Museums, Monuments and Ships!

After the palace we went to the  Revolutionary Martyry’s Cemetery – The resting place of the greatest of the anti-Japanese revolutionary fighters each grave features a bronze bust of the hero laid to rest within. This was a spectacular memorial place with an amazing view of the city. By now though even though we were pretty much allowed to take pictures of anything we wanted, I felt as though the time available to this was always very limited due to the schedule. Often when taking pictures Ms Pa was often telling me to hurry up and move on!

We then got to visit the Juche tower which is the biggest tower in the city, it can be seem from many places in the city including our hotel! One thing that was a little strange in this area was that the area seemed generally clean and tidy but they were hundreds of flies annoying everyone, at one point one girl on our tour got a fly in her eye and it was quite red for a couple of hours after. We went to the top of the tower and had a great view of the city.

After this we proceeded to the monument to the workers party foundation, this was a very impressive monument that was built in 1995 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the founding of the worker’s party. The area around the monument was very open but there was for some reason here a lack of locals. We had the impression they were kept away whilst we were there which was strange as on most occasions there were loads of locals around us!

We later visited the USS Pueblo ship was a US ship captured in the late 60's and has been held by the DPRK ever since! Before the ship we had a tour of several US helicopters and planes that had also been held by the DPRK, many of these were in a damaged or unrecognisable condition. Also there were photos of captured US soldiers surrendering. We hd a guide who I believe was in the DPRK military and she spoke fluent English. She was a very nice lady and very informative!

Inside the ship itself we got to see a variety of different rooms including the sleeping quarters, planning rooms and control centres. By this point though the scheduling of the tour was beginning to take its toll on us and we were falling asleep during the movie! 

Afterwards we got to visit a very graphic museum with some history of the war! The museum itself was quite graphic depicting many images of fallen USA soldiers. The museum was of course very anti American, but of course each country has its own views.