I’d love to write all about my impressions of North Korea, but I’m not really sure that I saw it.

What I did see was the face that Pyongyang chooses to show to foreign visitors, and a carefully coiffed, immaculately made-up face it is too. Life for the 30% or so of North Korea’s population who are Pyongyang residents looks pretty good. The city is clean. There’s bright new shiny buildings constructed purely for the benefit of the workers and the newest even have paint all the way round (not just on the street facing half of the building). There’s funfairs, circuses, a wonderful park. And there’s lots and LOTS of stupendously large statues of the great leaders and their supporters in the great revolution. People are neatly and smartly dressed, down to the natty Dear Leaders’ pin that every single Pyongyang resident I saw wears (these are given to every individual who chooses to join the Vanguard – kind of a young communists movement – when they are about 13 and retained carefully thereafter for life.).

There are even things in the shops, although I didn’t actually see people in said shops. No time for frivolous shopping when there are so many great group activities for one to indulge in. All paid for by the State, naturally. Mass dancing events spontaneously organized by the university study groups to celebrate National Day (those students really looked like they were having FUN!). Group bowling games. Extra study courses (as sanctioned by your boss of course) where such study is expected to make you a more effective employee and therefore contribute more effectively to the State’s progress.

Life here is taken pretty seriously. We went to see numerous statues, mainly bronze and monolithic and of course very impressive, we bowed a lot. We went to see feats of civil engineering, we oooh-ed a lot. We went to see Kim Il Sung’s birthplace, we aah’ed a lot. We went to see the heavy industry museum whose highlights included a display of the different tensions of copper wire that North Korea produces, we ooh-ed some more. Cataclysmic boredom threatened more than once – this is a place where you have to work at your fun, and that includes the tourists.

As light relief, we went to see some students at the local school putting on a show. Aaah, we thought, some delightful little snotty nosed kiddies singing off-key and simpering. Oh no. North Korea doesn’t display its amateurs, these kids were in the final years of the Vanguard equivalent of stage school. Polished doesn’t even begin the describe the level of finish these kids had achieved in their acts. Perfect timing, perfect execution, perfect smiles. Nature tamed.

So was I impressed? Sure.

Did I like it?…..Hmmmmm, come back to me on that one.