North Korea is unlike anywhere else in the world. Even before the fall of communism in Europe, North Korea was unique. Even Albania was less isolated then than North Korea is today, and even Romania’s personality cult looked positively humble compared with North Korea’s continuing adoration of the Great Leader Kim Il Sung (who continues as President despite his death in 1994) and his son, the Dear Leader, Kim Jong Il.

This was my sixth trip to North Korea, or as it is officially known, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). Like four of my five pervious visits, this visit was the next step in a United World Colleges (UWC) initiative to establish links with young people and education officials in North Korea that we hope will lead to the presence of North Korean students in UWCs.

North Korea seems to dominate international news at a scale out of proportion to its physical size. Perhaps the development of a nuclear weapons program makes this inevitable. An obvious factor is the continuing military tension on the Korean peninsula, a consequence of the Korean War (1950 to 1953) which ended (on the day I was born!) with an armistice (effectively a cease-fire) rather than a peace accord. The presence of tens of thousands of US troops along the border with South Korea is a huge source of anxiety and sense of insecurity for North Koreans.

Just this week, North Korea featured prominently in the news as the former US President, Bill Clinton, made a surprise visit to North Korea to secure the release of two American news reporters who had ‘accidentally’ wandered into North Korea to cover a story on women’s rights - how a person ‘accidentally’ and innocently wanders across a river (which forms most of the border between China and North Korea) with a film crew continues to puzzle me, however.

I had arrived in Beijing yesterday to collect the group’s visas and passports from Koryo Tours, the agent in Beijing that I used to obtain the visas. Run by a mildly eccentric Englishman who also dabbles in film-making, Nick Bonnor, Koryo Tours has an unparalleled record for successfully obtaining North Korean visas, and I have used them for every student trip to North Korea since the first one in 2005.

Collecting the visas was completed by visiting Koryo Tours’ office in Beijing, and it was great to meet Simon and Hannah, both of whom work there and with whom I have dealt for several years, under the distinctive wall decorations of large DPRK propaganda posters. As an aside, and without wanting this to sound like a commercial, I cannot recommend Koryo Tours highly enough as an efficient, diligent, courteous and thorough organisation that sometimes seems to work miracles in arranging special requests to meet our special needs as a school group. Although applications for visas must be made months in advance, the visas are only issued a few days before entering the country (greater scope for last minute refusals?), and the air tickets are only issued after the visas - in other words, the day before the flight or the day before that.

As an aviation enthusiast, I was hoping to have my first flight on Air Koryo’s new Tupolev Tu-204 on the flight from Beijing to Pyongyang. Like last year, I was unlucky in having that wish fulfilled, but this year I received a brilliant consolation prize - one of the world’s last flying Ilyushin Il-62s. The pride of Soviet aviation in the 1960s, the four-engined Il-62 was originally designed for ultra long range non-stop flights between Moscow and Havana. Despite their age, Air Koryo’s Il-62 are impeccably maintained and have very low flying hours, so this trip into aviation nostalgia was really appreciated, at least by me. Like my previous flights in Il-62s, this flight was silky smooth, completely free of the minor vibrations one feels on most flights, and notable for its gentle low-pitched take-off and perfect landing. And anyone who has ever flown an Il-62 can never forget the high pitched harmonic screeching sound of those four Soloviev engines on take-off!

The flight to Pyongyang was a great experience. Air Koryo is different to other airlines. Most airlines play soothing music as you board to calm your nerves; Air Koryo plays inspiring martial music that glorifies the Great Leader. An announcement was made about the drinks offered on board - various fruit juices, soda, tea and coffee - but it became obvious which was the preferred choice when we were told that the mineral water had been from a spring personally approved by Kim Jong Il.

Upon entering North Korean air space, we were informed over the intercom that we had entered the DPRK, a land that had been freed from the two great imperialisms (US and Japanese) by the Great Leader Kim Il Sung in a single generation. All the announcements were made with breathless excitement, whether it was telling us that the plane was delayed 30 minutes on departure from Beijing because of traffic congestion, or upon landing that we had now arrived in Pyongyang “where we could experience the single minded unity and joy of the Korean people that is famous everywhere”.

The in-flight reading followed a similar theme, with copies of ‘Korea Pictorial’ and the ‘The Pyongyang Times’ being handed out, each extolling the latest achievements of the country’s leadership, or the latest examples of ‘on the spot guidance’ offered around the country by Kim Jong Il. It doesn’t sound very subtle, but in some ways it is - every time the names of Kim Il Sung or Kim Jong Il are mentioned, the type size is one point larger than the surrounding text.

We arrived in Pyongyang to overcast conditions, turning our watches forward one hour but in reality going backwards about 40 years. (In fact, it is always a little unclear what the year really is in North Korea, which uses its own system of counting years from 1912, the year Kim Il Sung was born - the juche system. For example, 2009 is Juche 98). As always, it seemed to takes ages to wait for baggage and clear customs, although unlike previous visits, the baggage claim area now had lights. Maybe they had lights before that were never turned on, but the contrast between today’s experience (lights on) and the gloom that has been customary at Pyongyang Airport was very marked. It is forbidden to take mobile phones into North Korea, so I collected all the phones for our group - 18 of them - and checked them in before meeting our guides, Mrs Li and Mr Li, and our driver, Mr Li. None of them was related to any of the others; Li is simply a very common surname in Korea, as is Kim (which perhaps is more coveted; I can only speculate).

