North Korea is a population of more than 23 millions. North Korea is bigger in area than South Korea and slightly smaller than England. Most of the areas are occupied by military people where one is not supposed to enter. On the northern half of the Korean Peninsula, the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea is situated. Demilitarized zone in south, japan in the east, china in the North and yellow sea in the west flank North Korea. You will find this country a happening place the dark in contrast to South Korea.

This country is ruled by Kim Chong II after his father and the founder president died in 1994. Since most of the land consists of rugged mountains, the grain productivity is very less and the country has to depend upon the International food aid to feed its population. Decades of mismanagement are also responsible for this fact. Only a small is cultivable. The eastern part is rocky and western part has the coastal plains. North Korea’s climate is temperate. It is slightly colder and drier than South Korea in winter. Summer is hot, rainy and humid. May, June, September and October are the best months to visit this country.

This is a country that grew tremendously post the World war and has not stopped in its efforts. It continues to dazzle the visitors with their culture and local traditions. Among the various things to see, here is a list of five things one should not miss while travelling in this part of the world. Take a plane from the capital city of Pyongyang to reach Paekdusan, which is a place of great spiritual and religious significance. Paekdu, which is the highest mountain in North Korea, is also where the volcano with the largest crater lies. Called as Chonji, or Lake of Heaven, this crater is surrounded by various lakes. This place is very sacred to the locals, merely because it is here that the Son of Lord of heaven is said to have landed and where the first Korean Kingdom started.”

Take a plane from the capital city of Pyongyang to reach Paekdusan, which is a place of great spiritual and religious significance. Paekdu, which is the highest mountain in North Korea, is also where the volcano with the largest crater lies. Called as Chonji, or Lake of Heaven, this crater is surrounded by various lakes. This place is very sacred to the locals, merely because it is here that the Son of Lord of heaven is said to have landed and where the first Korean Kingdom started.

Even the radios are permanently soldered to receive only the State radio channels, so that no one ever gets tempted to listen to South Korean stations. North Korea really is the most oppressive country currently extant. Another claim to fame is that it is the first hereditary Communist dictatorship, something that not all that many old style Communists would actually think was a good idea. What with all that repression (yes, they have an extensive network of gulags, work camps for those who have displeased the leadership) and the pure idiocy of their economic system (they cannot actually feed their own population), it would be something of a surprise to find any North Korea casinos at all.

Roads
Fuel constraints and the near absence of private automobiles have relegated road transportation to a secondary role. The road network was estimated between 23,000 and 30,000 kilometers in 1990, of which only 1,717 kilometers–7.5 percent–are paved; the rest are of dirt, crushed stone, or gravel, and are poorly maintained. There are three major multilane highways: a 200-kilometer expressway connecting P’yongyang and Wonsan on the east coast, a forty-three-kilometer expressway connecting P’yongyang and its port, Namp’o, and a four-lane 100- kilometer highway linking P’yongyang and Kaesong. The overwhelming majority of the estimated 264,000 vehicles in use in 1990 were for the military. Rural bus service connects all villages, and cities have bus and tram services.

Railways
Railroads, the main means of transportation, had a total route length of 5,045 kilometers in 1990. In 1990 railroads hauled 90 percent of all freight, with 7 percent carried on roads and 3 percent of transport hauled by water. The comparative figures for passenger traffic were 62 percent, 37 percent, and 1 percent, respectively. By 1990 approximately 63 percent of the rail network was electrified, an important factor in improving traction capacity in mountainous terrain. Two major lines run north-south, one each along the east and west coasts. Two eastwest lines connect Pyongyang and Wonsan by a central and a southerly route, and a part of a third link line constructed in the 1980s connects provinces in the mountainous far north near the Chinese border. The railroad system is linked with those of China and Russia, although gauge inconsistencies necessitated some dual gauging with Russia. The Third Seven-Year Plan targeted an increase of 60 percent for railroad traffic through continued efforts in electrification, development of centralized and containerized transport, and modernization of transport management.

The first section of the Pyongyang Metro opened in 1973, and presently comprises 30.5 km on two lines, although as of 2007 it is unclear whether it is presently operating. Built with some stations at a depth of over 100m, it also doubles as an emergency shelter.

Waterways
Water transport on the major rivers and along the coasts plays only a minor, but probably growing, role in freight and passenger traffic. Except for the Yalu and Taedong rivers, most of the inland waterways, totaling 2,253 kilometers, are navigable only by small craft. Coastal traffic is heaviest on the eastern seaboard, whose deeper waters can accommodate larger vessels. The major ports are Namp’o on the west coast and Najin, Ch’ngjin, Wnsan, and Hamh ng on the east coast. The country’s harbor loading capacity in the 1990s was estimated at almost 35 million tons a year. In the early 1990s, North Korea possessed an oceangoing merchant fleet, largely domestically produced, of sixtyeight ships (of at least 1,000 gross-registered tons), totaling 465,801 gross-registered tons (709,442 deadweight tons), which includes fifty-eight cargo ships and two tankers. There is a continuing investment in upgrading and expanding port facilities, developing transportation–particularly on the Taedong River–and increasing the share of international cargo by domestic vessels.

Airports
North Korea’s international air connections are limited. There are regularly scheduled flights (about once or twice a week) from the international airport at Sunan–twenty-four kilometers north of P’yongyang–to Moscow, Khabarovsk, and Beijing, and irregular flights from Sunan to Tokyo as well as to East European countries, the Middle East, and Africa. Information on the frequency of the latter flights is not available. An agreement to initiate a service between P’yongyang and Tokyo was signed in 1990. Internal flights are limited to routes between P’yongyang, Hamhng, Wnsan, and Ch’ngjin. All civil aircraft, an estimated eighteen planes in 1991, were purchased from the Soviet Union. From 1976 to 1978, three Tu-154 jets were added to the small fleet of propeller-driven An-24s.