This story originally aired on Feb. 10, 2018. This week it appears again as part of our "Sticky Wickets" episode.

Alex Frecon is a 30-year-old copywriter and musician living in the Twin Cities. It’s hard to describe how much he enjoys playing hockey — beer league, he calls it. So, I'm going to let him tell you ... in song.

In March of 2017, Alex Frecon took a plane to Pyongyang, North Korea, handed his passport over to his tour guides-slash-minders and stayed for a week.

How did he get such a crazy idea?

"Yeah, that's a question, surprisingly enough, I get a lot," Alex says. "I was on the internet — specifically, I was on this website called Reddit."

Reddit is an online community. People post stories, rants, articles and web pages they've come across.

"And I saw this post that simply said, 'Hey, who wants to come to North Korea to play hockey with me?' " Alex says. "And I thought to myself, 'OK, that sounds interesting. Very click-bait-y.' "

The link took Alex to a website for the Howe International Friendship League — a sports tourism organization based in Canada.

"And I x'd out of the window and I didn't think anything of it," Alex says. "I didn't even consider going. I didn't do those kinds of things. Like, I love adventure, but that to me was so foreign."

But somehow, the idea stuck. He decided to reach out to the man leading the trip. His name is Scott Howe.

"My first email was so overwhelming," Alex remembers. "I had questions about the hockey, questions about the travel, questions about the tourism aspect. I mean, it was extensive."

Alex sits fully dressed before a hockey game in North Korea. (Courtesy Alex Frecon)

Alex and Scott exchanged 74 emails, and Alex still had a lot of concerns. Here's one you might not think about, unless you’re a hockey player.

"So the game of hockey, a lot of people who enjoy it, they have a great sense of humor. And they love, you know, it's called 'chirping.' It's very playful banter," Alex explains. "But I was under the impression that humor was going to be a no-go there. Be prepared to be questioned, be on-guard all the time. Those kinds of things."

On the other hand, this was the opportunity to play hockey against a national team.

"Does the North Korean national hockey team have a reputation for being good?" I ask.

"Well, that's a very nice way of asking the question," Alex says, laughing. "Let's say their talent has limitations. They're not the best hockey players in the world. Fine. That's fair. But, the prospect of playing against a national team, given my skill level, that opportunity is going to come around once in a lifetime."

Alex jokes a lot about his hockey skills — or lack thereof. But he’s not a guy who likes to lose. So he looked up some videos of his would-be competition on YouTube.

"They were old. But I got a feel," he says. "I was, like, 'OK, I can hang. I think we have a good shot here.' "

'An Elaborate Ruse'

Alex says he wasn’t really thinking about politics. But his decision wasn't easy.

"And I talked at length with Scott about that," Alex says. "As an American, there's a lot to be discussed there.

"To me, the worst-case scenario was, maybe something is said in the political arena that forces the borders to get shut and I get stuck in this country."

Alex decided to go. But he only told two people. And they’re not the ones you might expect.

"I did not tell mom and dad," he says.

As far as his family, his coworkers and his beer league teammates knew, Alex was going on a tour of China: Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong.

"I remember having to Google things to do in Shanghai and Hong Kong, just in case people asked me," Alex says. "I could be, like, 'Oh, yeah, I'm going to see this!' It was an elaborate ruse. I know. I am ashamed."

Alex’s days were spent researching and planning — both for the trip he was taking and for the trip he was telling people he was taking. He says he didn’t have time to get nervous, until he actually boarded the plane in Beijing that would take him to Pyongyang.

"The airline I took — I believe it's called Air Koryo — is the worst rated airline in the world," Alex says.

Alex stands rink-side in North Korea with the head coach of the men's national team, Yun Pong-chol. (Courtesy Alex Frecon)

The flight was uneventful. Alex landed in Pyongyang and breezed through customs. They didn’t even look twice at the camera equipment he brought to document his trip — a gallon-sized zip-lock bag filled with his GoPro camera, extra batteries and memory cards.

In fact, everything went really smoothly, until Alex’s teammates arrived and 17 strangers had to figure out how to play hockey together.

"In an ideal situation, I would have been the worst player on the team. But that was not the case. So we had a great range," he says. "We had one individual — I think it was his second time playing hockey ever. Yeah, and I mean, talk about confidence. Not only are you willing to try a new sport, OK? But you're willing to try that new sport against a national team ... in North Korea."

Not long after that revelation, the North Korean team took to the ice for warm-ups. That’s when Alex learned how out-of-date those YouTube videos had been.

"Got out on the ice and I was watching them warm up. And they're all skating in one big circle, very, very fast," he says. "And then, all of a sudden, someone just kinda yells, like, 'Hut.' And they all stop on a dime. And just snow ominously kicks up, all in unison. And I'm thinking to myself, 'OK, we are going to lose.' I skated over to Scott and was like, 'We are in some trouble.' And he said, 'Oh, no. We'll be fine.' Well, spoiler: We were not fine."