The North

The northern mountains lay for long periods outside Korean rule. Koguryo and then the kingdom of Balhae held much of the area, and Mount Paektu itself erupted in a huge event around 946 that scattered ash as far as Japan. Jurchen tribes occupied the Tumen valley until the early Joseon kings pushed the frontier to the Yalu and Tumen and settled the Hamgyong region with garrisons and colonists. It remained a poor, harsh frontier.

Under Japanese rule Chongjin and Rajin grew into ports, with rail links to Manchuria and heavy industry along the coast. The same border forests were the base of anti-Japanese guerrillas, and the 1937 raid led by Kim Il-sung on the Ryanggang town of Pochonbo became a pillar of the state's official history. The state also presents a secret camp on Paektu as Kim Jong-il's birthplace, although records outside North Korea place his birth in the Soviet Far East.

After the Korean War the north became an industrial and military heartland. The famine of the mid-1990s hit North Hamgyong especially hard, and the region became the main source of people crossing into China. Rason was declared a special economic zone in 1991, the nuclear test site at Punggye-ri in Kilju county hosted all six of the country's nuclear tests, and Chagang's closed valleys hold much of its arms industry.

The north has a strong regional identity within the country. The Hamgyong dialect is spoken across the north-east, in the Hamgyong provinces and Ryanggang. The official culture here is built around Paektu: the mountain appears on the state emblem, the Kim family is described as the "Paektu bloodline", and school and work groups are sent on pilgrimages to the guerrilla sites around Samjiyon, often in winter.

Beneath that official layer, the border has made this the least sealed part of the country. Chinese goods, mobile phones that pick up Chinese networks, and smuggled South Korean films and music reach Hyesan, Hoeryong and Musan first, and most North Koreans who have reached the South came from North Hamgyong and Ryanggang. The penalties for such contact are severe, and punishments for unauthorised border crossing and for distributing foreign media are well documented.

The region also holds some of the political prison camps described by the UN Commission of Inquiry in 2014, including Camp 16 at Hwasong, in what is now Myonggan county. Religion is suppressed here as elsewhere, though old Buddhist temples such as Kaesim-sa on Mount Chilbo survive as heritage sites.

Chongjin, the capital of North Hamgyong, is the country's third-largest city, built around its steel works and the port. Hyesan, the capital of Ryanggang, faces the Chinese town of Changbai across the narrow Yalu; Kanggye is the capital of Chagang; and Rajin and Sonbong are small port towns inside the Rason zone. Much of the rest of the population lives in mining towns such as Musan, with its large iron mine, and in scattered forest and farming settlements.

The economy rests on mining, timber, steel and fishing, and on cross-border trade with China, much of it informal. Markets in Hyesan and Chongjin, such as Chongjin's Sunam Market, have long been busy trading hubs. Rason has Chinese and Russian investors, a port used for transhipment and a small casino, and it is run under separate rules from the rest of the state.

Life is harder than in the capital: electricity is scarce, winter heating relies on coal and wood, and the stunting and hunger that followed the 1990s famine were severe here. Tighter border controls since the 2020 closure have squeezed the smuggling trade on which many households depended.

The cold plateau grows potatoes better than rice, and Ryanggang is the country's potato province. The state promoted potato farming at Taehongdan county on the Paektu plateau, and local cooking uses them in every form: boiled, in noodles, in dumplings, and in kamja-tteok, rice-cake-style cakes made from ground potato. Maize and millet were long the staples of the Hamgyong countryside, with rice a luxury.

The Hamgyong coast eats from the sea. Pollock (myongtae), squid and crab are landed at Chongjin and Rason, pollock is dried on racks along the shore, and gajami sikhae, flatfish fermented with millet, radish and chilli, is a Hamgyong speciality. The region's cold noodles are the chewier Hamgyong type made with starch, often served in a spicy dressing.

Wild foods matter: mushrooms and wild greens are gathered in the highlands. In Rason, Chinese and Russian goods fill the market stalls.

Mount Paektu is the region's defining sight. The volcano, about 2,750 metres high, is shared with China, where it is called Changbai; on the North Korean side a road and funicular climb towards the crater rim, from which tour groups have looked down on Lake Chon, the crater lake. Below the mountain, Samjiyon has the Grand Monument to Kim Il-sung's guerrilla struggle, the secret camp presented as Kim Jong-il's birthplace, and a townscape rebuilt as a model settlement, with larch forests and potato fields stretching across the plateau.

West of Paektu, the Chagang highlands along the upper Yalu are among the most remote landscapes in Korea, a region of steep forested ranges that visitors do not see.

On the east coast, Chongjin is the gateway to Mount Chilbo, a range of jagged pinnacles split into inner, outer and sea sections, with the Kaesim-sa temple, which small groups once visited. In the far north-east, the Rason special economic zone has the port of Rajin, the Tumen river where North Korea meets China and Russia, the rail bridge to Russia, and quiet beaches and islands along the coast.