While traveling to North Korea as a tourist is not as rare anymore as it used to be, very few people spend more than a couple weeks in the country.

In the second of this two-part series — you can read part one here — NK News asked a diplomat posted in Pyongyang from 2015 until recently to share his thoughts and experiences of living in the country as a foreigner.

“It’s a country trapped between the past and the present, with countless people caught in the middle.”

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and readability