North Korea: Kumsusan Palace of the Sun

This is the grandest mausoleum on earth – neither pharaohs nor Lenin could ever dream of this scale. This palace is the mausoleum for Kim Il Sung (the founder of North Korea) and Kim Jong Il, his son who succeeded him. It’s a super massive building that cost over 1 billion dollars to build and visiting it is likely one of the most surreal experiences in Korea. You have to wear formal wear, no photography allowed, you surrender all you personal belongings, you get through several metal detectors and then an air vacuum capsule to clean you up. Then you stand still on a level escalator that takes you for about 20 minutes along long underground corridors lined up with photographs of both glorious leaders. Long and solemn! Hundreds of crying Korean men and women ride the escalators with you and along you. Then you visit the two adjacent mausoleums – both improbably lavish marble and gold halls. You walk around the embalmed bodies of the great leaders, bowing three times at the foot and both sides. After these, you go through multiple rooms displaying Kim Jong Il’s and Kim Il Sung’s personal items (like the Mercedes, the boat, the train carriage and so on) as well as several halls dedicated to presents from the various foreign leaders (basically every communist-affiliated dictator to ever rule, most African and Middle Eastern heads of state). Surreal would be an understatement here! After viewing all this, you finally take the escalator out past the crowds of riding in. Then you can walk in the park outside where the photography is allowed.
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