On the drive from Sunan airport into central Pyongyang, we were reminded that the main cause of problems faced by foreigners visiting Korea is inappropriate taking of photographs. We were told not to take photos of military personnel, of people performing manual labour (because Korean people like to be dressed properly for photographs), of bus stops (where the lines are often very long), or of poverty. We were also told to be careful with printed photographs of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il, and to treat them with respect, as there had been a very serious incident last year (which was only solved after long negotiations and formal written apology) when a German tourist had crumpled a photo of the Dear Leader and thrown it in a bin.

We took the half hour 25 kilometre drive from Sunan Airport into Pyongyang as dusk was starting to form over the city. Our first stop was Fountain Park, a beautifully landscaped area sandwiched between the Grand People’s Study House to the east, the Grand People’s Study House to the south, and the Revolutionary Opera Theatre (with its huge facade mosaics showing scenes from the revolutionary opera “Sea of Blood”) to the west. The central feature is a very elegant sculpture of dancers surrounded by water.

From Fountain Park, we took the short drive to the mandatory starting point for any foreigner’s trip to North Korea, the Mansudae Grand Monument. This a huge 20 metre high bronze statue of Kim Il Sung, erected for his 60th birthday in 1972. The is one of North Korea’s most ‘sacred’ sites (if that word can be used in a society that is officially atheist, but which in practice implements an elaborate set of quasi-religious rituals) , and so, as is customary, we stood in a straight line facing the sculpture, placed flowers at his feet, and bowed at the waist together as a sign of the deep respect we felt. Apparently the masses wanted the statue to be 40 metres in height, but in a touching display of modesty Kim Il Sung insisted that 20 metres would be sufficient.

On either side of the Kim Il Sung statue there are beautifully executed copper sculptures in revolutionary style showing various incidents of Korean revolutionary history, with one side devoted to the anti-Japanese struggle and another to the anti-US struggle. One particularly sensitive note, I felt, was the up-turned US combat helmet with a bullet hole in it. Sculptures such as these are found in other places, especially China and, perhaps surprisingly, at the War Museum in Seoul, but the ones in Pyongyang leave the others behind in terms of the large size, their vast number and their beautifully fine execution.

We then took a short walk to the Chollima Statue, located just down the hill from the Mansudae Grand Monument. Chollima was a mythical horse in Korean folklore that was said to be able to fly 240 kilometres per day. Chollima was embraced by North Korea’s leaders, and the expression “at Chollima speed” became a catch-cry for doing things such as construction and development at great speed, and the sculpture is a reminder of that concept.

At its base were three huge revolutionary propaganda posters - this is always the site of Pyongyang’s most impressive propaganda art. The three posters give some idea of the shifts in the DPRK government’s priorities, and at the moment these seem to be economic development within the context of the nation’s Songun (Army-led) framework. Unlike some previous years when I have visited, there was no poster this time showing a US soldier being crushed under a barrage of North Korean feet - maybe these had been cleared away last week for Bill Clinton’s visit.

We had an unexpected surprise when we drove to our hotel. Like previous years, we had expected to stay at the Haebangban Hotel in downtown Pyongyang. For some inexplicable reason, we were significantly upgraded to the Yanggakdo Hotel, a 45-storey hotel built on an island in the Taedong River. Unlike the Haebangsan, the Yanggakdo had large rooms with good beds, brilliant views, television with BBC World news (as opposed to the single local station at the Haebangsan - when the televisions worked), 24 hour hot water, and a large book shop. And then there the extra features that we didn’t need, such as a casino, a two-lane bowling alley and (according to rumours) a brothel for Chinese visitors only.

Unlike the Haebangsan, where our independent movement was limited to the interior of the hotel and the car park at the front (the latter being emphatically without cameras), the Yanggakdo allowed freedom of movement anywhere on the island - a type of Korean Alcatraz. The Yanggakdo is featured in Guy de Lisle’s brilliant illustrated commentary on North Korea called “Pyongyang”. Having now stayed at the Yanggakdo (again, after a four year gap I should add), I must read “Pyongyang” again and have a good laugh.

After dinner, the students practised their performances for the forthcoming school visit while I negotiated our itinerary with Mrs Li and Mr Li. Actually, to use the word ‘negotiated’ implies an even-handedness which didn’t exist; the exercise was mainly telling me about several events in the “agreed” program that could no longer be fulfilled, mainly because many places seem to be under renovation and are therefore closed to foreigners. Moreover, the school visit which had previously been agreed as a full day including lunch with the students at the school had been reduced to a couple of hours. While the North Koreans always reserve the right to vary to program upon arrival, the scale of deletions (without replacements) was a little depressing.