Vienna-Pyongyang

Reminds me of this great travel blog from 2008: http://vienna-pyongyang.blogspot.com/ The writer traveled from Vienna to Pyongyang by train, giving him 36 unsupervised hours in North Korea.

A couple rail fans booked a train from Vienna to Pyongyang in 2008. Their travelogue is fascinating although it can take some effort to wade through the train-schedule minutia and whatnot if you're not into that but well worth it for the uncensored images. "The forbidden railway: Vienna - Pyongyang 윈 - 모스크바 - 두만강 - 평양 36 hours in North Korea without a guide..." http://vienna-pyongyang.blogspot.com/ EDIT: Direct link to skip the European and Russian part of the trip and go directly to crossing the border: http://vienna-pyongyang.blogspot.com/2008/09/irkutsk-skovorodino.html

My favorite N. Korea travelogue is this fellow's, done by train: http://vienna-pyongyang.blogspot.com/ He's a train hobbyist, a touch obsessed with timetables. He noticed that Moscow-Pyongyang routes were hypothetically opened. He secured a travel visa through the normal routes, and as it turned out, his visa was valid for any entrance to N. Korea. As a result, he entered the DPRK through the Russian border. He was able to walk around in normal N. Korean train stations and talk to the locals, without any government guides or monitors.

My favourite NK blog is the trip in 2008 from Austria to North Korea via the unexpected route from Russia https://vienna-pyongyang.blogspot.com/2008/10/vienna-pyongyang-by-trai…

You might also enjoy this blog from someone who travelled the whole Vienna-Pyongyang route: https://vienna-pyongyang.blogspot.com/

I read a blog diary by someone that took the train from Vienna thru Russia, then the closed (in 2008) border town of Tumangan, and then to Pyongyang. They spent multiple days touring Pyongyang and thereabouts in what appeared to be a strictly guided tour. Fascinating read. http://vienna-pyongyang.blogspot.com/

Also Deutsch Welle's english documentary channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCW39zufHfsuGgpLviKh297Q http://vienna-pyongyang.blogspot.com hacked the border crossing, but that hole has almost certainly been secured since. I've found a propaganda site which purports to be DPRK and is unabashedly old-style second world: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23738281 (Incidentally, YIL St. Benedict out Marx'ed Marx: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24588118 footnote 2)

A 2008 trip from Vienna to Pyongyang: http://vienna-pyongyang.blogspot.com/ This featured, for part of the way, a ride in the North Korean sleeper car from Moscow to Pyongyang, as far as I know still the world's longest single continuous rail trip without changing trains. Something like this could pretty well never be done again, though. The Khasan-Tumangang border crossing is really only open to North Koreans and Russians, and they managed to get in only on the technicality that Tumangang was listed on their visas as a valid port of entry. They were lucky they didn't end up in a North Korean jail - or a Russian one.

Ten years ago two guys managed to enter in Noth Korea by train from Russia spending 36 hours without a guide. https://vienna-pyongyang.blogspot.com/ They obviously went to see the USS Pueblo as well... It's kind of a long read, but very interesting, imho.

Looks like the correct URL is http://vienna-pyongyang.blogspot.de (there's an 'e' missing from the end of the submitted URL).

Related, wrt to romanticization of long rail journeys -- NPR reporter traveled from Moscow to Vladivostok: http://www.npr.org/blogs/pictureshow/143016679/russia-by-rail Also, this guy documented his trip from Vienna to Pyongyang, North Korea: http://vienna-pyongyang.blogspot.com/

It's difficult to do, but these guys did it -- http://vienna-pyongyang.blogspot.com/

Probably previously posted, but "36 hours in North Korea without a guide..." is really interesting as well: http://vienna-pyongyang.blogspot.com/

Reminds me of this article I read a while back. http://vienna-pyongyang.blogspot.com/ Someone actually did the Moscow-Pyongyang trip. I have no idea how they bought the tickets though.

If you like crazy, here's a blog of a guy who went from Vienna to Pyongyang by train, entered North Korea through the border with Russia and spent 36 hours without a guide...until he got to Pyongyang http://vienna-pyongyang.blogspot.com/

There are no good sources for what your average North Korean's life is currently like. There are a handful of famous accounts from a few of those who escaped the country and they're obviously pretty grim (particularly those describing prison camp life) but the stereotype of this primitive country, which is backwards both ideologically and technologically. I'm not an idiot, I don't believe there's a little hidden Wakanda going on there. But we can at least observe that if they're able to hack that quantity of crypto there is some kind of tech operation going on there, however small it might be. So they're not entirely shut off and they're able to penetrate at least a bunch of western crypto-startups. If you're motivated, don't mind a very on-rails, restricted and relatively pricey tour, you can actually visit yourself: https://koryogroup.com - I've wanted to for a while, but I've spent less money to travel in other interesting places with fewer restrictions for longer, so it's hard to justify the expense. An interesting read you might like is by a couple of Austrian guys who decided to hop on a train there, confusing and irritating border officials who didn't expect an invasion from the northern direction :) http://vienna-pyongyang.blogspot.com Probably the most accessible and interesting thing though, is a podcast series called "Blowback" (it's Season 3, the previous two were on the Cuban revolution and the Iraq war). Now obviously this isn't the current day but it…

This is a fun read: http://vienna-pyongyang.blogspot.com/

some more links from the same author The start of our trip with the North Korean train (still inside Russia): http://vienna-pyongyang.blogspot.com/2008/09/irkutsk-skovorodino.html Approaching the border between Russia and North Korea (the last kilometers inside Russia): http://vienna-pyongyang.blogspot.com/2008/09/khabarovsk-khasan-border-… Inside North Korea: http://vienna-pyongyang.blogspot.com/2008/09/tumangan-north-korean-bor…

Thanks. I didn't realise the red text was a hyperlink either. To save anyone else the hassle, this is where he finally crosses into NK: https://vienna-pyongyang.blogspot.com/2008/09/tumangan-north-korean-bo…

There’s a blog post series from a guy who did this. https://vienna-pyongyang.blogspot.com/2008/04/how-everything-began.htm…

Keep in mind these are photos of the capital, in areas that tourists are allowed to see. There's a fascinating photoset from 2008 by some Europeans who through a bureaucratic miracle were allowed to enter and cross North Korea by train: http://vienna-pyongyang.blogspot.com/2008/09/khabarovsk-khasan-border-…

There is a link to the 'detailed travelogue' http://vienna-pyongyang.blogspot.de/2008/04/how-everything-began.html