Koryo Tours and Channel 5 spent two years arranging the visit of the beloved Monty Python star to visit North Korea for an unprecedented travel documentary.
Two grown men slapping each other with fish turns out to be a uniting force in North Korean relations with the West. This was one of the things that Monty Python star Michael Palin found out on his trip to North Korea with Koryo Tours, the program was broadcast earlier this year.
Palin travelled through the country for a week. Along the way he showed his guides some clips from Monty Python, including a fish-slapping sketch. ‘You don’t have to know the language,’ Palin remarked at the Edinburgh TV Festival last month, ‘it’s just two grown men hitting each other with fish’. He told the audience that his female guide ‘cracked up’ at the vintage slapstick comedy.
When the producers of the documentary contacted Koryo Tours more than two years ago, we knew that this was a unique opportunity to showcase the human side of an often secretiv