TWO Brisbane larrikins say they gatecrashed a North Korean golf tournament by tricking officials into believing they were two of Australia’s top athletes.

Mates Morgan Ruig and Evan Shay, both 28, were in China when they decided on a whim to compete in North Korea’s annual golf championships.

They managed to bluff their way into the world’s most secretive state by successfully convincing officials they were members of the Australian golf team.

The pair got phony official team blazers made up and even attended official duties during the two-day tournament, which attracted 85 international players.

But the ruse unravelled when they hit the golf course and revealed themselves to be the substandard golfers they truly were.

“I hit 120, which apparently is not very good,” Mr Ruig told 9News.

“[The caddie] thought it would bring great shame on our family.”

The mates had been competing at a polo tournament in Beijing when they heard about the North Korean Golf Championships and decided to enter for fun.

“We thought, why be an internationalist when you can be a dual internationalist?” Mr Ruig said.

“Initially we just said we were just a couple of Australian golfers and they said, ‘You are the Australian team’.

“And we sort of ... didn’t say no. We thought we’d better go along with this.”

While Mr Ruig and Mr Shay had to hand over their passports on arrival in North Korea — which is mandatory for all travellers to the country — they said they had no trouble returning home after their fully chaperoned, five-day trip.

As for how they managed to pull off the incredible stunt, Mr Shay said: “I think their internet access is pretty limited in North Korea so they didn’t have too many opportunities for research.”

The pair were some of the luckier travellers to pull a prank under the ever-watchful gaze of Kim Jong Un’s totalitarian regimen.

Earlier this year, 21-year-old American tourist Otto Warmbier was sentenced to 15 years of hard labour for trying to snatch a political banner in a North Korean hotel.

The University of University of Virginia student was forced to confess and apologise on camera for “the worst mistake of my life” before he was found guilty of the “hostile act”.

Another young American, Matthew Miller, was arrested in 2014 for a provocative stunt in which he dramatically tore up his visa after arriving in Pyongyang.

He was tried and sentenced to six years’ hard labour but the US government managed to secure his release after 202 days.

And in a particularly bizarre case, US citizen Jeffrey Fowle landed in trouble in 2014 after he left a bible in a nightclub in the North Korean port city of Chongjin.

The devout Christian, who later admitted he knew exactly what he was doing, was detained after running afoul of North Korea’s strict laws against Christian proselytism.