Postcard: North Korea

Can a reclusive police state be a vacation destination? Sort of. Just bring lots of cash and ignore the government spies. One tourist's Hermit Kingdom holiday

Courtesy of Jenn Gearey

The author, on holiday in North Korea, poses at the DMZ with border guards

There were seven of us gathered in the Red Wall Hotel in Beijing—an Australian criminal lawyer for the insane, a Scottish lord living out his 007 fantasies, two communism-curious retired Italian mechanics, a retired Italian pilot who made a sport of traveling to the world's most inaccessible places and a young Italian accountant living in Austria. And me, the not-so-secret journalist from Canada who was surprised to even be invited. We had all signed up for a most peculiar adventure: we were going to North Korea. As tourists.

This was made possible by a little-known NGO based in Europe called the...

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