You Wouldn't Believe These Things You CAN DO In North Korea (2022)

hello everyone and welcome to another week with me um i'm pretty excited today because i've i've obviously gone hands-free and i've got all this uh fancy new equipment i've got one of those circle things which i think that you can see in my eyes and a tripod been making youtube videos for about almost two years now which is kind of crazy um and that whole time i've been using things like plant pods um books uh god knows what else to to kind of hold up my phone and uh natural lighting but now i'm one of those people with one of those things and uh the reason why i'm telling you this is because it shows um my commitment to this channel and i really hope that you will subscribe to me whilst you're watching this because it's gonna be a pretty fun video and i just spent 20 quid on all this equipment so please make it worth my while anyway um that's that so today uh we're gonna talk about a pretty fun topic i actually asked you guys this on instagram um what things um so i asked a few people who had already been to north korea i put it out to you guys what things really surprised you that you could do that you found that you could do upon going to north korea and i got some pretty pretty um i got some pretty fun answers back from you guys so obviously i already had some things in my head um a lot of people when i take them on tour um they they will often say to me like oh my gosh i didn't know that you could do that or maybe i'm telling them beforehand um preparing them to go to north korea and you know there's a few shock faces in the room so um i had a few ideas in my head and then i asked you guys and got some pretty fun answers back from you as well so i'm not going to give it a number right now because no idea how many there are going to be but in this video we're going to go through some pretty fun things that are really surprising that you can do in north korea and i guess it's pretty obvious why i'm doing this video a lot of videos out there um are like most shocking things you can't do in north korea in all honesty i'm just taking things from a bit of a different approach let's take a look at some shocking things that you actually can do in north korea [Music] number one super easy super quick we're gonna breeze past this one because you guys all know by now if you've been watching my channel for any period of time including the last three minutes that you've been watching this um that you can take photos in north korea you can take videos in north korea i have hours and hours and hours of footage literally thousands and thousands of photos there are three rules i go over them super quickly no photos of military no photos or constriction sites and uh you have to remain respectful when you're taking photos of the leaders that's it really basically there are a few more rules and stuff like that if you're interested check it out but we're going to go to the next one now which is talking to locals believe it or not you can talk to locals in north korea yes you can talk to north korean people on the street yes you can talk to the waitresses um you can talk to uh whichever north korean you find who is willing to talk to you and that's an important point okay so you're allowed to speak to local people doesn't mean that local people want to speak to you and that is completely fine when we go to any foreign country we should not expect that people want to speak to us or people are willing to speak to us um it's not so common for north koreans to see foreigners um especially if you go out of pyongyang if you can speak korean you have a much higher chance of being able to speak to locals uh not many speak english you should not presume that everyone can speak english even in you know even in places like restaurants bars hotels they might not speak good english in fact they probably won't speak good english the only koreans that you'll find speaking in english or speaking your language will be your north korean tour guides believe it or not you can go outside of pyongyang you can visit the countryside in north korea north korea is a lot more open than a lot of people think i myself have been to all four corners even though it's not really the square awful areas north east southwest of north korea um there's a lot of places to visit okay so the next one that i found was kind of researching for this for this um for this video was that apparently you're not allowed to wear jeans in north korea this is completely not true you're allowed to wear jeans in north korea there is one place that you should not wear jeans and that is if you are visiting the palace of the sun and that is where kim il-sung and kim jong-il lay in rest and the reason why you're not allowed to wear jeans there is basically because you should be wearing formula thai that is an extremely important place in north korea as i'm sure you can imagine so we just ask that everyone wear the appropriate attire when going there and jeans are not appropriate not because of the american influence of jeans and things like this but actually because um you should be wearing formal clothing at north koreans you won't find them wearing jeans definitely not but foreigners uh yeah you can wear jeans you can one thing that everyone is always really surprised with weirdly enough because when you think about it doesn't actually make that much sense um one thing that people are delighted to hear actually is that of an evening or indeed any time in the day in the afternoon or evening most likely you can number one drink alcohol in north korea and number two you can go to a local bar and drink alcohol with local north koreans real life north koreans koreans that aren't actors just put in the bar just for you um people are always happy to hear when i you