We stood at the back of a couple of classes, which all seemed to be ticking over nicely, before going into a third.  This, it turned out, was an English class, and as soon as we went in, the Teacher called us up to the front.  Stuart, who actually is an English teacher, didn’t move, and Andy was suddenly nowhere to be seen, so next thing I knew I was up the front of the class and the teacher was asking everyone to ask me questions.  No-one said anything.

The teacher tried to get things going by asking me a few innocuous questions, although my attempts at being funny lost a bit in translation. 

Where are you from?              London, but I live in Hong Kong.

Why are you here?           We’re footballers playing in a tournament in the DPRK

How old are you?           30, thanks for asking. 

You are very tall!              Thanks, I hadn’t noticed

Are you married?            No, why do you know anyone?

Eventually one guy at the back asked a couple of questions, but then things went a bit quiet again, so I tried to take the lead myself, and started talking, surprise surprise, about football.  Does anyone know any footballers?  ‘Michael Owen! Ronaldo!’  Does anyone know any teams?  ‘Manchester United! Real Madrid!’  Has anyone heard of Arsenal?  Er…….

Well I wasn’t standing for that.  By lucky chance, partly because I was on football tour, and also because by that point of the week I had no clean clothes left, that day under my jumper I happened to be wearing…my Arsenal shirt.  The shirt made an appearance and the Pyongyang branch of the Arsenal supporters club started here; I made very sure to tell the class that we were number one in England and that Manchester United were rubbish.  The big ‘O2’ on the front of the shirt confused a lot of people, especially when I started talking about mobile phone sponsorship, because…well they didn’t know what sponsorship was basically, let alone mobiles…so I stuck to football and they seemed happy.  In fact by the end of it I was still going but the teacher had to herd me out as she wanted to get back to her class and back to the established curriculum.

The Study House also had a room full of stereos, for which you could borrow music and just sit and listen.  I pressed play on my cassette deck to find it was playing Simply Red, so I turned it off and left.  No wonder they don’t like the West.

Again the afternoon had some formal sights to see, so again we took a bit of a detour, this time going rifle shooting.  The Pyongyang rifle range wasn’t particularly hi-tech, but they like a gun in the Koreas after all, so I had a couple of goes with a rifle and then a few shots with a pistol.  I managed to knock down a few of the targets, to garner some respectability, although we all nearly moved to live targets when a rabbit took its life in its hands and scurried across the (open-air) range.

Saturday 29th

It was our last day, and a combination of tours, early starts, barbeque meat of indiscriminate origin, North Korean lager, and overdosing on the karaoke machine meant that much as I’d enjoyed the tour, I was pretty much ready to go home.  However there was one more challenge to be overcome before we left.

Every day we’ve walked to the golf club bar, but aside from our trip into the bunker, I’d not been out on the course.  I hadn’t played golf in 8 years, and Andy and Stuart had never played at all, but that wasn’t going to stop us; on what must be the only nine hole pitch & putt course in the world that you still get to take a trolley and a caddy, and one of only two courses in the entire DPRK, we all set out to give it our best shot.

And my best shot was my very first, when I nailed my tee shot down the middle just past the green.  The rest of the round was somewhat more erratic, hitting the best/worst moment on the very last hole, which clocked in at a brief 80 yards.  I was very very conscious of the cavernous bunker, which was short of the green, so I put a little ‘extra’ on the ball to make sure I cleared it…which I did.  I also cleared the safety net at the back of the hole, and landed the ball on the roof of the clubhouse, only a few inches away from putting it through a window.  Fearing a diplomatic incident if I’d broken it, we scurried away to the airport.

So on reflection, what did I make of it all.  Well the people are friendly, intelligent, and show a lot of talent when pointed in the right direction, e.g. with the music, or even the football.  But it just feels like a wasted opportunity in a way, that everyone has shackles on them as to what they can see and do, what they are allowed to learn.  If they could exploit that potential, they could do very well.

The country itself is very clean – no pollution, no traffic, none of the chaos you get elsewhere in Asia.  It is reputed to have beautiful beaches, and some of the countryside is very picturesque, so there are definitely places to go and things to see.  And the hotels for the foreign tourists, whilst not close to being five star, are bearable.  But all of the time that the country is dominated by the idea of self-reliance, of shutting everyone else out, then these places will go unvisited.

You have to admire their strength of mind in a way, that at a time when the rest of the world is coming closer and closer together, that the North Koreans are so determined to remain independent and to hold out for their own way of life.  We saw no signs of the reputed problems there – starvation, malnutrition, or people being dragged away to labour camps – but we only got taken to certain places, so who knows?  If these things do go on, then at some point the country will have to face up to the fact, and this can only help open the door a crack.

The best parallel that we could draw at the end of the week is that it was as close as anywhere has ever come to George Orwell’s 1984.  Yes there was someone watching you all the time – a couple of times we saw people quite clearly following us to see what we were doing – and all the media and information that the people get is centrally controlled.  There are no outside influences, no chance for free speech.  And the Government creates an enemy in the eyes of the people - the US - who are to blame for all of their woes and against whom they must focus all of their energies if they are to survive, helpfully distracting the populace from any day to day problems they might be facing.

But forgive me if this sounds a little negative; after all it was this lifestyle and this ideology that we went to see in the first place. I spent a week in the DPRK without being hungry, ill, worried for my safety, or concerned about where I was going or where I was staying, and that is not inconsequential when travelling to somewhere completely new.  Overall it was a great trip, being both fascinating in terms of the culture that we experienced, whilst also just a group of guys going on football tour together.  Everyone that went on the trip loved it, and I would recommend it wholeheartedly to anyone who would consider going.  (Especially if they like karaoke.)

Now as for where we’re going next year…