There were around 50 of us standing in a car park and waiting for something but we didn’t know what. Most of the other people were speaking Russian and I assumed they were diplomats of some sort. I had guides with me and I asked what was going on, but they wouldn’t say anything.

After an hour, a few army trucks pulled up and a dozen soldiers stepped out of the back.

‘Line up over there with the others,’ my guide said to me.

I stood there and watched as the soldiers searched the vehicles. There were around ten cars and they went over each one meticulously. Every face was very serious.

‘Give us your phones.’ One of the soldiers said. ‘You will get them back after.’

I still didn’t know what ‘after’ meant but I handed my phone over. I trusted my guides completely so I didn’t feel like anything bad would happen. I was also used to the way they were secretive about everything until it happened. They never really explained what we were doing until we were just about to do it.

We waited in the car park for another 30 minutes and then my guide told me it was okay to get back in the car. We began leaving in a single procession. One car after the other. The military trucks were in front and behind us. I looked out the window and realised every single traffic light was green and all the other cars had stopped moving while waiting for us to pass. The whole city was at a standstill.

‘I’m in a motorcade…’ I realised, after 10 minutes. It made me feel special in a weird way. Almost important. The whole city stopped while we made our way through.

We drove for half an hour and then reached a giant stadium. Tens of thousands of people were flooding every entrance. It was for an event called the Mass Games and it’s arguably the most important celebration in North Korea. The purpose is to showcase the glory and incredible feats of the nation.

We made our way inside and found our seats. I was with the other white people. There wasn’t a lot of us, but we had our own special section. Most of them were the Russians I’d seen earlier in the car park. Russia has a fairly good relationship with North Korea so a lot of their officials and diplomats were in attendance.

Directly across from us were around 30,000 teenagers holding giant cards they flipped repeatedly to give the illusion of a moving picture. They were creating the most incredible scenes by flipping the cards in unison and it almost seemed like magic. It was like watching cartoon animation the size of a stadium move before you in real life. One of the scenes involved a soccer ball being kicked by a young boy into a goal. This was just the warm to keep the crowd entertained while the seats filled up.

An old man was sitting next to me and he smelt like an old man… Kinda like pee, but not quite. I think he said he was German, Austrian, or Dutch and his brother was the mayor of a town in one of those countries. He was very friendly and invited me to the town which I can’t remember the name of, but its English translation was something like ‘windmill’. The seats were tight in the stadium and his leg was right next to mine. Occasionally, I would move my leg away from his but he quickly put it back up against mine. I think he liked the contact. A strange old man but nice enough.

When the show began it was too jaw-dropping to focus on the smell or the touch of the old man. It was incredible. It was a combination of acrobatics, drones, flipping cards, and one unbelievable performance after another. It was impossible to know where to look because something incredible was happening everywhere.

There’s no real way to describe it accurately. None of it seemed possible and I was stunned for most of it. I didn’t realise human beings were capable of something like this.

One of the most interesting things about believing your leader is a God is you become capable of incredible feats to please him. The pyramids, the Sistine chapel… The greatest achievements throughout history are all attempts to please a God. The average person is considered unworthy, but if they devote their entire life to pleasing their God they might come up with something that gives him the slightest pleasure and be able to die happy. The feats the North Koreans came up with to please their God were the greatest things I had ever seen. To this day I know that show will never be beaten. My whole body was in disbelief for the entire time.

Halfway through the show, I felt a great gust of wind almost lift me out of my seat. Almost propel me upwards. I look around and notice 100,000 people had risen all at once, sucking all the air out of the stadium. I immediately rise as well and all the performers in the stadium begin running as fast as they can in my direction. Everyone is waving their arms frantically in joy and love.

I look to my left and there he is. Their God. Kim Jong-Un. He emerges from a sort of corporate box and stands along a podium. I can clearly see the details of the fat, chubby face that was always on the news. His expression is one of mild amusement with only the slightest smile.

The spectators cheer and shout. There’s around 20,000 high-ranking military on one side of the stadium and they are shouting like wild. Only the most important people in the country were there that night. Apart from the military, there were another 20 or 30 thousand high-ranking officials from the communist party. We were divided into sections throughout the stadium so you could clearly see who was who.

The performers down below are ecstatic. They are running and jostling to get as close to the position of Kim as possible. Looking up and waving, crying, screaming with love. Their souls all pleading to be noticed.

‘See what we have created for you. Look at what we are capable of because of our love for you. Does it please you?’ This sentiment was written on the face of every performer.

Kim stands and soaks it in for a few minutes before walking back into the box and disappearing from view.

The spell wears off and we all sit down again. I begin to wonder if I had been frantically cheering and I realise I had. My hands had been clapping too. I remember looking around at the white foreign faces and seeing they were in the grips of hysteria as well. Foreigners with no allegiance to this God were clapping and cheering like they believed in his greatness. Mania had come over them because it was impossible for it not to. How could one man elicit such love and ecstasy and not be a God? It didn’t make sense to me.

Only a few weeks earlier I read all about the atrocities of his regime. The killing, the enslavement, the harsh punishments. I was convinced he was a monster who surrounded himself with riches while his people starved. A man who tortured and imprisoned anyone who spoke a single word that was against him or the party. I would never clap or cheer for him. I was better than that.

Despite all this, my mind had gone along with everyone else’s and I was convinced of his greatness while I’d been clapping. Only a truly great man could inspire such incredible acts from 100,000 people at once. When 100,000 people throw themselves at the feet of God in devotion and love it almost becomes impossible not to feel it as well. I was under the trap and the spell like everyone else.

I felt all this for a few minutes before eventually snapping out of it. The thing that woke me up was the site of a group of children around 7 years crying at the sight of such an incredible being. It’s okay to see adults crying and cheering for evil men. I’d been around the world enough to understand how quickly we can become evil and I’d learnt to accept it most of the time. If a man wants to reduce himself to a slave and cheer for evil then so be it. He has made the decision, as much a slave is capable of making a decision. But the children hardly even knew what it was they cheered and yet it still came naturally to them. They were full of the same blind, loving devotion and something about the sight of them had sobered me up quickly.

I realised how easily people can go along with something and there was no point blaming any of them. We are not a smart species. We do as we’re told. The children would never know any better and the only thing worth feeling was pity.