Only American in North Korea marathon describes eerie way crowd cheered on runners

A US travel influencer recalled the odd way that spectators in North Korea cheered during a marathon in the highly controversial country.

Alex Page is a US-based social media influencer who documents his journeys and trips around the globe. And one particularly unusual trip saw Alex heading off to one of the most secretive and reclusive countries in the world.

This is, of course, North Korea, which has been under a communist government since the Korean War in the 1950s, which saw the peninsula divided in half between the US-backed south and the USSR-backed north.

The USSR may be gone, but North Korea remains highly secretive and largely inaccessible to outsiders apart from on state-sponsored tours.

While travel to the country was blocked, Alex was able to visit earlier this year, where he took part in a marathon.

Speaking to PEOPLE, Alex recalled the 'crazy' experience.

“At that time, I was in decent marathon shape," he said. "I honestly don't really know how I did it. Mixing travel with actually exercising and my job of content, then all those, it's like so hard to do at once.”

The start of the race was surreal for Alex, who described how the race began in a stadium with spectators 'doing synchronized claps and chants'.

He said: “Then the professional North Korean runners came out all in uniform, all extremely muscular. They were almost all in flat shoes that looked pretty normal. Then they ran a 2:25 marathon time."

It didn't take long after the opening ceremony for all the professional runners to be 'completely gone'.

Meanwhile, Alex described 'thousands and thousands' of North Koreans who had come to watch the race, where he was the only American competitor.

But it wasn't just the race itself which he found difficult, as even getting to North Korea in the first place is no easy task.

Funnily enough, it turns out that you can't just hop onto an easyJet flight from London to Pyongyang.

The only flights to North Korea go from China or Russia, and given that Russia is not the safest place to visit right now, that means if you want to go to North Korea, you have to go via China.

"I needed a visa to China as well, because the only flights to North Korea go from Beijing, or there's a couple in Russia, but the only popular one is through Beijing to Pyongyang,” Alex said.

“I needed a Chinese visa to go back from North Korea into China from there.”

Fortunately, Alex was able to get in, and get out again, safely.