Tourists are allowed to enter only two subway stations in Pyongyang, North Korea. Descending the escalator to the station platform, they are accompanied by "minders" — government employees working with guides and translators, watching the visitors' every move.
And though both subway stations are incredibly ornate — with vaulted ceilings, giant chandeliers and mosaics of happy Korean workers — the experience itself is eerily calculated, said Marie Lee, a visiting lecturer in race and ethnicity at Brown. There are myths that the whole metro system itself is a hoax, that it exists only as an act for foreigners, shuttling them from point A to point B.
Lee traveled to China and North Korea this summer as a member of the group "5 passes," a company founded by Matt Reichel '09, Jonathan Warren '09 and Nicholas Young '09, which offers summer study and tour programs in East Asia.
This summer's tour — 5 passes' inaugural voyage — was an incredible success, Reichel said, adding that the social dynamic among the 19 group members created an atmosphere of constant intellectual excitement.
Lee described her experience on the trip in an essay for the New York Times magazine in October.
"When you're in North Korea, the government completely takes over," she told The Herald. "To some degree, everything just felt sort of Disney-fied."
Her essay focused on a particular experience in the mountains outside the city. The group was taken by bus to have a traditional clam "bulgogi," or barbecue. They were surrounded by smiling, jovial fellow picnickers, enjoying an afternoon in the park.
"I suddenly started to see everything anew," she wrote. "Why were the picnickers here in the middle of the workday? Why was their food, those perfect pyramids of fruit, untouched before they pulled us over? Even the boy; I peered at his easel as I walked back and saw he was using a kind of paint-by-numbers kit."
The other group members expressed varying degrees of skepticism, but Reichel said tourists must learn to take their experience "at face value."
"A lot of people have these conspiracy theories," he said. "The most important thing is to observe and not assume."
Group members were forbidden from discussing their reactions while in the country. "We were told not to discuss things at dinner, or in the elevator, or in our rooms," said Thomas Gold, a sociology professor at the University of California, Berkeley. "Everything was bugged."
After accidentally leaving his camera unlocked in the hotel room, Gold returned to find some of his photos had been deleted.
The group was accompanied by two government-issued tour guides and one government-issued minder. Though Reichel, Warren and Young planned the itinerary, there were a limited number of places the group was allowed to go, Reichel said.
After five days in North Korea, the group flew back to China, where they had a three-hour "debriefing" session to process the experience, Gold said.
"It was very intense," he said. "Everybody was just holding it in for so long — it was just an explosion of intellectual energy."
Students composed about a third of the group, and the rest — including Grace Lee, Marie Lee's mother — were professors from various universities.
"It was really exciting because of how well people interacted," Reichel said, adding that he hadn't anticipated that individual members would become so close.
Gold called the group's intensely close dynamic "extraordinary." He added, "The nature of going to North Korea is such a draining experience."
Though it was their first time leading a trip through China and North Korea, Reichel, Warren and Young are "wise beyond their years," Gold said.
The trio has over five years of combined experience living in China — not to mention significant time in North Korea and surrounding areas — and has come to establish personal contacts in the region.
5 passes, which is named for the region in China where it will be based, will launch two new programs next year, offering up to six trips over the course of the summer, Reichel said. A new "North Korea Expedition" will venture into more remote places in North Korea, China and Russia, giving participants the "extremely rare" opportunity to experience locations where few tourists have ventured before.
The company's second new program, touring both North and South Korea, will run either one or two trips each summer. Reichel said he anticipates 5 passes will continue to be granted access to the Arirang Mass Games — a celebrated nationalistic, highly-regimented form of performing arts — for at least another two years.
Participants cannot be journalists or carry South Korean passports, but aside from that, there are no restrictions, Reichel said.
While in North Korea, Lee — who did not carry notebooks with her across the border — took notes on small scraps of paper and the notepad feature of her iPod touch.
Though Lee's skeptical essay in a national magazine may threaten her ability to return to the country, she said it's a risk she is willing to take.
"As long as I can do these things, I write about them for those people who can't go," she said. "People are just completely fascinated. Nobody knows what being there is like."
