Mount Paekdu

Another major highlight of my North Korean tour was our visit to Mt. Paekdu. Mt. Paekdu is the highest mountain on the entire Korean peninsula, and it's way, way the hell up north, right on the Chinese border (there are still arguments about whether Paekdu belongs to Korea or China).

Mt. Paekdu is really important for a lot of reasons; it's the highest mountain on the entire Korean peninsula; it has a huge crater lake at the top (the mountain is an inactive volcano); it's difficult to get to and really beautiful; and it’s a very historic, sacred site. Koreans believe Mount Paekdu to be the site of the origin of the Korean people, the foundation of their race and country. It's a sacred place and traditionally a site of worship.

It's especially important to North Koreans because during both the Japanese occupation and the Korean War, anti-Japanese and Communist guerillas were organized there (Kim Il Sung and his secret camps). Kim Jong Il was also supposedly born there (most Western sources say otherwise). So there are tons of reasons to see Mt. Paekdu, besides the awesome natural scenery.

We spent one night and two days in the Mt. Paekdu area, and it was really fun and so different from Pyongyang. We chartered a flight to a town called Samji, and once we were in Samji, I could see why we had to fly. Barely any roads in the region are paved, so we were bouncing around for hours at a time in our minibus, covered in dust, going down tiny, narrow dirt roads. The scenery was so beautiful – really wooded (reminded me of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula) and mountainous, with the occasional waterfall. The coolness was a welcome change after the heat and humidity of Beijing and Pyongyang.

But getting to Samji was only half the battle. Since it's so far north and the terrain is so (duh) mountainous, Mt. Paekdu itself is only accessible for a few months every year. The crater lake, Lake Cheon, is frozen 8.5 months out of twelve, and our guide Mr. Oh said that in winter, the winds can literally blow people away. The average temperature at the peak hovers around 17 degrees Fahrenheit (it was nice and cool in August – perfect hiking weather).

We drove a ways, maybe an hour, from Samji to the mountains. At Mt. Paekdu, the funicular wasn't working (‘temporarily out of order’) and our little bus could only go so far, so we had to walk the last 45 minutes up to Lake Cheon.


The view was worth the walk:




And the world's most worthless funicular:
This isn’t even the highest point – we could have walked a few more minutes to another vantage point, but I was tired and the view would have been about the same. We also had the option of walking down to the edge of Lake Cheon. It would have been amazing, but I never would have made it back up those hundreds of stairs!

When we were done, someone told us that it would be faster to walk down the funicular track, rather than down the path that we had walked up on. I don’t know if it was faster or not, but walking down the funicular was hard (so, so steep, my knees were killing me by the end) and at times really scary – boards were rotted out, the handrails were rusty, the whole thing was creaky and practically swayed in the wind. I’m scared of heights so I just crept down, and it took me about as long going down as it had going up!

Obviously the problem was more than temporary!

Besides Mt. Paekdu, we saw the secret camp where Kim Jong Il was supposedly born while his parents were busy stomping out the Japanese and imperialist aggressors. There are tons of secret camps in the northern mountains of the DPRK, but this one was particularly touching - we could see Kim Jong Il's childhood toys, as well as his baby blanket (made from bits of cloth given by the female guerillas, from the uniforms off their backs). There was also a really pretty waterfall and the Samjiyon Grand Monument, a historic battle site with monuments to the Juche philosophy and our favorite Great Leader.

Overall, the Mt. Paekdu area was a really nice overnight trip – we could get out of the city and see a different side of the DPRK. I’m a total sucker for trees and mountains and natural scenery, so this was my favorite part of the country.


And obviously the Kims share my good taste: