A Chequer-Board of Nights and Days

Older Chinese visitors find striking comparisons with their own country, 30 or more years ago. The public worship of North Korea's leader, Kim Jong Il, and of his late father, Kim Il Sung, is similar to the cult of Mao. The state ideology of juche (self-reliance) has much in common with Mao's isolationism. Chinese tourists are given warning, before leaving, to avoid commenting on North Korean politics and to be careful where they point their cameras. China was once as prickly.

North Korea is almost as wary of Chinese visitors as it is of Westerners. Like Westerners, Chinese are assigned guides whose job is to prevent spontaneous contact with locals. Some guides express disdain for Chinese socialism. "China is so dirty now and so expensive, and takes no stance whatsoever against the American imperialists", says one (with its industry barely operating, North Korea's air does seem refreshingly unpolluted to Chinese visitors).

The kind of tourism North Korea prefers is the carefully controlled tours by South Koreans to Mount Kumgang, a scenic resort on the northern side of their common border. There, they have virtually no contact with locals (South Korean tourists are rarely welcome in Pyongyang). On May 17th, North and South Korea opened the first rail links across the border since the Korean war. It was largely a symbolic act. Maybe one day such links will make it easier to travel to Mount Kumgang and to Kaesong, a South Korean investment zone in the north. But there is no sign North Korea plans to let South Koreans travel freely. Regular train services are still a distant prospect.

As mobile-phone-loving Chinese tourists frequently complain, North Korea does not allow visitors to bring their phones into the country--so fearful is it of unmonitored information conduits to the outside world. There is no internet access even in expensive hotels. North Koreans authorised to speak to visitors appear to be oblivious of their guests' annoyance at such privations. They boast that North Korea's economy once outperformed China's, particularly in the 1960s when China was gripped by famine. One Chinese visitor says her brother fled to North Korea then. The North Koreans do not allow her to try to contact him.

A Chinese travel agent says North Korea's poverty is part of its off-beat appeal. If North Korea were to become richer, she says, it would lose its competitive tourism advantage. Not that it is a huge draw, even when it does welcome tourists. The Arirang performance, originally due to last for a month, ended several days early because of insufficient paying visitors.