know i suggest of an evening if you want to hang out with the guides in the hotel bar or something like that it's a great way to build rapport with your guys it's a great way to just get chatting in a really chilled out environment um over a couple of beers or something like that if you like to drink beer and a lot of the time on tour we go to a local bar as well to um to sample some more north korean beer or just kind of hang out in a local area kfc mcdonald's okay so you can't actually have kfc or mcdonald's in north korea that's true but there is a kfc korean fried chicken place and there's also a fast food burger joint uh which definitely isn't mcdonald's but fast food burger joint pretty much the same thing so you can eat fast food in north korea you can have korean fried chicken um and you can have various other fried food usually to be honest we don't take people to these places on tour just because you can have them anywhere but you can always request these places or also um if you're in north korea for a couple of weeks um or on a particularly long tour then we do tend to stop off at these places um just for some kind of home comforts instead of having a typical traditional korean food karaoke who else loves karaoke and i'm not talking karaoke european style karaoke where you go into a bar and you sing in front of you know a couple of hundred strangers who are very drunk and you are just as drunk as them i'm not talking about that kind of karaoke the karaoke that you really regret the next day um asian style karaoke so chinese japanese korean karaoke um is basically in a private booth private room area and um it's very very popular in china korea and japan and north korea is no exception to that so there is karaoke in north korea um it does have western songs and yes you are able to sing and enjoy that okay the next one you can go on the internet in north korea you can post on social media shakara so uh i've got a whole video i'll again put it up here got a whole video on uh going on the internet in north korea or is the internet in north korea um very quickly there is intranet in north korea that's for the locals so that is an internal internet so uh locals and local north koreans cannot access foreign internet however foreigners can buy a local sim card it's extremely expensive um so really i would recommend that you don't but if you want to you can buy the sim card you can buy data for it and you can go online onto social media and you can post about your trip whilst you are in north korea next thing that you definitely can do in north korea is going to go through some sports so you can play football you can do golf you can do volleyball you can go bowling okay um these are some really fun things that you can do either as a specialized trip so if you want to go uh to the golf course maybe it's an idea that you do um a kind of specialized tour by yourself or like a day by yourself as an add-on tour because usually it's not included into tour itineraries bowling very popular with the locals especially of an evening of a weekend just like it is anywhere in the world um volleyball koreans love volleyball usually at work the or in companies there's um volleyball teams so like girls we guys or for example with the toy company that we work with they have volleyball teams with the chinese speaking guides and the english speaking guides stuff like that they get really competitive they have like an end of year match stuff like that um if you get the chance to play volleyball with koreans it's always good fun they are really good so be ex you know expect to lose keeping on to the theme of sports let's go to dancing so yes you can dance with locals i have a really embarrassing youtube video um of me again i'll be up here of me dancing with locals one of my favorite times in north korea it was um it was mayday public holiday which is my favorite time anyway uh it's not too hot not too cold locals are all relaxed it's an amazing holiday to spend there um and also this was just a really fun interaction that i had with some koreans who were singing karaoke in the park and i heard them singing my favorite songs so after everyone had sat down for a barbecue in the park i obviously um ran up to them and hey just kind of started singing with them and they really liked that they really appreciated it um i'm glad because it was a bit um intrusive of me uh but i tend to do these things all over the world and uh thankfully they were very welcoming and um and allowed me to to sing and dance with them so it was fun and hey it's not just me you can do that too from dancing to swimming another thing that you can do in north korea is swimming on the beach uh you can also swim in the swimming pools if you want to uh but more people are kind of astounded that yes north korea has beaches that you can go to crazy since it is a um you know it's got a lot of coast around it so of course there's gonna be some beaches um and indeed you can visit them you can visit them on the east coast and on the west coast i'm not very good with directions believe it or not being a tour guide in the summer they can be really really fun places to visit obviously in the winter they're a little bit dill it's a little bit cold you're probably not going to want to swim but uh you can if you really want to and so finally three more things and they're all pretty fun ones people are really surprised that you can talk to the guides pretty freely about pretty much anything there are some topics that i would recommend not to talk to the guides about or at least you know wait a few days until you kind of build up a trust relationship before you start these conversations so that was it um a lot of things i don't know how many things we covered um things that you can do in north created [Music] [Music] [Music]