Another Holiday Travel Destination

North Korea has one of the nastiest governments on earth. Kim Jong Il, the first communist dictator ever to inherit his job from his father, swills cognac while his people starve. Anyone who complains is thrown into an icy labour camp.

If you can get a visa, a trip to North Korea will be educational. Nowhere else will make you so glad the West didn't lose the cold war. Nowhere else can you observe such an odious cult of personality. Those tired of Coke advertisements may well prefer the hundreds of neon signs wishing ten thousand years of life to the Dear Leader. Your phrase book will tell you how to make pleasant conversation about the bumper harvests that have happened every year since he came to power. Even the karaoke machines in hotel bars play songs about how Mr Kim "dispels raging storms."

You will be accompanied at all times by official guides, wearing Kim Jong Il badges, who will show you the various monuments honouring the Kim dynasty. At the International Friendship Exhibition, a marble palace in the hills, you can marvel at the 104,223 gifts with which foreigners have shown their admiration for the Dear Leader and his father. Stalin sent a bullet-proof limousine. Mao sent a clunky record player. The former president of the Central African Republic sent a flag made of 10,000 butterfly wings.

At the Pyongyang Children's Palace, your correspondent heard a pre-pubescent choir sing: "We must always be prepared for the sake of the Dear Leader." Inspiring pictures of Mr Kim were projected against the backdrop. The crowd loudly applauded a doctored version of Jacques-Louis David's painting of Napoleon on a rearing horse, in which Kim Jong Il had been substituted for Napoleon. Then a power cut intervened, the lights went out and the orchestra fell silent.

For a hefty fee, even tourists from capitalist South Korea are allowed to visit certain scenic mountains in North Korea. But they are not allowed to talk to any North Koreans, and they are certainly not allowed to try searching for any relatives they have not seen since the Korean war of 1950-53. Contact with wealthy southerners might make northerners resent the regime that keeps them poor.

Buildings in North Korea are designed to look impressive rather than to serve any useful purpose. Hotels therefore tend to be grand but empty. Check into a 45-storey, 500-room edifice with revolving restaurants on the roof, and you may find you are the only guest. Get out of the lift on the wrong floor and you will find yourself in darkness. There is no sense lighting corridors no one uses.

Korean cuisine is fiery and exhilarating. But not in North Korea. Shortages of even the most basic ingredients mean that the hermit kingdom's only novel contribution to world cuisine is a bland version of kimchi - a cabbage dish that is supposed to be hot, but in this case isn't.

Don't say anything disrespectful about the Dear Leader or his dad.

Take a thick coat. Korean winters are harsh, and the radiators in your hotel may not work. Your correspondent endured a meal during a power cut at which diners kept their hats and gloves on, and waiters produced candles "to create a romantic atmosphere". They sang, too, which wasn't bad.

When browsing for souvenirs, there's not much choice. Shop shelves are largely empty. The only things that are easier to get in North Korea than elsewhere are books by Kim Jong Il, who is said to have written definitive guides to more or less everything. Your correspondent was won over by his Guide for Journalists, which suggests that "Newspapers should print mainly articles glorifying the Great Leader of the Revolution."