About 30 km outside the North Korean capital, the Hermit Kingdom's only golf course cuts through heavily forested slopes running down to the waters of Lake Taicheng. The late Kim Jong Il is rumored to have once frolicked there on a luxury yacht. He is also famously credited with shooting a world-record 18-hole score of 38 under par — including five holes in one — on the day he opened the course. The story was reported by the rogue state's lone news service, the Korean Central News Agency, which said 17 bodyguards witnessed the round. Strangely, nobody at the course seems to recall his presumably spectacular performance.
More recently, the secluded course played host to a different type of visitor: tourists. Last month, 15 foreigners and one North Korean competed over three rounds in the second Democratic People's Republic of Korea Amateur Golf Open. The tournament, organized by Dylan Harris of the U.K.-based Lupine Travel company, brought together golfers from six countries for eight days of golf and sightseeing. The experience offered a rare glimpse into one of the world's most reclusive countries — and an even rarer chance for everyday hackers to win a national championship.
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5 holes in one with several hundred mulligans and a few executed caddies.
No amount of mulligans would help this idiot get even 1 ace.
Fuk you kim jong il
sincerely,
william espinosa, cutler bay, FL
The first hole-in-one was the windmill hole.
Yes and if he is lucky enough (oops I meant to say skilled enough) to make a hole in one on the last hole he also gets a free game. What a great leader he must be .He gets to play Golf while his people starve. And our politicians are more worried about the Arab world.Now tell me who's the nut case here?
Our politicians are worried about the Muslim world because they are causing all the murder and mayhem.
That's funny!
The author needs to do some simple research to find that there is (at least) one other golf course in N Korea. Go to Goodle Earth, look in the middle of Pyongyang and you you will see a river. Zoom close to the river and there are several islands. One of the islands contains what looks like a hotel and has 9 holes of golf right next to it.
If your concept of "simple research" includes searching zoom-views of Google Earth, I'd say it needs a little more work.
and few hundred hours to waste...
Hi CargoCult, if you did your research properly rather than relying on out of date Google satellite images you'll find out that the course on the island closed down last summer and it has now been ripped up and building work is taking palce on the site of it.
There is one more course, situated at Mount Kumgang but its been closed for years.
Golf Course of Yanggakdo Hotel
That's not a golf course CargoCult; that is their Cooling Pools for their Nuclear Reactor.
DAAYUUUUM SON, YOU JUST GOT TOLD.
Sure, go to North Korea and enjoy the golf...enjoy your time in the country, while the starving locals look on....
Hi My Name is John, I completely missed the entire point of the article. This has been a message trom the American Public Educational School System.
Let them eat grass.
I bet their golf swings hook just as bad as their missile launches.
North Korea still has unspoiled landscape. Some European tour operators are active here. Those who go there are genuinely interested in a country that prides itself on its hermetic seal and don't mind eating in a restaurant where power cut is part of the menu.
N. Koreans are brain dead. They act like the Borg. They starve and torture their own people. They constantly threaten all out war. And now we find out a couple people in the country play golf.
Disgusting people.
Still, I like the North Koreans. For me they are people, different though, but in many ways less spoiled than you and me. The question is how to approach them in a positive way that will benefit both. I wish I could afford to go there to see for myself. But we the poor people only have ideas! North Korea should open its borders to world tourism. In a matter of months, their gross national product would compare to the world's leading tourism destinations. Kim Jong UN ought to understand that not all tourists are spies or bad people in any way. They ove other people and mean well! Enormous advantages would come to North Korea with tourism!
5 holes in one. Thank god I live in a country where I can sound off and say that Kim Jong II and his son are total morons. They are a disgrace to the N. Koreans and if they truly loved their people they would draw down the borders and let the people see the rest of the world and what life is all about. Keeping their country secluded does not help their plight.
N. Korea is a great place to live... if you are in the top .000000000000000000001%! For everyone else... it sucks!
Lol instead of saying the .00000000000000000000001% you could just say Kim Jong-Un.
There was actually 18 body guards present that day, but the last one wouldn't corroborate the story. Strangely, there is now a cement statue in a fountain on the course that looks just like him.
the comments are dingers...
"The story was reported by the rogue state's lone news service, the Korean Central News Agency, which said 17 bodyguards witnessed the round. Strangely, nobody at the course seems to recall his presumably spectacular performance."
I don't believe this. Those 17 bodyguards do not want to collaborate the story. Do they scape to S. Korea? have they been executed? If they are still around, don't they get punished for not collaborating the story?
Pretty hard to discredit Kim Jong Il's claim of shooting a score of 38 under par, when there were 17 witnesses to that amazing feat. And when all 17 witnesses will swear that it really did happen, or face execution.
The media here never talks about how North Korea is committing atrocities like Nazi Germany. Some of those people who didn't seem sincere enough in mourning for Kim Jong-il were reportedly arrested. It also says something that anything about this country could be part of comedy entertainment in America.
Will there come a day when my life would be so boring and depressed that I would be playing golf?
"... a world-record 18-hole score of 38 under par — including five holes in one..."
Not that hard to do when the longest hole on the course is but three feet in length... a par 5 from the little Munchkin's point of view since it's a wicked dogleg left with multiple traps along the fairway.
Just missed a sixth hole-in-one on the Clown's Mouth hole... 3 body guards were immediately executed in retaliation for his incompetence!
i'm gay
sincerely,
william espinosa, cutler bay, FL
sincerely,
william espinosa, cutler bay, FL, 8th grade
Oooooo mista kim u hit ball into lake for fifth time. so good i call guiness record book now.
Put the holes in the middle of the bottom of a bomb crater , be hard to miss a shot in a funnel.
The balls were connected to the holes like the retractable cord is connected to a sweeper. Step on the release button and ziiiiiippppp, right back in the hole. But the retractors were made bny the NK missle agency so he only got 5 of 18.
I wonder if the tourists were offered a tour of Camp 14.
Well, after the N. Koreans won the World Cup – I suppose anything's possible.
38 under par and 5 holes in one. This is best laugh of the day – NK leaders are smoking some real
good stuff to print a stupid article like this. Hahaha
Yup just what I thought, no pictures of the course.
Now that's the kinda of stuff I LOVE to hear from KOREA! HOLYSPIRIT!
kji would have had more fame if he joined the pga..
I can imagine it would be surreal to see some well dressed man in the distance sneaking your ball out from the rough and back onto the fairway.
Next up: The Famine 500, a dune buggy race across Ethiopia! Heckle the starving children as you speed by!
You mean even the paper tiger running dog commies play capitalist sports?
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