Early this year Britain's fastest snowboarder was granted special access to film and speed down the slopes of the most secretive country in the world - North Korea. Source - Youtube/Cinematica Media
By Ted Thornhill
Astonishing footage has been recorded of Britain's fastest snowboarder going down ski slopes in North Korea - and unsurprisingly there is plenty of space to hurtle around in, because he's got the mountain to himself.
Jamie Barrow, who has reached 94mph on a snowboard, was filmed cruising around the Masikryong ski resort.
Barrow cannot contain his joy at being able to zoom over the untouched fresh powder, the Daily Mail reported.
He says: "You have to keep pinching yourself, realising where you are."
Masikryong was the brainchild of Supreme Leader Kim Jong-Un, and is designed to rival Pyeongchang in South Korea, which will host the winter Olympics next year.
The well-groomed pistes on the resort's Mount Taehwa are flanked by wooded hillsides and run down to a huge hotel.
Outside a large stone tablet acclaims "the work of Dear Leader Kim Jong-Un who devoted hard work and heart and soul to make our people the happiest and most civilised people."
The resort is a four-hour drive from Pyongyang, down a potholed concrete road that passes through unlit tunnels and which civilian work crews clear of snow and ice by hand after fresh falls.
The warm comforts inside are a world away from the scenes outside the entrance checkpoint, where peasant farmers drag sleds loaded with firewood across frozen lakes, and ox-drawn carts are used for transport.
At the end of the clip Barrow says: "We can only show you what was shown to us - a small piece of a much bigger picture."
Western visitors to the highly secretive nation are carefully monitored by government officials, who make sure their cameras are trained only on the most civilised aspects of the country.
The reality is that North Korea is an impoverished nation with a ramshackle infrastructure - and 40 per cent of its people are undernourished, according to the Global Hunger Index.
