Finally, an answer to the question “what about the North Korean MMORPG’s – do they exist? And are there dwarves?”: yes. Yes, they do. Or: it does. (But no dwarves.)

The North Korean MMORPG

Titled “WAR between Cho-Han dynasties” and described as “a combat game with one of the upheaval times in Chinese history as its background.” Sadly, we never got to play or look at it, but they proudly talked about its techical features (among others, “running for 24 hours without a break”) and its distinctive game scenarios (”where the new combat style, a hero fights a battle with his soldiers in a battlefield”, was of particular interest.) We never learned where, or how, exactly, this game is played – since they never showed us the intranet – but the fact that they’ve made an MMORPG, albeit a quite unclear one, was enough for us.

The people behind WAR… is Samilpo Information Center, a North Korean “computer centre” that has existed for 13 years and has about 100 employees. They enthusiastically guided us through their body of work, ranging from the online handwriting input program “Koryo Pen”, to a database of North Korean karaoke songs to a completely self-developed PDA. But what really, honestly impressed us, was the answer to our question “So… games?”.

Recipe For Success: Mobile Games

Actually, we were rather unimpressed for the first eight or so titles – mostly asian board games with mediocre graphics and, despite what they said, horrible-to-bad A.I. However, when the word “mobile” was thrown into the mix, things got interesting. (Don’t get us wrong. The translation pen was pretty good. But, all in all, and compared to other products in the same category – pretty lackluster.)

As it turns out, Samilpo Information Center is a very active, and very proud, provider of mobile games, primarily to the Japanese market. Made evident by the fact that all games ended with a manga-styled illustration of a big-eyed, teenage, girl.

Finally: A Way To Shoot Wolves

Some of our favorites were “Wolf Hunting”, a first person shooter where you play the role of farm owner. It’s all about killing… wolves. “Great if you have a friend who owns a sheep ranch”, Mr Bak, the manager, said wryly. “Socoban” is a puzzle game about furniture appearing irregularly. No, we don’t really know how that works either. But the graphics were nice. And the undisputed champion of North Korean produced mobile games – Reru. The train game. Both description and concept are so amazing that we’ll post it in entiry:

“This game is to build the railway on the various conditions.
You can not control the train; you can only build the railway. You can not destroy rock-mountain, lake and city. You can not change program of reru that appears on the upper of screen.”

Expect a Noko Jeans themed release of the game in the coming months.

Download a sample of the Samilpo Information Center Presentation as a PDF file by clicking here. If you want to work with them, e-mail us at info@nokojeans.com.

After having our stomachs blown out by possibly the most evil – but good! – kimchi we’ve ever eaten, we were in serious need of something… easy. Something relatable, and something safe. Enter: some good old American-North Korean fusion food. Enter: the hamburger!

The promise of hamburgers, in Pyongyang, seemed impossible at first. Our imagination ran wild — how would this typically western meal be interpreted by a typical North Korean chef? We had heard horror stories about the Koryo Air hamburger, with its “tired, tired, little bread. And under the bread was the smallest and saddest little hamburger ever looking up at you, with a weak lettuce hanging from it waving with a flappy hand… ‘Help, help…’”

Turns out, the hamburger was fucking great.

After going through a small shop, sealed off from the main street outside by huge plastic film plastered all over what otherwise could have been a display window, we were greeted by the friendly waitors. We had arrived! The hamburgers were near!

With gaping mouths and saliva all over our sleeves, we overlooked the menu and eventually found the burger. It came in three different flavors: regular, cheese, “egg”. The price was a bargain, too – 1€. We ordered 8 big ones of the “egg” variety, and some local beer.

Since they bake fresh burger bread for every order, the wait was a little bit longer than at your average McDonalds; think maybe eight times the McDonalds waiting time. Eventually, eight sad looking little things arrived on big plastic plates. But as we all know, it’s the inside that counts. And especially in the case of North Korean burgers.

It was a blessing. It was like visiting someone’s parent, who had once, maybe six years ago, seen a picture of a hamburger, and was now asked to re-create it. But where memory might have failed, competence reigned supreme. Since there is no import of burger bread, seasoning, etc, everything was made from scratch. No Heinz cheating or HP Sauce shortcuts. Only handcrafted bliss.

The experience was simple - but not in the sense that it’s plain, rather in the sense that there was no bullshit. If Volvo made burgers they would probably taste like this. And given the context this was exactly what we wanted. Three red stars, worth a trip.

How does one blog from North Korea?.

Step one: fill out the form for international phone calls. Since internet is not allowed, all external communication is handled through an e-mail service system – with three employees – and all recipents must be approved. We chose a friend in Sweden to be our link between the modified, North Korean Outlook Express/Windows ME interface and the interwebs blogospherical.

Friend approved.

Step two: write content.

Step three: press send.

Done!

It’s official. It’s a fact. North Korea’s biggest mining company has agreed to make pants together with Noko Jeans. Estimated time of arrival: sometime next year.

We’re here. We’re still alive. And here is - perhaps - the first blog post ever from North Korea. Composed in the lobby of the Koryo Hotel, actually co-written with the three people looking over our shoulders right now, and of course manually validated on an official form. With company stamp. Price: 2 Euro per 25 kb.

