Round North Korea with Michael Palin in rose-tinted spectacles

Michael Palin in North Korea, a two-part documentary in which the Python is given a tightly choreographed tour of that country, aired on Channel 5 last year. Palin dances with cheerfully drunk residents of the country on International Workers’ Day; picnics with his guide, a woman called So Hyang; plays catch with an inflatable globe with some children; learns Taekwondo; sees some beautiful scenery — mountains, rivers as well as cities comprised of coordinated, colourful blocks, with monuments dedicated to the Great Leaders (as the rulers of North Korea past and present are collectively called). But there are some more sinister sights, such as a road lined with huge concrete pillars, ready to be knocked down to obstruct it in the event of an invasion from the south. This book is the journal — though evidently very edited; it reads nothing like a diary kept during the trip.

Palin states his aims in the documentary as being to meet — truly meet — ordinary North Koreans and show that ‘people, no matter their background, are much closer to us than we think’. It’s an ambitious task, as the journey has been planned by a travel agency that arranges carefully curated, government-approved visits to the closed-off country. Palin is chaperoned by two guides and a ‘gaggle of officials’, who (as becomes apparent) monitor everything. While the crew prepares to film anti-American cards and posters in a gift shop, these men quickly clear them away, leaving only cards of the Great Leaders. In another shot of Palin and a farmer working in the fields, the same officials hurriedly arrange for a tractor to be brought in, to present the country as being more modernised to western viewers.