The American couple who met while on vacation in North Korea

(CNN) – Ryan Carlson was in the middle of a backpacking trip to New Zealand when he received the email: North Korea is opening its borders to American tourists.

It was September 2005. Carlson, 25, was working in the finance department as an independent futures trader in Chicago, a job that gave him great flexibility when traveling.

The email from Beijing-based company Koryo Tours confirmed that travel to US citizens would only be offered again for the next four weekends.

Carlson gave up his New Zealand adventure, flew back to Chicago, arranged his visa, and then got on a plane to Beijing to meet the Koryo Tours group.

Meanwhile, 30-year-old Shauna Cheng was leafing through an English-language magazine published in Beijing when she came across an ad for Koryo Tours’ North Korea trips.

Born and raised in San Francisco Bay, Cheng temporarily moved to China to work, experience life in Beijing and learn Mandarin on the side.

A trip to North Korea seemed like an unusual and fascinating travel option.

“Why not?” Cheng thought and booked a place on the trip.

A plane to Pyongyang

On October 8, 2005, American tourists gathered in Beijing, introduced themselves, and boarded a plane to Pyongyang full of energy and anticipation.

“There was a lot of excitement. We’re starting this adventure. We don’t know what it will be and it’s not something we’ve ever seen before,” recalls Carlson.

Cheng and Carlson sat next to each other on the bus from Pyongyang Airport to the hotel.

“Ryan seemed like a nice guy with good energy,” Cheng recalls.

The two talked a little about Singapore – Cheng’s parents were from there and Carlson had recently visited them – but most of the conversation revolved around what to expect in North Korea.

“I’m not like a slick operator,” says Carlson. “It was just a way of sharing this excitement – and it wasn’t just between us, just the whole group was really happy.”

Cheng and Carlson were the two youngest American travelers.

“Everyone had a unique story,” says Carlson of the group among whom he remembers a Soviet dissident who was interested in seeing another communist country.

The focus of the trip was on the Arirang Mass Games, which Koryo Tours described on its website as a spectacle of “100,000 dancers, gymnasts and musicians working in perfect synchronization”.

Carlson calls the event “absolutely breathtaking”.

For Cheng, the highlight was the north side of the border at Panmunjom, which separates North and South Korea.

“It was so interesting to see South Korean soldiers standing between the buildings and I could also see the American military advisors in the building watching us through their binoculars,” she recalls.

Tourism in North Korea is tightly controlled by the government – visitors to North Korea must stick with their tour guide and there is no freedom to explore independently.

The Americans’ cell phones were also confiscated on arrival in Pyongyang, as was the case at the time.

“There were no distractions, no internet, and we knew it was a short trip. So we really had all the elements to live in the present, ”says Carlson, who adds that he felt safe throughout the trip because he was confident in the Koryo Tours guides.

“Although I felt very safe with Koryo Tours, as an American citizen, I didn’t have diplomatic missions in case a problem arose. So it was more about respecting the guides and following their example,” says Cheng.

Since September 2017, after the arrest and death of US tourist Otto Warmbier, Americans have not been able to travel to North Korea, except in very limited circumstances. US citizens currently require special confirmation to enter the country.

Potential connection

During the three-day trip in 2005, Carlson shared a hotel room with an elderly man, Ken, from New York. Ken kept encouraging his new friend to spend more time with Cheng.

Carlson was dying to get to know her better, and the thought of romance had crossed his mind.

“I’m 25 and single and she’s a beautiful woman and she’s single. Of course we will have that potential,” says Carlson.

But he didn’t know how Cheng was feeling – and the last thing he wanted was to make her uncomfortable by trying to force interactions.

Still, over the course of the trip, Cheng and Carlson found that they shared a similar worldview – they loved traveling and learning about other cultures through experience.

The tour ended and the group flew back to Beijing, where Cheng and Carlson attended a show together before Carlson flew back to Chicago.

It was just like being with friends, they explain – they were joined by Ken, the guy Carlson had lived with in Pyongyang.

Before Carlson flew home, he and Cheng exchanged email addresses in hopes that they could meet in the United States.

Cheng’s time in Beijing was due to end in December of this year, after which she would live in California again.

Coincidentally, Carlson’s sister was studying at the University of California at Berkeley at the time, so he spent a lot of time visiting the San Francisco Bay Area.

