The following article is the third in a multipart series by Gareth Johnson of Young Pioneer Tours about being a North Korea tour guide. Views expressed in columns are exclusively the author’s own and do not represent those of NK News.

North Korea is unlike any other country in the world — and a trip to the Rason Special Economic Zone (SEZ), tucked away in the far northeast, is even further out of the ordinary.

The Rason SEZ was establishedin the early 1990s, right at the end of the Cold War. Former communist bloc countries were experimenting to see