Arrival in Pyongyang

Upon landing we were all very excited to finally have arrived in the DPRK, I was a little nervous as I had with me a book about a crazy church in the USA called the Westboro Baptist Church, although this book was not religious, religious materials are banned in the DPRK, but the tour guides assured me my book was fine. Exiting the aircraft and going through passport control was not that much different to any other country, I had with me my visa which we received in the meeting the previous day; sadly we were told that no evidence would be in our passports of our trip and that the visa would be taken from us on leaving the DPRK! I managed of course to get some good pictures of it! 

Waiting for the bags took forever as there was so much cargo on the belts, of course for the very DPRK citizens allowed to visit Beijing, they bring back many imported goods, no idea what was in these but of course it was to make money for sure. After about 30mins we claimed our bags and then the customs exit began, they wanted us to declare all phones, laptops, electronics, camera's, books, etc... Much different to many other countries where all you have to declare are food, alcohol and cigarettes! The process was very confusing as several items were taken here, several items taken there and bags half emptied etc... It was very hard to keep track of my belongings. I was taken to a separate area where they very briefly inspected my laptop, all they did was search the videos, documents and music folders, I could have easily had something concealed elsewhere. Something which of course I don’t recommend you doing, for example the 2014 movie ‘The Interview’ is officially illegal in the DPRK, apparently you can get into serious trouble for having it, the main items banned are pornography and religious materials, quite a combination!

I was a little worried about the book but they looked at it for about 10 seconds and told me I was fine to go. I walked through the arrivals hall and I was one of the last ones there. We met the tour guides and waited for the last few people from our group then proceeded to the bus.