Bizarre Trip of a Lifetime
Monty Anderson got word that the trip was on two weeks after rushing home to California from Ukraine for emergency open-heart surgery. He didnât ask his doctor if it was OK to take another trip so soon. He told him he was going.
Eighty-year-old Joan Youmans heard about it when she picked up her phone messages after a trip to Indonesia. She canceled a few doctorsâ appointments and booked immediately.
When Joe Walker learned the trip was a go, he said he âjust gave them my credit card number and told them to fill in the amount.â Cost him seven grand, he figures.
Such is the allure of North Korea to the âextreme traveler.â
Opportunities for American tourists to visit the secretive state that makes no secret of its loathing for the U.S. are mighty tough to come by. A North Korean visa for an American is like round-the-clock electricity here in the North Korean capital: not impossible, but rare enough to be appreciated when it unexpectedly arrives.
âItâs the hardest place to get to,â said Bill Altaffer, who should know. Altaffer is the worldâs most traveled man, according to the mosttraveledman.com website -- âothers look it up, weâve been there,â says the recorded message on his home phone. The website doesnât just rank by number of countries visited. It counts territories, autonomous regions, enclaves and provinces too, from Abkhazia to Zhejiang. Altaffer, a retired schoolteacher, has hit more of them than anyone.
But not North Korea. It was the only place on the globe that had thwarted his attempts to visit -- âexcept for Wake Island, maybe,â he said, referring to the U.S. Pacific territory that is a restricted military installation. âBut I can live without Wake Island. North Korea was the big one.â
Like the other Americans, Altaffer had a standing order with the Santa Monica-based Travelersâ Century Club to go should the chance ever arise. So this fall, when the North Korean regime decided to issue a handful of visas to Americans for reasons it typically never bothered to explain, Altaffer, Anderson, Youmans, Walker and globe-trotter Don Parrish found themselves on a rare adventure for Americans.
North Korea is not everyoneâs idea of a holiday destination. But these are not your stereotypical Americans abroad, looking for the nearest McDonaldâs. They long ago gave up bringing home souvenirs. Nor are they interested in just touching a toe to an airport tarmac to tick a destination off the list.
They want to experience the place. Theyâre the travelers who show up in Afghanistan with war still smoldering, who can tell you where Tuva is (the dead center of Asia) or who would buy a personalized license plate that says âSocotra,â in honor of once landing on the tiny archipelago of islands off Somalia that is Yemeni territory.
Theyâve visited places youâve probably never heard of, and covered far more miles than Magellan or Cook ever did.
That desire to poke their noses into unusual spots drove them to board an Air Koryo flight from Beijing to Pyongyang, buckling up on a creaky, Soviet-made Ilyushin 62 for the 90-minute trip. The airliner has averaged a crash every two years since coming into service in the early 1960s, a safety record that may explain the exclamation mark on the glowing red âFasten Your Belts!â light above the seats.
âI saw my first communist country in 1965 -- East Germany -- so itâs taken me 40 years to get to the last,â Parrish said just before boarding. The Chicago-area native began racking up air miles while making 80 trips between the U.S. and Japan in the 1990s as a communications consultant, and he has since visited more than 100 countries.
Parrish is modest about his travels, deferring to those he describes as real pros, like Altaffer. âTell Bill where youâre from,â Parrish urged a fellow passenger. âHeâll have been there.â
Yet none of the five were showing any âbeen there, done thatâ nonchalance about finally getting a peek behind North Koreaâs curtains. Nor did they appear concerned about visiting a dictatorship that is a sworn enemy and demonstrates an almost pathological paranoia about Americans.
âTotalitarian governments take care of you,â said Altaffer, who lives in Mammoth Lakes when heâs not traveling. âPeople are always asking me: âArenât you scared when you travel?â And I say: âYeah, when I land at LAX.â â
Being the visiting âimperialistsâ in town was the least of their worries. Walker was sick for three days after eating something that fought back, though the food reviews were generally good. (There was grumbling that they were limited to one drink each at lunch). But the biggest problem, all five later agreed, was the inability to go anywhere without being shadowed by their government-appointed minder. âI knew it would be regimented, but I had no idea just how much,â Parrish said, reflecting on the trip after returning home.
They were treated to the standard North Korean greatest hits package tour. They saw monuments to Kim Il Sung, the founder of the North Korean republic and still officially its leader despite his death in 1994. They went to a model school and to the war museum, where âevidenceâ of American war atrocities is displayed. There was a bus excursion to the North Korean side of the demilitarized zone, or DMZ, and another to the Pueblo, the American naval vessel captured by the North Koreans in 1968.
