American reporter's visit to North Korea has many rules

Visitors to North Korea must follow several rules, such as not putting their hands in their pockets when visiting memorials or leaving their hotels without permission.

The death of Otto Warmbier, an American student who was imprisoned in North Korea, reminded NYTimes reporter Craig S. Smith of a trip to North Korea with his son, True, in 2015.

The trip got off to a rocky start. Hours before Smith left Hong Kong, he left his passport in a washing machine with his clothes. The passport was bent and still damp when they arrived at the mainland Chinese airport to fly to North Korea. A Chinese immigration officer sniffed Smith’s passport and asked his superiors for permission before letting him through. The North Korean immigration officer seemed less suspicious, although Smith’s passport looked like it was a fake.

The North Korean guide met Smith and her son at the airport. They were a lively girl carrying a designer bag and a taciturn man in a suit who was clearly there to listen and observe.

The tour guide asked the Smiths not to take pictures of construction sites, military objects or soldiers, a rule that is difficult to enforce in a country where five out of every 100 people wear military uniforms. They also asked the Smiths to be careful when taking pictures of statues of the late North Korean leaders Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il that they not have their heads or legs missing from the frame.

The Smiths were taken straight from the airport to a monument featuring massive statues of North Korean generals on Mansu Hill in the city centre. “We were warned not to chew gum or put our hands in our pockets. We were instructed to buy flowers from a kiosk, bow to the statues and lay them at their feet,” Smith said.

Smith and his son were then taken to a hotel near the Taedong River, the same one where Otto Warmbier had stayed during his fateful journey. They were told not to leave the hotel gates without permission. "On our first night in North Korea, the female guide asked us to promise that we would not leave without permission," Smith said.

The Smiths did as they were told. They spent their evenings in underground entertainment halls, bowling and playing blackjack in Chinese-run casinos.

Craig S. Smith and a female tour guide in Pyongyang in 2015. Photo: NYTimes

The two got to see a lot of places, from the mountains in the north to the demilitarized zone in the south. "Although we were forbidden to take pictures as we moved from city to city, I secretly took pictures. The countryside looked like many places in North Asia, with oxcarts and a few motor vehicles. The most impressive thing was how clean and tidy the villages were. Every piece of farmland, even the steep hillsides, was plowed and planted," Smith wrote.

"I knew that on that route, we were only about 16 kilometers from the Yongbyon nuclear complex and about 40 kilometers from Labor Camp No. 14. Any requests to stop to see the lives of North Korean people, even the shops in the city, were refused."

Along the way, the guides repeatedly asked about Smith's job. On his visa application, Smith said he ran a translation company in Beijing. That was true, except that Smith did not specify that he was the managing director of the New York Times' Chinese-language site, responsible for translating articles from English to Chinese.

"The tour guide kept saying that there were many spies in North Korea. I realized this trip was not a game that my son and I should participate in," Smith recalled thinking at that time.

On the last day, Smith's son asked if they could see the statues of the generals again. The tour guide seemed confused, even annoyed, but obliged.

"When we arrived, the male guide asked me, 'Why do you want to see the generals' monument again?'. I explained that since we had started the tour there, my son wanted to end it at the same place. He was silent until we approached a building," Smith said.

Here, the tour guide asked Smith to write down the reason on a piece of paper to bring inside the building to meet the person in charge. A man came out of the building and talked to the tour guide. The tour guide asked Smith to tell him the reason again so he could go inside to explain. Smith repeated what he had said and followed him into the building.

"There was no guestbook inside, just a group of people in military uniforms. They seemed annoyed to see me come in and gestured for me to go out. After a while, my guide appeared and said they accepted."

"I realized then that we were under suspicion. Seeing what happened to Warmbier and looking back on my trip, I saw how risky it was. The ambiguity about my identity, my wet passport, and the photos I secretly took, some of them of a decapitated statue of Kim Il Sung, could easily be used as evidence that I had nefarious intentions," Smith wrote.

On the plane back to China, Smith read the English-language Pyongyang Daily. “Nuclear strikes will end US-North Korea tensions,” read one headline. “North Korea sets timetable for major war,” it said.

"A lot of people said I was stupid to go to North Korea. But it's easy to underestimate the risks of a place like North Korea," Smith wrote. "Warmbier was naive, and so was I."

According to VNE