By Stephen Glain

 Although North Korea is opening its doors more and more to foreigners, access often remains restricted to just a few rushed days in Pyongyang. However my colleague Stephen Glain, who's working in the Beijing bureau for several months, just made a rare two-week trip across the wintry and isolated country. He came back with this fascinating tale:

In Sinuiju, a city perched on the North Korean side of China’s Yalu River, I awoke at dawn to the tinny strands of martial music broadcast from megaphones hitched to slow-moving vehicles. Soon there was an odd accompaniment: the sound of metal scraping against tarmac. A snowstorm had just passed through the region and North Koreans – gathered in work brigades, farm collectives and youth leagues – were busy clearing the road to Pyongyang about a hundred miles south. By the tens of thousands they converged, armed with shovels, pick-axes, claw-hammers, and tree branches bundled to form a kind of gigantic egg-whisk.