Round North Korea with Michael Palin in rose-tinted spectacles

Michael Palin in North Korea, a two-part documentary in which the Python is given a tightly choreographed tour of that country, aired on Channel 5 last year. Palin dances with cheerfully drunk residents of the country on International Workers’ Day; picnics with his guide, a woman called So Hyang; plays catch with an inflatable globe with some children; learns Taekwondo; sees some beautiful scenery — mountains, rivers as well as cities comprised of coordinated, colourful blocks, with monuments dedicated to the Great Leaders (as the rulers of North Korea past and present are collectively called). But there are some more sinister sights, such as a road lined with huge concrete pillars, ready to be knocked down to obstruct it in the event of an invasion from the south. This book is the journal — though evidently very edited; it reads nothing like a diary kept during the trip.

Palin states his aims in the documentary as being to meet — truly meet — ordinary North Koreans and show that ‘people, no matter their background, are much closer to us than we think’.