As you drive the 15 km from dreary Pyongyang airport into the centre of the North Korean capital you cannot miss the pyramid-like building under construction on the horizon. It is the latest monument to the "great leader" and founder dictator of this bizarre country, Kim il-Sung, and his heir, Kim Jong-il; a 105-storey hotel.

It is hard to justify the expenditure of millions upon millions of dollars on the huge memorials, grandiose buildings and perfectly manicured parks in honour of the Kims while thousands of North Koreans are reportedly starving in the countryside.

It is a mystery who will be occupying this lavish new hotel when it is eventually completed. There is no tourist industry here, and little penetrates this hermit-like State from the outside. There are only 300 Westerners living in this land of 22 million people. Most are confined to the capital and are diplomats and aid workers who arrived when famine first gripped North Korea five years ago. They are monitored everywhere they go.

Pyongyang, a showcase capital, is free of the hustle and bustle of other cities. You are hit with the fact that there is hardly any traffic. It is immaculately clean. Middle-aged men and women dressed in dark brown and blue Mao suits spend the day with dust-pans and brushes. But they are not very busy as there is little litter in this country which is minus Western consumer goods: no sweet packets, plastic bags or drink cans to dirty the streets.

Pyongyang is also free of noise. Doll-like women in blue uniforms and hats stand motionless at street intersections holding white batons to direct the dribble of cars and buses that pass by. The yellow number-plates denote privately owned cars, while the state-owned vehicles have black plates. A rough count showed only one out of three number-plates is yellow.

One in five male North Koreans is in the armed forces, and soldiers with guns patrol the streets. The people are dressed in dark clothes. There are no Western labels to be seen anywhere and no advertising. The only thing radiating from the billboards are images of the elder and younger Kims.

But the most striking and saddest impression left following a brief 36-hour visit to this closed regime is how the people of North Korea are devoid of independent thoughts. From 7 a.m., when the loudspeakers first start blaring to rouse the faithful into the service of the State, until dusk when the stony-faced people return home to sit in darkness due to electricity cuts, homage is paid to the two Kims.

No books or newspapers are allowed from outside, No Internet, foreign television or radio. We had to declare any written material we brought into the country.

My assigned "minder" - let's call him Mr Lo - was full of Kim mantra. Without blinking, he told me how North Korea's history really only began when Kim Sungil liberated the country from the Japanese in 1945.

North Koreans speak of "the Great Leader", dead now six years, as if he were still alive. "But he is still alive. His spirit is everywhere. He is guiding us from above," Mr Lo said.

In this nation, people do not pay taxes. Accommodation is provided by the state. Rice is given free to people who pay only a distribution charge. Education is free.

A LACK of goods and money means everything is recycled in Pyongyang. I wandered into what I thought was a small shop to find men busy mending watches and women with sewing machines mending clothes.

For a country closed off to the West, the sight of a foreigner on the eerily quiet streets does not seem to evoke curiosity. The people stare through you, rather than at you. Eye contact is avoided. These Kim followers have presumably been warned of the dangers of contamination from outside forces.

The shops are run down and empty. Old-fashioned stock is stacked in abundance in the five-storey department store near my hotel. The only transaction I witnessed were two people coming in and handing over cash for what looked like brown coupons. No one would tell me what the objects were.

Most worrying is the fact that the small grocery stores were empty of food and fresh produce. The only items in plentiful supply were packets of dry biscuits. In one shop people were coming in to get containers filled with what looked like rice. The state distributes rice and wheat.

At 6.30 a.m on Thursday morning, I decided to break the rules and go walkabout on my own. We were staying in the Kyro Hotel, one of three that all visiting Westerners are confined to. We were warned "to rest" during gaps in our schedule. The hotel was clean but the carpets and furnishings are straight from the 1960s.

At this early hour the darkly dressed masses rippled though the city streets, rushing to work and school. People walked everywhere. The few buses that trundled by were packed. Strangely, the electric trams were empty but the subway was busy. I was not allowed on because I was not with my guide. Taxi-drivers would not bring foreign guests anywhere, either, without their minders. Everyone is a puppet in this play.

I was followed as I tried unsuccessfully to blend in with the morning rush. The lady in the dark-purple, two-piece suit was not doing a good job shadowing me, though. I could see her slipping into doorways every time I turned around. I gave her a wave and a smile, and - embarrassed - she looked away. But she stuck with me for my unofficial tour.

NGOs who met the European Union delegation in Pyongyang this week to discuss food aid expressed concerns about access and monitoring. Aid workers are allowed to take field trips outside the city, but access is only allowed to approximately three-quarters of North Korea's 210-plus counties. No one knows what the true famine situation is. Aid organisations claim two million have died in the last five years.

Two of the 75 journalists in Pyongyang to cover the historic visit of an EU delegation for talks with Kim Jong-il attempt ed to get out into the countryside by bus to see for themselves what life was like. They were stopped in the outer suburbs of Pyongyang by the military and escorted back to the hotel after a serious chastising.

Before we left for Pyongyang airport on Thursday evening, a television journalist was thrilled when her young minder agreed to allow her do a quick vox pop on the city streets. All those she interviewed spoke glowingly of their wonderful leader. When the senior minder found out, there was consternation. His junior colleague was in serious trouble and was frogmarched out of sight.

A small number of the journalists managed to get to Pyongyang's only casino on Wednes day night. They passed several bars and restaurants along the way. Most were totally empty or shut. There was not one North Korean in the casino. It was all foreigners, mostly Chinese, working here.

The tentacles of the two Kims stretch everywhere in this city. The only books stocked in the hotel or shops I visited were by one or other of the dictators. Kim il Sung on the Juche Idea - the country is built upon the Juche ideology of total self-reliance, military strength and ideological purity - was one. Let Us Further Enhance the Role of Intellectuals in the Revolution and Construction was another.

People going about their early-morning business were reading aloud from some of these books. One schoolboy aged about 10 caught my attention because he was reading passages from an English textbook. I sidled up beside him and saw the chapter was headed "Forests". But even one so young had been warned not to engage with the West. He cantered off for fear he would be seen with this capitalist.

On a visit to the Pyongyang No 1 Senior Middle School I saw the same textbook in the language room. Surprising, for a country determined to shut out the West, English was on the curriculum. A sign on the corridor outside the classroom explained everything. It read: "Foreign language is a weapon for the life and struggle."

Inside, 12 and 13-year-olds were primed to read for their visitors. A boy read from a passage titled "My dream" and it started: "Every one of us has something to do in the future. Most of us will join the Korean People's Army."

A story on page 83 centred on a lad called Jack who was knocked down by a bicycle. He was turned away from the hospital because "he was a Negro boy. This is America."

And this is North Korea, which allowed Western media a tiny and rare glimpse of this quietly forbidding country this week. A glimpse into a chilling world which is curiously trapped in the Cold War past.