I’m traveling with a group of random people from different nations in Korea. But it doesn’t look like South Korea at all and conclusions of my whereabouts were made. It has a darker overtone this country. The people are happy but it is overpopulated and most of our travels have shown extreme poverty and a rural lifestyle. However there were very luxurious city parts as well, although heavily guarded at almost every corner. So on one of our trips to the countryside I remember trying to take pics for the blog near a frozen lake and snowy mountains at early early morning, the pics came out blurry and I gave up. We sat down at a roadside bench of some sorts and it is peaceful and quiet. Dawn is coming but not really because the sky is so cloudy. Then we here a bang. A bang so brutally loud that for a second I’m scared I’ve lost my hearing, this fear goes away quickly for the new fear of the earth beneath my feet disrupting. Everything is shaking and we have no idea what is going on except for that the explosion came from a mountain that we can see from where we are but it isn’t that close. All of a sudden cars from everywhere driving at maximum speed pass the road. Big military trucks and old cars coming from the road left and right. The cars coming from the mountains have loads of water in them and people are surprisingly calm yet with just a hint of panic in their eyes as they drive by us. We try to help but the only car we manage to stop has a chauffeur that is panicking out of his mind. He drags me into the passenger seat next to him and the rest have no choice but to get in the car with me. He hauls us in as he is screaming in Korean and crying his lungs out while he’s driving south first past a small town, then southwest. It wasn’t the most action-packed dream because our trip the city goes on for hours in dream time. Him driving himself insane, screaming in Korean and crying while I’m sitting there trying to find a single word of Korean I can understand. The rest of the group are in the backseat fast asleep of exhaustion. The drivers dark glasses have already fallen off of him while he was crying earlier and he gets so mad that he throws this black (maybe dark-green) basker away. He’s explaining things to me but the only words I can understand during our very long trip to Pyongyang are (sorry for the spelling my readers who speak Korean) “wrong” (naeppun), “very” (byello), “mom” (omma), “plan” (gyehag), “hunger / there is hunger” (pageopaa). The rest is lost to me and my lack of Korean skills.

So we get to the city and we are told by the guards that they are denying entry for all vehicles and people arriving from that specific route, according to our driver. I can see the city behind the guards, all calm and peaceful. But the guards have some fear in their eyes. And that… is when I wake up because of a buzzer I have on a New York Times news-app that is supposed to buzz only when big events happen. So I wake up…

To this.


The first is a sketch I made to explain the specifics of my dream to Filip. The below pic is where it actually happened.
Red – where we were. Orange – where the explosion hit. Yellow – nearest town we drove by. Blue – the lake I tried to take pictures by.

Every single detail checks out. Except I was asleep and not with a bunch of randoms in the northeast of North Korea. The first news alarm about this was at 4 in the morning Swedish time, in the middle of my dream, while I was sleeping. Was the man screaming about the bomb or about his overall living situation in North Korea? I don’t know. But I told you I was freaky. You didn’t believe me.