Travelling with the intercity from Rotterdam to Zeeland, we arrived in Goes for our day trip!
The reason we had chosen to visit Goes was because of a temporary exposition of 50 paintings, made in the period of 1960-2010 by professional North Korean painters regarding propaganda for the country. Officially they were made to stay within North Korea in public places and hotels, representing families, agriculture, war and confrontation.
The collection is owned by Ronald de Groen, who worked with Willem van der Bijl in the late nineties. Willem was a postage stamp dealer who had an work office in Pyongyang at the time. This gave him access to the paintings in North Korea and was able to secretly export them to Europe. Since 2011, both Willem and Ronald have not been in North Korea, after Willem spent two weeks in jail on suspicion of state-threatening activities.
The exhibition itself was held within the Maria Magdalena Church, with a beautifully sounding organ that was being played, which was built between 1641-1643 by the England prestige William Deakens.
A female traffic controller in front of the Pyongyang Station
Actively playing athletes in front of a factory
City celebrations about the withdrawal of all naval and land-based tactical nuclear weapons deployed under order of President George Bush.
Pyongyang in winter, showing the access of public transport
Korean girls playing
North Korea is somewhere that really fascinates us, watching documentaries and random youtube videos of tours there. It’s a place we would be interested in visiting ourselves!
The rest of the city was rather small but pretty, exploring the lanes and local shops. We also took a walk around the mini yacht harbour and grabbed some lunch at Grand Café Jersey on the pretty market square. Delicious food at a good price. This definitely topped off our day trip!
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