A train pulls into Puhung Station. One of the most lavishly decorated stops, Puhung was one of only two metro stations foreign visitors were allowed into before 2010.
- Photo Gallery
It’s a Museum! It’s a Nuclear Bunker! It’s North Korea’s Subway System!
For the first time, Pyongyang’s subway system is open to tourists. Photos from inside show chandeliers, commemorative plaques, and elaborate murals.
It’s hard to visit Pyongyang, North Korea. But now a new section of the city is open to tours. And it’s a section that’s fastidiously clean, fervently patriotic, and fabulously dressed.
For years, outsiders were allowed inside only two of the Pyongyang subway system’s 17 stops, sparking conspiracy theories that the whole thing was merely an elaborate setup, complete with costumed actors posing as commuters. But last fall, Pyongyang opened its full metro system to tourists for the first time, just as Australian travel blogger and software developer Elliott Davies arrived in North Korea for his government-sanctioned tour. What he found was “pretty much a broad museum of North Korea and all of its ideals,” he said. “I didn't expect
