In september 2008 a friend of mine and I made a trip to the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea, better known as North Korea.

Not only that North Korea is quite an unusual touristic destination, the route to North Korea was even more unusual – I travelled the whole way from Vienna (Austria) to Pyongyang by train via Slovakia, Ukraine and Russia (my friend, he is from Switzerland, only joined me in Irkutsk). And we used a route into North Korea, which is said to be impossible for tourists:
We entered North Korea from Russia via the border at Hasan/Tumangan, whereas usually tourists can only use the railway line from the Chinese-Korean border at Dandong/Sinuiju to Pyongyang.
This route was open for tourist traffic only untill about 1994. It's likely that we were the first tourists who travelled this line since then.

Our trip was an experiment, we just wanted to try this route. Long planning and debates whether we should really try it or not preceeded the trip.

The state North Korean tourist company KITC did not know in advance about our route. And we did not know what would really happen to us after arrival at Tumangan.

But finally everything went well.

The highlights:

- We went 860 km by train across whole North Korea, from the most North-Eastern point till Pyongyang.
- We passed through regions, which are usually not accessible for tourists.
- We spent about 36 hours on North Korean territory without a guide.
- We walked around freely at Tumangan station, North Korean border station to Russia[/list]