22.) My lifelong interest in North Korea explained.

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22.) My lifelong interest in North Korea explained.
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My uncle Ivar D. was a surgeon for the US military during the Korean war and a member of the 38th parallel. Maybe he told me something from Korea.
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October 9, 1983 North Korea killed 21, mainly South Koreans, in a bomb explosion in Rangoon, Burma.
In February 1984 I was outside the gate of the Martyr Mausoleum and asked the military guards if this was the place for the explosion. Eventually they said "Yes". But they didn't let me in...
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In 1998 I cycled from Bangkok through Laos, China, Mongolia until the road ended north east of Cita in Russia Far East. I had to take the train to a few train stops before Blagoveschensk. Then on by bicycle to Vladivostok around 1500 kilometer after Blagoveschensk. Then I cycled to Khasan near the river border to North Korea.
This was under Boris Jeltsin and the Rubel crashed and people were annoyed. No one stopped me on the way to the border village and nobody stopped me from playing spy taking pictures of the train bridge between Russia and North Korea.
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At night I pitched my tent in the bushes 30 meters from the border fence between Russia and China forgetting completely that the border probably was heavily mined...
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Two days later I crossed the border to China. In China I cycled as close to the North-Korean border as I could. The area was probably closed to foreigners on bicycle so I passed roadblocks as quiet as I could using yellow earplugs connected to a yellow Walkman pretending to be listening to loud music so that I could ignore soldiers calls of warning...
Some parts of the border the border line is following a tiny river and I could see the North Korean soldiers chatting to each other. A big portrait of the first North Korean leader stared at me from afar. whenever I saw ordinary people they were picking cabbage.
There were logging trucks on the gravel road with long uncut threes on the truck. But in each sharp bend the threes would have pushed anyone and anything in the ditch.
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In Dandong the river is big and I peered across to North Korea in binoculars, before I cycled on to Dalian and the end of my bike ride. I had lost a lot of money in a stock trade that went sour so I had to go back to Norway to work for years...
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In end of June 2016 I was arrested in Thailand for 6 years without visa and 15 months without valid passport. The American Embassy helped me as I had requested and on a video link with the judge I was afraid of getting three months in jail - and she gave me only three days thanks to the American Embassy.
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But then I became the responsibility of the Norwegian Foreign Department and they didn't want me back to Norway so I spent 8 weeks in Bangkok Detention Center waiting for a ticket back to Norway.
We were around 70 people in one room and the youth I thought was a dolled up Japanese turned out to be North Korean. Unfortunately I didn't find it out until he left...
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In 1982 I was among the first foreigners to travel "freely" in China.
maybe I will be among the first foreigners who can travel freely in North Korea too?
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