Edward Wong/The New York Times

Mun Ho-yong placed the bouquet of flowers at the foot of the towering outdoor portrait of Kim Il-sung, the founder of North Korea. Then he turned to the Chinese businesspeople and tourists, and to the foreign journalists. “Now please bow to our leader,” he said.

Most of us had set foot in North Korea for the first time just hours earlier. We had no idea what protocol to adopt when faced with the “Great Leader,” as North Koreans call him. So we followed Mr. Mun’s lead. We bowed.

I visited the remote port town of Rason four months before North Korea announced that Mr. Kim’s son, Kim Jong-il, the “Dear Leader,” had died at age 69 “of fatigue” during a train ride on Dec. 17.

The trip to Rason on the border of northeast China and a long boat journey we took to the south, on what was North Korea’s first tourist cruise, in late August and early September were the final glimpses of North Korea permitted to a large group of foreign journalists before Mr. Kim died.

Since then, the North Korean military has tightened the border with China, and it is difficult to know how the residents of Rason are dealing with Mr. Kim’s death. No doubt flowers are being laid in places to honor him, as people still do for his father. Photographs from the North Korean state news agency show citizens weeping across the nation in the period of mourning that precedes Mr. Kim’s funeral on Dec. 28. State television broadcasts are proclaiming Mr. Kim’s youngest son, Kim Jong-un, the “Great Successor,” ensuring that North Korea remains a dynastic Communist nation.

Our journey was part of a push by the top levels of the government, and possibly by Mr. Kim himself, to jump-start the economy in Rason, which was designated a special trade zone in 1991. North Korean officials wanted journalists and Chinese businesspeople to spread the word that Rason was open for investment.

Edward Wong/The New York Times

That was the trip’s formal purpose. But over five days, I also got a sliver of insight into ordinary life under Mr. Kim’s rule through conversations with Mr. Mun, one of our guides. He was 25, and he had the kind of look that distinguished North from South Koreans: a scarecrow-thin frame, sunken cheeks and a deep tan. He spoke English with a strong accent. He graduated in 2007 from the Pyongyang University of Foreign Studies, an elite institution in the capital known for training diplomats and intelligence officers (and tour guides, apparently).

“Because they gave me special education for foreign languages, I went to university,” he said. That meant not joining the army like many of his male peers. After graduating, Mr. Mun returned to Rason, where his family lived. Now he worked for one of the state-run tourism agencies. He said he met 100 foreigners last year.

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On Aug. 29, my group traveled on buses across the Tumen River that divides China from North Korea. We entered the customs checkpoint at Wonjong, where men in dark uniforms poked through our bags. Behind one counter were framed portraits of Kim Il-sung and his round-cheeked son.

Mr. Mun, wearing a pin of the elder Kim on his white shirt, leaped into the aisle of our bus as it began bumping over rutted tracks on the three-hour drive to Rason. He tossed out well-rehearsed talking points: “In our country, there’s no individual ownership,” and “In 1950, there was a war, the Korean War, started by the United States.”

He talked, too, of how Koreans were working together to forge a prosperous nation by 2012, a century after the birth of Kim Il-sung. “That’s the great purpose of the Korean people,” he said.

Outside the bus window, three men rode horses through a field. Our caravan rumbled past clusters of gray, single-story concrete homes. Then it rolled into the center of Rason, where an oxcart plodded along one street.

After checking into a hotel, we followed our guides to the gigantic outdoor portrait of Kim Il-sung. Then we were ushered into a theater next door, where children belted out patriotic tunes. One was a crowd-pleaser for the Chinese audience: “Without the Communist Party, There Would Be No New China.” Afterwards, standing outside the theater, Mr. Mun was peppered with questions from the journalists: Did the children perform at the Mass Games in Pyongyang? How long did they train? How much money did the theater earn? The purpose of the show, he said, was “to show the happiness of the children, the happy lives of the children in our country, not to earn money.”

That night, we attended a banquet hosted by a vice mayor, Hwang Chol-nam. Mr. Mun slurped cold noodle soup. Being a tour guide was one of the better jobs, he said. In the summer, he could make 60,000 won per month, which was $600 at the official exchange rate, or $170 at the black market rate in Rason. (Dollars were generally traded at the black market rate here.) His salary dropped to half that in the winter.

A tourist once asked him how much he paid for rent. Mr. Mun lived with his mother. “I didn’t know how much it cost,” he said. “I had to go back and ask my mom.” It turned out she paid 600 to 700 won per month, just a few dollars.

Two of Mr. Mun’s sisters were housewives, and a third one sold goods at a covered market. “My sister works there because it’s a better income,” he said. The market was a capitalist experiment; items were sold at the market price rather than at government-fixed rates. Other such venues had sprung up around the country to bolster the ailing ration distribution system.

At university, Mr. Mun had watched American films to practice English, even though movies from the United States and South Korea are officially banned in North Korea. From the library, he had checked out books by Mark Twain, Margaret Mitchell and Shakespeare. “Woman, thy name is, thy name is – frailty?” he said, trying to recall a line from “Hamlet.”

Mr. Mun told a French reporter on our trip that he had fallen in love in Pyongyang. But he had had to break up with his girlfriend because of his move back to Rason. I asked Mr. Mun about this later, and he told me he had a girlfriend now. “She’s also a tour guide,” he said, lowering his voice.

On the second day in Rason, our group boarded a dilapidated cruise ship for a 21-hour-ride to a nature park in the south. The return trip was even longer. Mr. Mun joined some of the other Korean passengers in the ship’s canteen for drunken late-night karaoke. Stewardesses in white uniforms shook their hips to his crooning. “I have to drink and smoke to forget myself,” he said the next morning.

Back in Rason, the vice mayor agreed to let us visit the covered market. For some reason, only non-Chinese journalists were allowed to go. Mr. Mun escorted us through in 15 minutes. We followed him in a single line. He allowed no notebooks or recording devices. “Just use your eyes,” he said.

On the bus back to the Chinese border, I spoke with Mr. Mun about books and movies and the marrying age of North Koreans. For women, 25 was the “most favorable, most fashionable wedding age,” he said. I asked him whether this trip had been a tough assignment.

He tapped his chest. “I’m smiling on the outside,” he said, “but inside my heart is screaming.”