Getting into North Korea was one of the hardest and weirdest processes VBS has ever dealt with. They finally said, “OK, OK, you can come. But only as tourists.” At the airport, the North Korean consulate brought us to a restaurant and these women came out and started singing North Korean nationalist songs. We were thinking, “Look, we were just on a plane for 20 hours. Can we just go to bed?” but this guy with our group who was from the LA Times told us, “Everyone in here besides us is secret police. If you don’t act excited then you’re not going to get your visa. So we got drunk and jumped up onstage and sang songs with the girls. The next day we got our visas. A lot of people we had gone with didn’t get theirs. That was our first hint at just what a freaky, freaky trip we were embarking on…

The VICE Guide to North Korea

Unprecedented access to the New York Times newsroom yields a complex view of the transformation of a media landscape fraught with both peril and opportunity.

Page One: Inside the New York Times

"Sneaking into North Korea was one of the hardest and weirdest processes VICE has ever dealt with. In North Korea, if you get caught being a journalist when you're supposed to be a tourist, you go to jail, or worse. Our rare footage is some of the craziest ever captured, providing an honest look inside the hermit nation."

We Tried Sneaking Journalists Into North Korea

With NBA great Dennis Rodman and a trio of Harlem Globetrotters in tow, VICE traveled to the capital of Pyongyang for a tour of the city, a basketball clinic, and an exhibition game.