A man who attended a summer camp in North Korea as a teenager has shared what it was really like to stay in the totalitarian country, revealing that children were “indoctrinated” and played “to destroy the White House.”
In a first-person piece for Business InsiderRussian Yuri Frolov recalled the summers he spent in 2015 and 2016 at the Songdowon International Children’s Camp in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
Yuri, now 25, said his interest in North Korea arose as a child, after watching a documentary about the communist dictatorship.
He desperately wanted to see the country for himself and discovered the camp in Wonsan, North Korea, after doing some research on the internet.
“I tried to find out more information, so I joined a group called ‘Solidarity with North Korea’ on VKontakte, the Russian equivalent of Facebook,” he explained in the article.
Russian Yuri Frolov recalled the summers he spent in 2015 and 2016 at the Songdowon International Children’s Camp in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
Once in the group, he discovered a 15-day summer camp for children offered by the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, which for only $300 included food, lodging, all facilities, airfare, and everything else.
“I saw it as an opportunity to see North Korea for myself, so I asked my parents, who agreed to send me to Songdowon,” he said.
Yuri traveled from St. Petersburg, where he grew up, to Vladivostok, a city in Russia’s Far East.
From there, he and the other children, all between the ages of nine and fifteen, were met by some Communist Party officials and traveled to North Korea, arriving first in Pyongyang, the capital.
“I was probably the only one who traveled to North Korea to see this dystopia,” he admitted candidly. “The others seemed to see it as an opportunity to go to the beach or play in the playground for little money.”
Yuri recalled the activities officials took them to, which included war museums displaying captured American vehicles and the USS Pueblo, an American ship that was captured by North Korea in the 1960s.
He also said they were often pushed into supermarkets to spend money, noting that they were allowed to buy alcohol and cigarettes, and that some of the young children in the camp ended up drunk.
Yuri said the staff at Songdowon were “very welcoming” to the children, and that most of the campers were from Russia, but others were from Laos, Nigeria, Tanzania and China.
A photograph of an airplane in Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea in March 2016, taken by Yuri
Food is served for a birthday at the Songdowon International School children’s camp in 2018 in Wonsan, North Korea
Buildings at the Songdowon International Children’s Camp, Kangwon Province, Wonsan, North Korea, in 2012
While they spent time with the other children, the North Korean children in the camp were largely separated from them.
“I think it was deliberate to prevent them from talking to us about their experiences,” he reasoned.
While many of the activities were fun, including beach outings, sandcastle-building competitions and swimming, Yuri said there were also some “really weird rituals.”
“We had to clean the statues of former North Korean leaders,” he said. “One morning, we woke up at 6 a.m. to clean the monuments of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il.”
Yuri said the children took part in many activities designed to “brainwash” them, including singing propaganda songs about North Korea’s supreme leaders and a computer game where their character, a hamster in a tank, had to destroy the White House.
While Yuri had attended the camp out of curiosity, she reported that some of the children were influenced by the experience.
“One boy became so indoctrinated afterwards that he joined the Communist Party in Russia and was always posting about North Korea,” he recalled.
North Korea is also not a destination for those seeking a culinary experience: Yuri only eats rice, wedges and bread, losing a lot of weight in her 15 days away.
The national flags of North Korea and Russia are displayed in Pyongyang in June for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s summit with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un.
Pictured: Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un attend an official welcoming ceremony at Kim Il Sung Square in Pyongyang.
Yuri said that even though the camp was a “boring, miserable, overly controlled experience,” she returned the following year as Communist Party officials had already registered him.
“Coming back was a stupid decision and I don’t know why my parents let me go,” he admitted. “But I would do it again without hesitation.”
Songdowon International Children’s Camp has been operating for almost 30 years.
Originally, the main aim was to deepen relations with friendly countries in the communist or non-aligned world.
But officials say they are willing to accept young people from anywhere, including the United States.
The camp is also open to North Korean children who get good grades.
