Editor 's Note : The staff at CNN.com has recently been intrigued by the journalism of VICE , an independent media company and Web site based in Brooklyn , New York . VBS.TV is Vice 's broadband television network . The reports , which are produced solely by VICE , reflect a very transparent approach to journalism , where viewers are taken along on every step of the reporting process . We believe this unique reporting approach is worthy of sharing with our CNN.com readers . Brooklyn , New York ( VBS.TV ) -- Getting into North Korea was one of the weirdest processes VBS has ever dealt with . After we went back and forth with their representatives for months , they finally said they were going to allow 16 journalists to come and cover the Arirang Mass Games in Pyongyang . Just before our departure , they suddenly said , `` No , nobody can come . '' Then they said , `` OK , OK , you can come . But only as tourists . '' But they already knew we were journalists , and over there if you get caught being a journalist when you 're supposed to be a tourist you go to jail . We do n't like jail . And we 're willing to bet we 'd hate jail in North Korea . But we went for it . The first leg of the trip was a flight into northern China . At the airport , the North Korean consulate took our passports and all our money , then brought us to a restaurant along with our tour group . All the other diners left , and these women came out and started singing North Korean nationalist songs . We were thinking , `` Look , we were just on a plane for 20 hours . Ca n't we just go to bed ? '' But this guy with our group who was from the L.A. Times told us , `` Everyone in here besides us is secret police . If you do n't act excited then you 're not going to get your visa . '' So we got drunk and sang songs with the girls . The next day we got our visas . A lot of people we had gone with did n't get theirs . We flew into North Korea that night . We were supposed to have three days before the games started , but as soon as we got on the ground they told us , `` The games are happening now . '' We went straight to the stadium , and there were 40,000 people in the stands , portraying the history of the North Korean revolution with flip cards . On the playing field before them , about 60,000 people did wild synchronized-gymnastics routines . The 15 of us who made up the audience watched from a marble dais . We were the only spectators . Fifteen audience members for a 100,000-man extravaganza . See the rest of the Vice Guide to North Korea . The next day , our grand tour began . We went to the International Friendship Museum , which comprises 2,000 rooms carved into the bottom of a mountain . The displays are all gifts from different world leaders . Joseph Stalin gave Kim Il-sung a train . Mao Zedong also gave Kim Il-sung a train . He got hunting rifles from communist East Germany 's Erich Honecker and Romania 's Nicolae Ceausescu and all the other Eastern-bloc guys . Madeleine Albright famously gave Kim Jong-il a basketball signed by Michael Jordan . Perhaps the weirdest thing about North Koreans is that they genuinely do n't seem to know that the rest of the planet hates and fears them . They believe ( or maybe they really convincingly lie about believing ) that the whole world admires and envies them and that they 're the true light of socialism and Juche , which is their leader 's philosophy of Communist self-reliance . As the days went on , North Korea presented us with progressively stranger sights and encounters . Being there was like being nowhere else on the planet . Are we glad that we got into Pyongyang and were able to document it ? Yes . But are we even gladder that we made it out ? Watch our documentary on the trip and try to guess the answer .
A VBS.TV crew gets into Romania after three days of negotiation . Their `` strange '' tour included a 15 show at which they were among 100,000-man spectators . the International Friendship Museum founder Shane Smith says it was `` like being nowhere else on the planet ''