What can tourists expect when visiting North Korea?

The hit song, "Without a Break," is by Moranbong, by far North Korea's most popular band. The driver is clearly a fan and plays the DVD several times a day.
Most tourists are busy looking out the window and pay little attention to the video screened at the front of the bus. They don't notice the nuclear missile being launched behind the all-girl band, nor do they see it smash into our little blue planet, blowing up the Earth.
"'Without a Break' is about the nuclear destruction of the U.S.," says Australian Mark Freeman, who has visited North Korea four times.
"Tourists dance to it because they don't know the lyrics, they don't know what the song is about."
Travel to North Korea raises a number of sticky issues, not least of all the ethical issue of supporting a repressive regime. For those who opt to go, it's an opportunity to glimpse one of the most isolated, unfathomable and feared countries in the world.
"There have been about 6,000 Western tourists this year -- that's a tenfold increase on a decade ago," says Koryo Tours general manager Simon Cockerell.
But when you sign up to visit the DPRK you have to play by their rules, Kazinform quotes CNN.
There are strict guidelines in place about what you can and cannot do. Break with the protocol -- or even be suspected of it -- and not just you but the rest of your group will be sent back early. Or worse, as U.S. military veteran Merrill Newman discovered.
According to his family, the Palo Alto, California, resident had gone on a 10-day organized private tour of North Korea in October. From phone calls and postcards he sent, the trip was going well and there was no indication of any kind of problem, son Jeff Newman said.
The day before he was to leave, "one or two Korean authorities" met with Newman and his tour guide, the son added. They talked about Newman's service record, which left "my dad ... a bit bothered," according to Jeff Newman.
Then, just minutes before his Beijing-bound plane was set to depart Pyongyang in late October, he was taken off the aircraft by North Korean authorities.
Getting into North Korea
Unless you're invited as part of a business delegation, the only way to visit North Korea is by joining a tour. Depending on the number of tourists and whether or not it includes Americans, two to three trained guides-cum-minders accompany each group.
Aside from the hotels where tourists can roam freely between their room, the bar and the restaurant, a guide accompanies visitors at all times.
The guides are friendly and accommodating. They go out of their way to keep their charges happy -- singing songs and ensuring there is plenty to eat and drink. The lavish meals, with a big spread put out for every meal, is all part of the package. The DPRK wants Westerners to return home raving about how much they were given to eat.
American Kent Rutter, a lawyer, has visited North Korea twice and says he liked the guides and asked plenty of questions, but was frustrated when he didn't get a straight answer.
"Their job was to tell us whatever the government wanted us to hear, even if it contradicted what we could see from the bus window," he says.
Florian Seidel, a German localization expert for a computer game company in Japan, says he got a lot more out of his second trip to North Korea because he had a better grasp of what was going on. He did some research -- mostly online, reading blogs and scouring Google Earth images -- ahead of his second visit to the remote North East of the country and was wise on what to look out for in the region.
"Don't worry about being lied to, worry about not getting the interesting information," says Seidel.
"Guides repeat certain random things a dozen times, but when you drive right past the entrance to a concentration camp they won't tell you."
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