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North Korea hot spot for American tourists

ROUGHING IT: Hardy American visitors enjoy a candlelit dinner — amid one of the frequent power outages — on their strictly controlled trip to North Korea, where the imposing Koryo Hotel towers (bottom left) over the capital of Pyongyang. (
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Ahhh, vacation: Slave-labor gulags, giant mass marches of goose-stepping soldiers, humongous, dreary mausoleums — and virtually all of it off the grid.

It’s time for spring break in Pyongyang, capital of the Kim family’s hermit kingdom and a place where kindergartners are taught to hate “American imperialists.”

Even though North Korea doesn’t show us the love, a growing number of Americans are flocking to the world’s last Stalinist country, disregarding State Department travel warnings to get a peek at one of Earth’s most secretive societies.

Uri Tours, a New Jersey-based company that specializes in travel to North Korea, has seen a five-fold increase in business since 2009, when the country began allowing travel during most of the year.

Previously, tourists could visit only during limited times.

This year, 500 people are projected to get visas via Uri — which arranged Dennis Rodman’s bizarre trip last month, during which the former NBA star watched a basketball game with young, baby-faced dictator Kim Jong Un.

In North Korea, your hosts watch your every move. Everyone is assigned a minder who ensures that you don’t wander the streets alone.

“You meet this guy who is like the fun uncle, and it’s really hard to wrap your head around that he’s working for this regime,” said Nicholas Java, 30, a Columbia University grad student who went on a Uri Tour in May.

Java once asked if he could go on a solo jog. He was told to run in the hotel parking lot.

His group was also brought to two massive statues, of regime founder Kim Il-sung and his son, Kim Jong Il, and ordered to bow.

During a museum tour, Java said, the tour guide derided “big-nosed Americans” — and pointed right at him.

There are plenty of other exciting sights — like the giant Monument to the Victorious Fatherland Liberation War and the Taedonggang Fruit Orchard and Pig Farm.

Visitors also see poor North Koreans pushing manual, wooden snowplows on busy highways — or even plucking weeds from the roadbed by hand.

Tourists from freedom-loving countries are a little spooked by the synchronized applause at sporting events.

“It’s just something people do automatically,” said Andrea Lee, president of Uri.

Although much of the isolated nation is starving, visitors get plenty of food — including cold noodles and spicy fermented garlic, similar to kimchi.

Keep your gloves on at dinner — it gets cold during the frequent blackouts. “They are so prepared. Within seconds, they storm in with candles,” said Lee.

You’ll have a difficult time getting to North Korea with frequent-flier miles. Only Air China and Air Koryo, North Korea’s state airline, fly into Pyongyang.

“You don’t feel 100 percent comfortable there,” said Java.

During his visit, Java said, he wondered: “Is the regime taking advantage of us?”

“But I encourage people to go,” he said. “Then the North Koreans see you and hopefully that instigates a conversation there that says, ‘Wow, Americans aren’t bad.’ ”