Alumni
Column
50 SPCCAA
A Trip to North Korea
Alvin Ying (1995)
During the March 2014 Happy Hour Gathering, a number of adventurous alumni from the classes of 1995, 98 and 99 chatted over
drinks and turned the conversation into a wild idea of visiting North Korea as a group. After juggling our vacation schedules, dealing
with our respective human resources departments for reference letters and a cumbersome visa application process, seven of us
from SPCC went to North Korea for five days in a guided tour in late May. The experience was truly remarkable, which included
visiting local museums, a local high school, and the demilitarised zone (DMZ) at the border with South Korea. We even tried to mix
with the locals in an amusement park, took a subway ride and watched a professional gymnastics performance.
Our visit to a local amusement park in Pyongyang in the evening was our first encounter with the locals, mainly children dressed
in school uniforms. We were surprised by the variety of games offered in the park, including roller-coaster, free-fall machine, pirate
boat and bumping cars. We dared not to try the roller-coaster or the free-fall machine, but had a lot of fun with the bumping cars
and pirate boat. We saw many smiling faces in the park, but this comfortable lifestyle may be adopted by the privileged children in
Pyongyang only and may not apply to those from poorer areas outside the city.
The subway ride was also interesting. The Pyongyang metro is one of the deepest underground subway systems in the world.
When we travelled down to the platform through a long escalator in a bleak concrete tunnel, which took two to three minutes,
we found it strange that we did not see any advertisements which are commonly found in other cities. In fact, we did not see any
advertisement anywhere else in Pyongyang. On the contrary, government propaganda posters and slogans were everywhere. We
noticed that people in North Korea are very good at queuing up to get onto public transports. We saw no chaos but only neatly
formed lines at bus stops and platforms.
We also had plenty of rest, karaoke and table tennis games during our stay in the “five-star” Yanggakdo Hotel, as we were
not allowed to go outside the hotel by ourselves. We bought a few books which detailed the famous Juche idea
（主題思想）
created by their Great Leader. The hardworking SPCC alumni in our group wished to find some time to study Juche in
depth and may even consider forming a Juche study group in Hong Kong! We look forward to sharing with other SPCC
alumni the Juche idea at the next happy hour event, and hope to plan another trip to other exotic places in the near future!
Participants of the trip included: Rebecca Tang (1999), Alvin Ying (1995), Simon Fok (1999), Chris Shiu (1998),
Athena Ng (1999), Yvonne Siu (1995) and Glenda Yu (1995).
More Photos in Dropbox:
