I've been lucky enough to have visited NK as well and unsurprisingly everything I read lined up perfectly with my own experience. Most likely tourists from all over the world are always shown the stock tour. Our guides were incredibly insistent that we see everything, too -- that means no suggestions for other activities and definitely no wandering off.
One of my most memorable take-aways was also a visit to a school that we were told was one of the best in the country. We were taken to a room where students had formed groups around several desks, all performing different tasks (one desk had microscopes, the other a pc, yet others had more contraptions, probably for demonstrating mechanical processes). As was mentioned in the story, they weren't actually doing anything, they were just sitting there looking at the machinery in front of them and trying to look like they were about to discover something huge. They must've been the best actors in the school, and probably were very proud of themselves to have been chosen to present to such a prominent audience.
Friends of mine used to work in a building that also contained the help desk for external customers. One day when a customer delegation was visiting the help desk, they were all brought in and told to sit at the empty desks and pretend to take calls.
When I went our tour guides were somewhat lenient. They were happy to take us to the Pyongyang Pizzeria when we asked, but insisted that the Opera would "not be fun for us."
Another group we met said their guides would fulfill almost any request, so go figure.
Exactly. I "ranted" about it in response to the article.
Basically I'm not sure the author understood she realized the "stock tour" and that it was all fake and propaganda.
Even the one school people get to visit is fake: the students are actors as you're saying. They take the few genius kids they have and force them to perform the exact same music in front of nearly every delegation that gets there.
Once I realized that every single "official" trip there tells the exact same story, my girlfriend and I decided not to go.
The drones and spy cameras tell a whole different story than the communist party's propaganda of course.
It's really scary what communism did to North Korea...
This was an interesting read and very much in line with other travelers' reports. However, I do wonder about this part:
>Go to North Korea if you can. It is very, very strange.
Is it really a good idea to go if you don't have a particular reason (such as this diplomatic trip)? I recall that most human rights groups recommended that tourists not visit Burma until recently so as not to support the regime. For someone like me who would only be going to satisfy my own curiosity, would I not simply be supporting the North Korean regime? I would be giving them money and possibly helping them in their propaganda efforts (see, look, at this American who has come to visit our great country!). I can't think of any ways in which my visit would be good or helpful.
I went to Burma for two reasons. First, the country isolated from the rest of the world can be an eye-opening experience. If you are, say, North American, and all you go is Western Europe you will never quite learn to appreciate what you have. To me the biggest surprise was how warm, cheerful and hospitable Burmese people are, in a country where poverty is rampant, infrastructure is almost non-existent and freethinking is oppressed.
And the second reason is that you can try to direct your money more to the people than government by staying and eating in small family establishments rather than pricy hotels that are almost always are controlled by the government.
On the other hand, isolating an entire people in order to "let the ship sink" sooner and thereby allegedly help them (cf. half-century-old embargo on Cuba) doesn't seem morally sound either. These are tricky issues indeed.
The cost of a visa and a stay in North Korea is so low, and so few people visit each week that it wouldn't surprise me to learn that they make a loss on each visitor. It must cost them a lot to keep the hotel with 20 guests running, each visit site staffed, the 100,000 performers at the main stadium, the subway line etc. for 20-30 visitors a week. It is like a really large theme park with very few customers.
My family and I went to North Korea purely for curiosity's sake. Although we didn't like the giving-money-to-a-terrible-dictatorship aspect, the trip really changed our perceptions of the country and was by far the most interesting trip I had taken.
your contribution to the regime would be marginal at most - so why bother? shedding some light on this weird country is much more important in my opinion.
Not trying to hijack this thread, but I recently spent almost two weeks in the DPRK, and it was one of the most interesting and fascinating trips I ever had.
Is anyone else confused by the layout of the article? In Chrome on a large monitor(27"@2560x1440) it's kind of difficult to intuit the order of reading.
Yes, very disorienting. I zig-zagged my way down the page, unsure of where to focus next. Kind of like the Facebook timeline, but without the little ticks to indicate where each section fit in the order.
I was actually surprised to see Sophie write up her experiences in NK. I'm sure that, being part of diplomatic, friendship mission she had to pick a choose her words and stories, as her write up will be associated with the mission and members to some extent.
I have never been to NK, perhaps one day I will have the opportunity. I'm sure such a trip would challenge a lot of my priors about what is normal and not normal and help me to understand more about myself and my own cultural attitudes. For me that is the ultimate point of travel.
As an example, I am an American, but I have not lived in the United States for a long time. And each time I go back I find my own country both intensely familiar / strange and both comfortable / uncomfortable at the same time. I remember a couple years ago going back in Dec 2008. Obama had just been elected president and it was the oddest feeling, as I walked about the Chicago airport waiting for my delayed plane to Boston, to see Obama's face on T-shirts, to see Obama's face on Time (or was it Newsweek?), to see Obama's wife on the cover of the ladies magazines. I suppose all the Obama sign-age didn't seem at all strange to the natives but then again I suppose, pictures of the Great Leader don't seem out of place to the natives in NK either.
I could tell you more stories about the strangeness of seeing flags everywhere months after 9-11 or the horror of the rhetoric that is casually accepted by the audiences during national conventions. But what I am trying to get at is that political and nationalistic symbols exist in every country and the trick is not to do the easy work and point out its baseness or ridicule it when we see it some place else. The trick is is to see what Jung would call our own "shadow"; do the hard work; see where we have let our own institutions manipulate our thoughts and feelings. When we can do that then one has had a successful trip.
It's a strange question, almost science fiction, "What's it like to be in a country that is entirely brainwashed?" It's also a philosophical and ethical question, "Are we morally required to intervene"?
