I'd never really given much thought to North Korea, but in 1993 I met someone from Pyongyang while studying in Beijing. I played football with him, and we became friends. After he went home he wrote to another friend of ours saying, “I've joined a travel company but there are no tourists coming. Would you like to?” North Korea had only opened to the west in 1987 so basically no one knew you could actually go.

I loved to travel, so my friend and I got together a group of mates and we went over later in 1993. That was my first trip to North Korea, and it made me decide to stay in Beijing and set up a travel company for other western tourists.

In a funny way my first impressions of Pyongyang were very positive. The architecture may be brutalist, but there are also incredible fairy-tale landscapes, two big rivers and lots of green space. You only slowly become aware of how North Koreans live. It was a very tough time in 1993, when the Arduous March - a particular period of famine and struggle for North Koreans - was just coming on.