“North Korea was preparing a military parade on Yanggak Island to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Korean War armistice, so we were put up in the Cheongnyeon Hotel on Gwangbok Street instead.
This was my second trip to North Korea, but the first time I’d gone outside in secret. One time I went out at night, and the second time at 6AM. I was very tense, my heart aflutter. I wore simple clothes to look like a North Korean, let my hair down and used a black bag of my mother’s to hide the fact that I was not wearing the necessary pin badge.
The women of Pyongyang put me to shame, though, as I was wearing flat sandals while they were in high heels. They were in makeup and looked milky white, making me look like a colored person. No matter how I tried to imitate them, they would have known I was a foreigner.”
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