Like most tourists, we stayed at the Yanggakdo International Hotel in Pyongyang, which was completed in 1992 and features glass elevators, a revolving restaurant on the 47th floor, and a mysteriously inaccessible fifth floor. The building includes a 24-hour tailor, Egyptian-themed nightclub, and Macanese-run casino, as well as a beauty parlor in the bunker-like basement—virtually every amenity imaginable, except for Wi-Fi. There seemed to be no reason to leave (and anyway you can’t—it’s on an island). In the morning, city-wide wake-up alarms jolted me out of bed as the sun rose over Pyongyang’s pastel skyscrapers.

The showcase capital is in some sense a living museum of the Cold War era. The communist kitsch—handpainted propaganda posters, grim workers’ uniforms, socialist catchphrases—was everywhere. But there were also signs of foreign, modernizing—even capitalist—influences. One restaurant played a Korean version of the 1980s Europop hit “Brother Louie.” There are so many imported cars that the city is experiencing its first traffic jams. At the country’s international airport, citizens returned from abroad carrying boxes of new Sony Bravia flatscreens through customs. Even the souvenir shop at the DMZ sold Coca-Cola, and a foreign resident—the city now has around 600, mostly from China and Russia, according to expats I met in Pyongyang—testified that Ben & Jerry’s ice cream is available in shops (given U.S. trade embargoes, these products likely arrive via the flourishing black market).

The government is also cautiously relaxing the rules governing its tightly controlled tourism industry. The essentials haven’t changed: All tourists need a government permit and must travel on official guided tours, whose every meal, bathroom break, and souvenir stop is meticulously scheduled. Yet tourists are generally allowed to take photos and videos, and cell phones are not confiscated at the airport. While the average North Korean can’t get online, visitors can buy 3G SIM cards at the airport and use an Egyptian-built network to post on social media as they wish. This year, amateur foreign runners participated in Pyongyang’s marathon for the first time.

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In North Korea, I regularly caught glimpses of what appeared to be mundane life and everyday happiness: uniformed military couples holding hands at Pyongyang’s funfair; roller-skating girls in pink sweats buying ice cream; bored parents waiting on benches in the shade. In a country often portrayed as incomprehensibly foreign, the familiar seemed bizarre.

Perhaps it’s due to this cognitive dissonance that signs of a more nuanced and normal North Korea are so rare outside the country. Speculation in Western and South Korean media frequently reduces the enigmatic country to a caricature, and these rumors amused our guides endlessly: the “mandatory” state-sanctioned haircuts (no one has one), the “executed” girl band Moranbong (still alive, as we saw on TV while visiting a Pyongyang craft-beer brewery), and the stubborn legend that Pyongyang’s subway passengers are all actors, hired to create an illusion of normalcy. Parts of Pyongyang’s subway—which our guides said was a gift from the Soviet Union—are open to foreigners, and as we rode the rails during rush hour, the system seemed not all that different from New York’s, albeit slower and cleaner. Commuters read papers or looked down at cell phones. It seemed narcissistic to believe that the government had employed hundreds of actors with the murky goal of convincing tourists that North Korea is an ordinary place, rather than accepting the more logical explanation that Pyongyang’s residents commute just like everyone else. An old man with a fishing rod seated opposite me glanced away from an animated discussion with his companion, smiled, and pretended to reel me in. If he was another cog in North Korea’s public-relations machinery, the regime had a sense of humor.