North Korea Vacation - Flower Exhibition Centre

North Korea Vacation - once in the DPRK you will have the chance to see a flower exhibition, perhaps the only of its kind in the world.

The Kimilsungia-Kimjongilia Exhibition Hall hosts the International Kimilsungia and Kimjongilia Festivals which focus exclusively on two flowers; the Kimilsungia and the Kimjongilia, named after the Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il respectively. The latter was bred by an Indonesian botanist and the later by a Japanese one then presented as gifts to the DPRK.

Right image: stand of the stall shown being filmed for national North Korean TV.

This exhibition centre has dozens of stands on each of its two floors composed of these two flowers. Each stand is designed and offered by an official workplace (for example the railway group, the tourism bureau, etc) and has national symbols such as flags, reproductions of national monuments, national dates, and so on.

Perhaps as spectacular as the thousands of flowers in the the Exhibition Centre is the sheer number of people there present; hundreds of families, co-workers and party workers that make the number of visitors to an exhibition reach astronomical figures, sometimes surpassing the million according to the guides. Reporters from national Korean TV are likely to be seen interviewing people who represent their work group. This is sometimes all combined with patriotic music and pictures of the Dear Leaders and the achievements made by the country in the background.

The purple, smaller flower is the Kimilsungia and the red one is the Kimjongilia.

Left image: dozens of North Koreans wander around the exhibition hall. A reunified Korea mainly made of the Kimilsungjia flower can be seen at the bottom of the picture.

Please click on our North Korea Information for information about the DPRK that you will find useful before you set of for your North Korea Vacation.