Current Time in Sariwŏn-si, North Korea

Sariwŏn lies in the south-west of North Korea, about sixty kilometres south of Pyongyang, in a broad plain of paddy fields and orchards bordered by low wooded hills. It is the capital of North Hwanghae Province and stands on the main road and rail corridor running from the capital towards Kaesong and the demilitarised zone, which makes it a place most visitors to the country pass through at some point.

Around three hundred thousand people live in the city. Its importance is agricultural and industrial. The Hwanghae provinces are the granary of North Korea, producing much of the country's rice and maize, and Sariwŏn serves as the administrative and processing centre for that region, with food industries, textile mills, a large cement works, tractor and machinery plants and a network of collective farms in the surrounding countryside.

Settlement in this fertile plain is ancient, and the hills nearby preserve the remains of mountain fortresses built during the Koguryo and Koryo periods, when the area lay on the contested route between the north and the Korean kingdoms of the south. Sariwŏn developed as a modest market town, grew during the Japanese colonial period when the railway was built, and was heavily damaged during the Korean War. The city was rebuilt afterwards on a planned grid with wide avenues, apartment blocks, public squares and monuments, in the style used across North Korea in the postwar reconstruction.

The best known attraction is the Folk Street, a purpose-built quarter constructed in traditional Korean style, with tiled roofs, painted eaves, a pavilion, a gateway and a reconstructed section of old city wall. It was designed as a place where citizens and visitors could see historical architecture and customs, and it usually forms part of organised tours. Above the city rises Kyongam Hill, crowned by a pavilion reached by a stone stairway, from which there is a wide view over the plain and the surrounding hills. Further out lie the ruins of Jongbangsan fortress and the Songbul Temple, a Buddhist foundation dating in origin from the Koryo dynasty, set among pines in the hills.

Cultural life follows the pattern of North Korean provincial cities, with a theatre, a cinema, a stadium, a children's palace offering music and dance instruction, and public parks used for group activities. Local specialities include cold buckwheat noodles, kimchi from the region's cabbage harvest, and fruit from the orchards of Hwanghae, particularly apples and pears.

The Pyongyang to Kaesong motorway and the western trunk railway both pass through the city, and buses, trolleybuses and bicycles serve local movement. Sariwŏn has a teacher training college, an agricultural college and a medical college, reflecting its role as a provincial capital.

Travel to North Korea is possible only on organised tours with official guides, and independent visits are not permitted. Within those limits, Sariwŏn is one of the more frequently included provincial stops, and it offers a glimpse of everyday life in the agricultural heart of the country.