I Was in North Korea

It was a dream.

And it was with a team. But for what mission I did not know. And neither did I know how we got into the country.

And as with all dreams, various incongruous threads started and ended abruptly, sometimes triggered by something in the dream itself, or, in this instance, my own mind - somehow aware of itself dreaming - directing it with seemingly random thoughts or motifs that popped into my supposedly sleeping mind.

The North Korea I dreamt was very cold and snow was falling hard, and there was a great famine in the land. And it was in the reign of the new Young Leader.

North Korean mourners are obscured by heavy snow on Dec. 22, 2011.

In one thread I saw a starving woman carrying in her arms a sick baby with wiry white long hair and greenish skin tones. (I remembered my mind saying it must have white wiry long hair and so it was.)

A female member of my team approached her and the baby vomited. There were what seemed to be pieces of bread and other orangey macaroni-looking bits in the vomit (and now also I know for sure dreams are in colour). Then a starving man approached the vomit looking for food but turned away and himself started vomiting instead.

Then the team was in some room, perhaps of a disused school, together with other North Korean dissidents, and we were all sitting or sleeping on the floor. It felt like a detention centre, and it continued to snow heavily outside.

I then, walking knee deep in the snow, approached some guard - or was I trying to escape? - and I told the guard, "The Rangers are coming." That apparently scared the guard and the soldiers starting deserting their posts. And I was wondering how they knew what Rangers I was talking about.

Then I became more awake than dreaming, but I - consciously? - wanted the dream to go on, but it disintegrated into absurdity and I went back to sleep, or, perhaps, so I thought.