In 2018, Michael Palin spent two weeks in the notoriously secretive Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, a cut-off land without internet or phone signal, where the countryside has barely moved beyond a centuries-old peasant economy but where the cities have gleaming skyscrapers and luxurious underground train stations.
He shares his day-by-day diary of his visit, in which he describes not only what he saw but also his conversations with the country’s inhabitants, his encounters with officialdom, and his musings about a land wholly unlike any other.