North Korea's 'Mass Games' provide tourist spectacle, and sobering reminder

FILE PHOTO: People take photos after paying their respects in front of bronze statues of the late leaders Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il before getting married in Pyongyang, North Korea, September 11, 2018. REUTERS/Danish Siddiqui/File Photo

PYONGYANG (Reuters) - Packed into Pyongyang's giant stadium this week with thousands of other tourists, Australian Mitchell Hamilton marvelled at the return of North Korea's “Mass Games,” a huge pageant that has produced some of the most iconic images of the isolated country.

“My thought sitting there was that it was a show fit for a god,” Hamilton told Reuters on Tuesday atop the Juche Tower, a 560-foot (170-metre) obelisk in downtown Pyongyang. “You can’t help but get swept up in the spectacle.”