All of which forced the Americans to confront a moral choice: In such a sensitive environment, where your minders warn you they can put you on the next plane out of the country at a whim or confiscate your film at the airport, do you challenge the prevailing local version of history? Or do you let the representation of America as a dangerous rogue state pass without comment?
The first stop on the tour, for example, was the towering statue of Kim that overlooks this city. Every visitor was lined up at the base and was expected to bow in homage.
All five Americans bowed.
Walker felt uncomfortable, he said, paying even perfunctory homage to the man who created the police state and cult of personality that are widely blamed -- outside North Korea, at least -- for the countryâs poverty, hunger and international isolation.
âIt felt a bit like being a Jew visiting Hitlerâs Germany,â Walker recalled as he headed back to his home in San Diego.
âBut I think itâs your obligation as a visitor, and as an American, to leave a good impression,â Walker added. âYou have to try to do everything you can to not come across as the Ugly American.â
It is a syndrome he sees frequently in his travels.
âI used to think it was the bad 10% of Americans who ruined it for the other 90%,â Walker said with a rueful smile. âBut now I think itâs the bad 50% ruining it for the other 50%.â
Anderson says he sees himself as a diplomat when he travels, trying to win people over one at a time. But trying to strike up a candid conversation with North Korean officials about their lives was frustrating. âWeâd buy them drinks at night, and Iâm pretty good at being charming,â he said. âBut this is the first country Iâve been to -- and Iâve been to 125 -- where I couldnât get past the official statements. Nothing worked.â
Only Youmans appeared unperturbed by the relentless propaganda. North Korean officials called her âGrandma,â and when the group was told to line up by age to walk to the edge of the DMZ, she was at the head of the line. Youmans found the North Korean attitude at the border to be fairly casual and said she loved the âorderlinessâ of Pyongyang. People were âwell dressed and healthy,â she said, adding that she believed North Korea could become a âreal power one day.â
Youmans, who lives in Glendale, describes herself as a late starter in life. She didnât make a real commitment to traveling until she was 68, after her husband died. She had worked all her adult life. Raised three kids. Started college at 40. Got a doctorate in law at 54.
Six weeks after his death, she left on a trip, alone, to 12 countries. âMy kids think Iâm crazy,â she said. âBut my grandkids tell me to go for it.â She has now been to 172 of the 193 member countries of the United Nations but worries she hasnât seen enough of Africa.
Her only anxiety during the North Korean visit came when the possibility arose that the group might have to spend an extra day in Pyongyang to get seats on a flight out. Youmans had connections to make. She was going to Algeria.
Five days were enough for Anderson too. âAny more would have been painful,â he said back home. The postcard he had mailed himself from Pyongyang had arrived that day, and he was happy for any evidence that he had been there. North Korean immigration officials had refused -- to the Americansâ great frustration -- to stamp their passports.
Altaffer wants to go back.
âThis is definitely the weirdest trip Iâve been on,â he said as the Ilyushin headed back to Beijing. âI would love to go back for another five days. I want to get into the mausoleum to see Kimâs body.
âEverything else is anticlimactic after North Korea,â he said with a sigh.
Perhaps only people as widely traveled can understand the appeal of a city as austere and superficially joyless as Pyongyang. Each of the five understands the instinct to see something different in a world that keeps shaving the edges off its differences and variations.
âThese are the only people that really understand me,â Altaffer said of the other travelers. âYou get home and you canât talk to your friends about Pyongyang. They donât know, they donât understand, and they donât care.â
Of course the world of elite travel is not without its snobbery, its own hierarchy of achievement. Those who call themselves âadventure travelersâ -- a separate breed from this North Korea crew -- prefer trips offering a greater physical challenge. Flying in an Ilyushin does not count. For an adventure traveler, itâs not a trip unless it involves sweat, scratches and the possibility of rare diseases.
Anderson says a true adventure traveler would dismiss him as a âplastic explorer,â because he reaches his destinations by credit card instead of his wits.
He makes no apologies.
âI like first-class travel and I like adventure travel,â Anderson said. âIt would be nice to take three months to float across the ocean and then climb to the top of the mountain to meet with the headhunters, but I want to explore the world. And there are so many places to go.â
Meanwhile, Anderson encourages people he has met on his trips to visit him at his Napa Valley home, one of the most beautiful places heâs ever seen, he said.
âI tell everyone to visit, theyâre all welcome,â he said. âAs long as they know I probably wonât be in town.â
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