Danish Magician Jesper Grønkjær has traveled around the world performing magic where few, if any, other magicians have gone. One of those places is North Korea.
“I travel to the far corners of the world to see what a smile can do,” he says in a video chronicling his time in the authoritarian state. Jesper, who traveled to the country just before the Covid pandemic, made it into North Korea by simply asking the authorities there. They allowed him to enter the country, though when he got there, they took his passport. Two guards also followed him all day, telling him where he could go and what he could eat, before locking him into his hotel room at night.
Even with these restrictions, however, the government allowed him to film his time in the country, where he primarily performed for schoolchildren (Jesper’s request to perform for the dictator Kim Jong Un was rejected). In a YouTube video that first went up in December 2024, you can see Jesper’s impact on several groups of children, who are initially wary of him before he wins them over with magic. The video also shows him entertaining a tight-laced guard, who bursts out laughing after several clown noses miraculously appear in her hands.
“I tried to make some space where it’s OK to forget about the difficult things in life,” he said in a radio segment for PRX’s The World about his time in North Korea. “Small moments where we could laugh together, not talk, but laugh together.”
Images courtesy of Freeport Traveler