For the next several months, Cheng and Carlson stayed in touch by email and occasionally by phone.

Carlson says he was grateful for the limitations on Internet communications in the early noughties – that meant they had to make an active effort to keep in touch.

“You really had to work to make it happen,” says Carlson. “As with many good things, the more you put into something, the more you get out of it.”

An American reunion

Just before Christmas 2005, Cheng moved back to California. A few months later, Carlson flew out to visit his sister and met with Cheng while he was there.

“We went out to dinner with his sister and a good friend of his, and I wasn’t expecting much,” says Cheng.

“But after that, when we went out for a drink in San Francisco, we kissed for the first time on the top of Nob Hill.”

A relationship slowly built up. Carlson had to return to Chicago, but the two began planning their next meeting.

“It was very incremental,” says Carlson. “It wasn’t a moment.”

It was around Carlson’s third trip to San Francisco that the two first spoke openly about their feelings for each other and realized that they both wanted to establish a cross-border connection.

For the next several months, Cheng and Carlson flew back and forth between Chicago and California to visit each other.

“I’ve only been to Chicago once so it was good seeing more of the city with Ryan, and he loved coming to California, so it was a perfect fit with our wanderlust,” says Cheng.

Cheng was also training for the San Diego Marathon at the time, and Carlson was kicked out and surprised her at the finish line.

On another occasion, they drove up the California coast and spent the weekend in picturesque Monterey Bay.

“Travel is always exciting, but traveling for a budding relationship is as exciting as it gets,” says Carlson.

“The anticipation of seeing someone you love and only being with them for a limited amount of time before they leave creates a unique energy that doesn’t come from anything else in life.”

Whenever a trip came to an end and they went their separate ways, Cheng Carlson always sent a message in the mail.

“She then sent a card and sprayed her perfume on it,” recalls Carlson.

In the summer of 2006, Carlson accompanied Cheng on a family trip to Maui, Hawaii – the first time he had stayed with relatives for long periods of time.

He quickly bonded with them, realizing that Cheng’s parents had inherited a spirit of adventure and independence not dissimilar to traits he had inherited from his parents.

“Both Shauna’s parents are from Singapore, my mother from the Philippines and then my father, he was the only one in his family who left a farm and went to university,” says Carlson. “All of that shaped us to do something of our own.”

The couple’s first romantic trip abroad was to Paris, with Carlson organizing the weekend as a surprise for Cheng’s birthday.

“She had been to Paris with her family as a child and I was backpacking Paris, staying in hostels and such. So it was nice to have the Paris trip that every young couple dreams of,” he says .

As the relationship got more serious, both Cheng and Carlson began to think beyond their next weekend getaway and into the future.

For both of them, marriage seemed like the next step.

“A good measure of a relationship is how people feel when they’re apart and we miss each other very much. So getting engaged was a way of making a commitment to stay together for life,” says Carlson.

Carlson proposed marriage to Cheng on July 4, 2007 when the couple saw the Independence Day fireworks over the rooftops of Chicago.

“As a first-generation American, I’ve always loved July 4th, so I looked forward to seeing the celebration and having some champagne,” recalls Cheng.

She hadn’t expected the proposal that evening, but she was overjoyed.

The couple married the following year in the historic Merchants Exchange Building in downtown San Francisco.

“[It] survived the 1906 earthquake, so staying strong through anything is a good analogy, “says Cheng.

After the wedding, Cheng and Carlson embarked on a month-long honeymoon around the world that included a return trip to North Korea with Koryo Tours and a stay in Beijing to see the 2008 Summer Olympics.

Family travel

In the years that followed, the couple continued to travel extensively, from Turkmenistan to South Africa.

In August 2014 they welcomed a daughter, Celine, who is now with them on all their adventures.

“We’ve run them across six continents and many parts of the United States,” says Carlson.

Of course, the Covid-19 pandemic ruined many of their plans, but the family enjoyed a trip to French Polynesia in the summer of 2020 and was recently on Maui.

Cheng and Carlson are currently busy planning upcoming adventures – they look forward to showing their daughter more of the world when some lands reopen.

“We are such a family unit with our daughter Celine,” says Carlson. “Becoming a parent is the greatest joy I have ever experienced and couldn’t even begin to explain it to my 25-year-old self, although it can sometimes involve the greatest frustrations.

“Time goes by much faster now with a child, and the best way to slow it down and capture it is to travel together.”