THE COMMUNISTS were watching intently. One wore a rough, green military uniform with a cut-off collar. He had a large, moon-like face and an inscrutable expression. The other, who had a flint-like look in his eye, was in a slick grey suit.

It's not often you wake on a train to find a pair of communists sitting cross-legged an arm's length away and staring at you. But that, I soon discovered, is par for the course in North Korea.

Both men, like almost everyone else I would meet in the country, sported red circular badges depicting North Korea's founding father, the “dear leader” Kim Il Sung, who helped to forge the nation by defeating the Japanese in the 1940s.

They had taken off their shoes, which were placed neatly on the floor of my compartment on the Beijing-to-Pyongyang train. Journey time: 26 hours.

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I sat up sharply. I was fully clothed and had been resting while officials took away my passport for inspection. I was the only Westerner on the shiny green train.

The man in the grey suit asked: “Do you have a mobile phone?” He seemed pleased that I did. He took it, examined the casing, placed it in a brown envelope, sealed the ends with tape, stamped a red mark on the front, and said: “Do not use mobile phones in North Korea.”

I was asked to open my bags. The man with the moon face asked: “May we smoke?” And without a chance for a reply, they lit up.

Through a fug, they peered at my possessions. “What is this?” snapped the grey suit. It was a book by T.S.Eliot. “Poetry,” I said. He looked suspiciously at the cover. The other man flicked through the Bradt guidebook, examining the pictures and grunting. “And this?” It was a thriller by Lee Child. “Ah, crime action thriller,” he said approvingly.

“Are you married?” asked the grey suit suddenly. I said that I wasn't. He drew on his cigarette, exhaled a plume of smoke and replied thoughtfully: “A single man may live like a king, but die like a dog.”

With that, they handed over my passport and departed. I was in. My visa was in order. I was a tourist in North Korea - probably the most secretive country on the planet. And I had received free life counselling.

Privacy was one thing I quickly learnt not to expect. Tourists are watched carefully by official guides, who report to the secret police. I was on a nine-day visit on a package offered by a British travel company - a handful offers trips - and I was monitored the entire time.

My guides, whose names I won't reveal in case I cause them trouble - which is why I am writing this article anonymously - were with me almost every moment I was not in a hotel room. They met me at Pyongyang's giant station, and hardly let me out of their sight.

The only time I was allowed to walk “on my own” from my hotel one afternoon, I soon discovered that X had been following. “You went farther than you said you would,” she admonished in a friendly way

Even though they were keeping a close eye on me - I was visiting as a tourist, not as a journalist - we got to know each other and became chums after their initial bouts of questioning in which I lied and told them vaguely that I was a travel agent. This “interrogation” ended only halfway through the trip, when they ran out of steam.

My tour took in Pyongyang, Kaesong in the south by the Demilitarised Zone and its famous border checkpoint, a trip to mountains in the north, and a visit to the West Sea Barrage, a giant structure built to prevent flooding.

Pyongyang was the highlight. Everything about the city was enormous and built on a giant scale: the concrete apartment blocks - many needing a new coat of paint - the endless monuments to Kim Il Sung and the Korean Workers' Party, the “study houses” where children are taught to play musical instruments, the building of the People's Army Circus, the parade squares, the boulevards.

As the guidebook said, it is a showcase city. The country I had seen from the train looked run-down: crumbling dwellings amid simple farmland with ploughs pulled by miserable-looking oxen with ribs showing.

Pyongyang, however, is designed to impress: there were even chandeliers, marble columns and fancy murals in the Underground. It is so markedly different from the rest of the country that non-resident North Koreans are allowed in only with special permits. Otherwise, everyone would try to live in Pyongyang.

But despite the scale of the buildings, it was clear that poverty was a big problem. One obvious sign of the lack of wealth was the almost total absence of cars. Often our Landcruiser was the only vehicle on the road. People cycled or walked, but the giant avenues were empty. This was particularly striking when we drove to Kaesong. Most of the time we had the ridiculously large ten-lane motorway to ourselves.

Along the roadsides, people strolled along, staring in disbelief at the Westerner - me - driving past.

We visited embroidery factories, acrobatic shows, memorials, farms, Buddhist temples (Buddhism is tolerated) and military museums commemorating victory in the Korean War. We stayed at comfortable hotels designed for diplomats; the hotel in Pyongyang even had CNN as well as the dull local station (constantly showing military band performances), though there was never the chance to use the internet freely.

At one hotel there was a computer that allowed guests to send e-mails from a hotel account. But this was permitted only after the address of your recipient had been checked. Two of my three e-mails never arrived.

The cult of Kim Il Sung is strong, although he died in 1994 and his son, Kim Jong Il, who has graduated into the exclusive ranks of the “axis of evil” for his pursuit of nuclear weapons, now runs the country.

Whenever we visited monuments to Kim Il Sung - and we also went to his giant mausoleum, where locals broke down in tears - I was made to bow. Even the slightest joke about the endless pictures of the Kims, which were on almost every street corner, was frowned on by the guides. “We do not say things like this about our great leader,” said X.

On Mount Myohyang, we went to the International Friendship Exhibition, a collection of gifts presented to the Kims by a ragbag of despots, including Gaddafi, Castro and Mugabe. I asked my guides if they thought it was ironic celebrating international friendship when the citizens of North Korea were rarely permitted to visit the outside world.

“That is a very journalistic question,” said X suspiciously.

Food was varied. We ate lots of barbecues (duck, chicken, beef), rice, tofu and kimchi, a spicy cabbage. Occasionally, as a Westerner, I was given tasteless burgers and chips.

Sometimes the guides ate with me, other times not. But they always knew where I was, even if I was left alone. “You went to bed early,” X would say, even though I had eaten by myself and returned to my room without thinking I'd been noticed.

You're never really alone in North Korea. Big Brother really is always watching ... even, as I discovered on the train from Beijing, when you're sound asleep.

NEED TO KNOW

Bales Worldwide (0845 0570600, www.balesworldwide.com) offers two-week group trips, including nine days in North Korea and three in Beijing, from £2,445pp. Most meals are included. Visas cost £156. Tailor-made trips for 17 days are £2,995.

Reading Korea (Lonely Planet, £15.99). North Korea (Bradt, 14.99)

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