We’ll fill you in on more details further on (right now, we’re off to eat some hamburgers, the Pyongyang way.) But regarding the the jeans production, the situation is as follows: we really don’t know. Yet.

While Beijing is preparing for the Olympic Games, we’ve been practicing our own little sport. Trying to break the record for fastest visa issued to North Korea ever.

The fact that we’ve travelled to China, started a blog, made suits, talked to the Swedish media – and even received a lot of Chinese press – without even having a visa to North Korea ready has been kind of a… headache, the last couple of weeks. What if we go public – which we did – and eventually arent’t even allowed into the country – which we might not? Big fail.

Every day since we arrived two weeks ago we have called our Korean contacts, in Sweden and China respectively, to ask them about the visa issue. And the response has always been that the visa is “nothing that you need to worry about”. Which in theory sound absolutely amazing, but in practice, with no stamp on your passport – is rather stressful. We continued to call our contacts and they continued to reply that “everything will be OK”. And when we were informed that we had to get the visa done in less than 24 hours in Beijing, things got really stressful.

We arrived in Beijing yesterday, in a metropolis that none of us has ever been to before. After a night with little to no sleep, at 8 AM today, we were woken by our contact at the North Korean Embassy in Beijing who called to tell us that we had to arrive at the embassy in less than 30 minutes. We jumped into our clothes and ran to a taxi and shouted that he should take us to the North Korean Embassy. Fast!

After about 15 minutes, keeping the deadline, we arrived at the embassy, which was much bigger than its American counterpart or any of the other embassies that we passed. We were extremely nervous. What would he think about our shabby clothing? And our young age? Would he interview us before we were allowed inside the embassy? Strip search? Questioning?

It turned out that our visit to the North Korean Embassy in Beijing would be a far more relaxed experience than our visit to the Bank of China later the same day. After a few minutes of small talk and paying the fee we got our visas. Thus after one year of hard work the sweet feeling of accomplishment rushed over us. We did it. We got the visas.

Tomorrow at 5:30 PM we take the train from Beijing Central Station. 24 hours later we arrive in Pyongyang, capital of North Korea.

We’ve heard many rumours about Guangzhou being China’s Sodom and Gomorrah, with a whore in every street corner and people ready to stab you and steal your money everywhere. Rumours that turned out to be only about 7% true.

We arrived in Guangzhou early wednesday morning after less than three hours of sleep. First up was the denim factory, but before that – the free lunch. This time in a restaurant with a huge neon sign that said, simply: “Hotel”. Although when we asked about the room cost per night, they looked at us like we were idiots, and replied that this was a restaurant, and not a hotel.

Among the things that you could order for lunch they had a huge alligator tank full of alligators with their mouths shut together by duct tape. “A childhood dream come true” for one of us. “An interesting dinner” for the second of us. And nothing for the third – who had fallen asleep.

We were exhausted, and sleepwalked our way through the factory, trying to pick up whatever we didn’t already know about jeans production. After the tour we had to meet the manager, but we just wanted to leave, since the working conditions were awful (and we just wanted to sleep.) But we felt that we had to give them something after the extremely extravagant lunch - so we sat there pretending to discuss prices amongst each other but in reality had an advanced discussion about different sexual experiences. And ISO standards. This was, in other words, probably the least productive factory visit so far, but still interesting and rewarding.

After some much needed sleep, and the arrival of newly printed Noko Jeans business cards, delivered free of charge by a local striptease club owner, we headed to the second tallest building in Guangzhou to meet up with Lennart Nilsson who works at the the the Swedish Consulate in Guangzhou.

He treated us to japanese dinner (thank you, Sweden!) and was extremely friendly and generous, sharing his deep knowledge about Asian history and culture and also the work that he performs through the Swedish consulate in Guangzhou. The night continued onwards to a Chinese reaggae bar (FYI: they use flutes!) where we met Alex, a friend of a friend who is a Chinese media entrepreneur/photographer. He introduced us to a regular wednesday night in Guangzhou – three clubs of different quality, a stolen wallet and, a very, very late, and likewise failed, attempt at ordering cheeseburgers through the hotel reception.

Earlier today we met with the extremely friendly and talented Lin Lin and Sam, who run the agency Jellymon. After interesting discussions about Chinese advertising, photography, art and the merits of a Shanghaiese hip-hop club – and Swedish body hair – they took us on a short, but great, food expedition in their neighborhood. They also introduced us to a guy who had fell from a “10 to 12 metre” high building without even getting a scratch. Overall a great couple of hours that we hope to repeat in some form when we get back to Shanghai.

Today we say buh-bye to Shanghai – see you in about 15 days. Painfully early tomorrow morning we get on the plane to Ghuangzhou – referred to as “the darkest city in China” – for two hectic days of meetings.

On the agenda: meeting a factory, a striptease club manager, a Swedish government representative, a Chinese media entrepreneur, two Chinese filmmakers and, last but not least, our dear friend Bruis Deng, spammer extraordinaire. Phew.

After that, it’s the 24 hour visa hunt in Beijing, and after that… hopefully Pyongyang.