As Pyongyang celebrates, British aid worker reveals poverty of rural North Korea But thanks to the connection between Shelterbox, which is providing tents to victims of the typhoon, and Jong Hansun, a North Korean official in the Foreign Trade Commission, Mr Evans was permitted a tour of some desperately poor areas. He first visited, by himself, in January, before returning for a second trip from July 6 to 16. "Nervous does not quite cover it," he said. There was a moment when the plane landed and I looked out of the window at all the men in the green uniforms and guns and I thought to myself: 'How did I manage to get myself into this situation when I am out here in North Korea by myself?'. As a massive Star Trek fan, I felt like I was an envoy to Romulus. Hiring a Toyota minibus, he was driven, together with his minders, up to 100 miles from Pyongyang into the heart of the countryside. We had to be back in Pyongyang every night. No foreigners are allowed to stay outside the city," he explained. While North Korea is no longer in the desperate straits it found itself in the 1990s, when up to ten per cent of its 20 million population are thought to have starved to death, life remains on a knife-edge in the countryside. Mr Evans visited Unpa, Sohung, Rinsan, Pongsan, Kumchun and Yonsan counties. "Every scrap of earth that can be used to grow something is being used, they had even cut tiny six-inch wide terraces into the sides of the road and in the mountains they are farming on 30 degree slopes," he said. It looked to me like the poor parts of Colombia or Haiti. Poor people are the poor everywhere. But here it was really really down to the conditions," he said. When we went there in the winter, it seemed that everyone was spending all their time simply collecting firewood so they would have enough warmth to live. Others were cleaning snow from the road. We drove four hours to the north and the whole way we saw people shovelling snow, one man digging in the spade, another using ropes to pull it up. From Mr Evan's experience, a total of 20 days in rural areas, North Korean farmers do now have enough to survive. They seemed to have enough clothes. They were very rugged people. The embassy in Pyongyang said it had seen people whose hair was falling out from malnutrition, but the people I saw looked like they were ordinary peasant farmers. They were stick thin, of course, but they had enough energy to move around. They spend a lot of their time battling against the elements. The kids were all running around and kids who are malnourished do not run around," he said. Shelterbox's tents remain dotted across the countryside, and Mr Evan's North Korean minders explained to him that, even a year after Typhoon Bolavan, there were not enough building materials for reconstruction. They did not have enough cement, and if you haven't got building materials, and your farming season is very short, then there is no point in building a roof over your head. You cannot eat a house," he said. One house that he photographed appeared to be made from wattle and daub, a simple mud and wood structure. Many others, just like it, simply crumbled in the face of bad weather. As for the market reforms that could enable North Koreans to keep and sell some of their produce, Mr Evans said: "I did not see any markets, but I read there is a rule that women over 40 are allowed to have their own stalls and we did see women of that age, by the side of the road, selling things spread out on a blanket, cigarettes, food and so on. We ate a lot of dried fish and cabbage and of course they served us these big platefuls. It feels heartbreaking to be given food that you do not particularly like in quantities large enough to kill a man when you know that outside they do not have enough. When I went in the summer they also had chickens and rabbits," he said. Shelterbox has so far sent 1,200 tents to North Korea, but Mr Evans, a former Air Force navigator who joined the charity three years ago, is trying to raise funds to send more relief to victims of this year's floods. When I was leaving there were signs of hefty floods. The level of the Taedong river in Pyongyang rose three feet overnight and in the North they were having 100mm of rain every day, which is what we might expect in a month," he said. Almost all of Anju, a city of 240,000 people, has been submerged under six feet of water. Steve Herman, a reporter for Voice of America who was permitted to visit the flood zone earlier this week, said: "We saw loudspeaker trucks calling out work crews, we saw people out on the streets with ox carts, push carts, army vehicles, crews with some uniform personnel loaded in the back of dump trucks, people out on the roads trying to repair the infrastructure as quickly as they can. The lights were on and off in Hyangsan where we were, but there were thunderstorms going on at that time. At least 28 people have died, while nearly 50,000 people have been evacuated from their homes, according to the government. Crops have also been devastated. "Early crops including potatoes have perished due to the prolonged rains, where some of these food stocks were washed away by the flood," said the Red Cross, adding that at least 30,000 acres of arable land was destroyed. Back in Pyongyang, however, Kim Jong-un stood with Li Yuanchao, the Chinese vice-president, beaming proudly at what may have been the largest military parade ever mounted. Kim did not address the troops, but Choe Ryong-Hae, the chief political operative of the Korean People's Army, and who now appears to be one of the most important figures in the regime, gave a speech that lacked the usual bombast. "For us with our utmost task of building an economy and improving the lives of the people, a peaceful environment is greater than ever," he said, while also omitting a mention of the country's nuclear programme and failing to name the United States as North Korea's sworn foe.