British YouTuber allowed into North Korea to run marathon
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A British man who runs a popular YouTube travel channel managed to set foot in North Korea after he signed up to participate in an international marathon.
Harry Jaggard said it was his best chance to see firsthand the country under Kim Jong Un’s repressive rule.
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“I’m not a runner, but they told me you have to be there in a month, and I made all the preparations and made it happen,” Jaggard told the New York Post.
“I’ve been making YouTube videos going to less visited areas of the world for a while now, and North Korea has been on my radar for years.”
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To get to North Korea, the 27-year-old Jaggard said he flew from Beijing to Pyongyang.
He spent five days in the capital in April and thought he would not be able to film much of the country.
“I was not expecting [to be able to vlog] at all,” he said. “I thought that it would be very minimal, maybe a few clips that I would voice over. To have the freedom that I was given was crazy. They were very relaxed.”
He and other athletes received a strictly managed tour of the city’s subway system, war museums, a beer hall, and state monuments, including one of former leader Kim Jong-Il.
“They showed us the tour that they wanted to show, it was definitely the highlight reel,” he said. “It’s like going on a tour of America but only seeing Las Vegas — like the shiny parts.”
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He described his hotel room as clean and comfortable, despite it reminding him of the 1970s, and it was the only place with access to the internet. He also worried the room was bugged.
Jaggard, whose channel boasts 2.43 million subscribers, thinks the regime doesn’t understand the reach influencers have throughout the world.
“They say no journalists are allowed on the tour, and I think YouTubers are definitely in the grey area because we’re not technically journalists, but you could argue that my piece was journalism — just not very good journalism.”
During the trip, he was only restricted from filming a view tower, a supermarket and a war museum.
He started seriously training a month before the marathon once he got the green light enter the country, and he finished the race in three hours and 40 minutes.
“Fifty thousand people cheering at the marathon, which I never expected to even finish, so I was very proud of that.”
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