The most interesting piece of the article was noting that computer science students have access to our internet, beyond their closed off version. That means A TON. Their minds won't be closed forever. The idealist says, "They won't be closed forever" and there is a realization there. I think it could take longer than people think - their poverty will be a large cause. What will hurt more is the well educated opening their minds.
It was a very well written article. And the Eric Schmidt political cartoon was great on many levels.
(And yes, every website should be readable on Chrome. It's no longer a one-off browser)
It's from 2002, so things were quite different back then, but the dialogue the traveler gets into with his guide is very interesting!
The next room contained more gifts from the South, including a Hyundai Grandeur donated by the former chairman of Hyundai (whose family is originally from the North). Mr. Huk asked me if I had ever seen one of these cars during my time in the South. When I said, "sure, my neighbor has one just like it," he gave me another one of his 'you have to be lying' looks. How could such a great gift, a gift implying so much respect, belong to some normal person like my neighbor? This was obviously a car reserved for the elite, capitalist oppressors, not some common car for the masses. When I told him I wished the chairman had given away a lot more so there'd be less traffic in the South he got fed up with my obvious lies, gave me a disgusted look and moved on to talk to someone else.
"Ordinary North Koreans live in a near-total information bubble, without any true frame of reference. "
I always wondered if the North Koreans interviewed really have no idea what is going on or just acting that way out of fear. I highly recommend watching the Vice guide to North Korea to understand what I am talking about.
It is equally confounding on the desktop. But ultimately, I think it was a bad template choice by the author rather than any particular bug in Google Sites. (Two-column with pictures just doesn't work.)
I have a hard time with the light-hearted tone of reports such as this. In one sense the NK propaganda really is comically weird. But in another sense, if you've read 1984 it's all too grimly familiar.
I try to refrain from making emotional political statements on this site but I cannot resist.
> Go to North Korea if you can. It is very, very strange.
This is essentially advocating a visit to a huge concentration camp which is still in operation. The abuses that go on in this country are beyond belief. This whole article brings about a feeling of sickness in me.
It seems like a nice read, but the weird layout distracted me and prevented me from going past the first 3 or 4 paragraphs: I got lost in a mix of two vs one column paragraphs. I tried different browsers with no luck.
In any case, I have planned to go to North Korea at some point :)
Here is a set of articles from 2006 written by the founder of one of the leading design studios in Russia - artlebedev.ru. The read is very interesting, but unfortunately only available in Russian.
This Flickr photostream by "Moravius," who is some sort of humanitarian aid worker in NK. There are lots of photos from outside Pyongyang, which I rarely see elsewhere on the web: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kernbeisser/sets/
There's a great documentary on Dresnok called "Crossing The Line." His Twitter account is one of the weirdest internet artifacts I've discovered: he only posts every 2-3 months, and the first account he followed was a Kim Jong-il parody.
The documentary "A State of Mind" is terrifically disturbing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_State_of_Mind). Follow two participants in North Korea's Mass Games as they prepare to put on a show for the Dear Leader. Filled with "only in NK moments."
An interesting one is The Red Chapel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Red_Chapel where two Korean-born Danish-adopted guys travel to North Korea. Because they are of Korean-ethnicity but don't speak Korean or know much about Korea, they get interesting responses from their handlers. One of them is also in a wheelchair and since North Korea allegedly kills all handicapped infants, it leads to some very tense situations.
A few years ago I came across this highly disturbing testimony from a former prisoner. There are no pictures, and no jokes. It gives a glimpse at the dark side of North Korea, and of humanity. It is fucked up and will upset you, so consider yourself warned.
In the 'other media' category I can highly recommend 'Pyongyang: A Journey In North Korea' by Guy Delisle[1] which is a graphic novel detailing his few months working in North Korea for a more serious look and into the lives of those who actually live/have lived in North Korea is 'Nothing to Envy' by Barbara Demick[2] which is a detailed, if not somewhat harrowing insight.
There's a great writeup on reddit about "What North Koreans were told about World War II" [1] with a list of books and couple other media buried in the thread.
What mostly strikes me about this post is how condescending she is about the people there. It's not only about the regime, but here post is basically belittling for the people there.
A gew gems of the post:
"How that squares with official NK agitprop that Americans are super-evil imperialist bastards is beyond me. "
Like every Korean over there wants to eat Americans for breakfast, sigh. Yes, their official pollicy is very anti-American, but has it every stroke her mind that they are also people? And that they can make the distinction between "the American people" and their government. Just as much as I hope that she can make a difference between a person and their leaders.
"When we asked how old Un had turned (29? 30?), we were told that "Koreans keep track of age differently" than we do. Alright, then."
This one kinda says everything about the author.
"No, silly North Koreans, you're under international bank sanctions."
All in all, whatever she writes down is an accurate observation, but I would have wanted the tone to be much different. No I mostly read this as a rant from someone who believes is superior to them. I would have liked it more if it was written from a more neutral point of view. But hey, it's the internet, ranting is what has to be done :-)
For what it is worth, I've been there a bit over a year ago and what she has seen (besides the official visits) is more or less the same as I have seen. So yes it is all fake of course. But I would definitely visit it again to see other parts of the country.
Every time I read about North Korea, part of me keeps wondering:
How many international treaties would I break if I were to sneak in some surveillance tech in there? Just a small robot that looks like mouse and shoots photos, or a small UAV deployed on the South Korean side of the border? Just to get out to the world some photos of how real NK looks like. I wonder what kind of consequences would such an attempt have and why no one seemed to have tried so far.
If you tried flying a UAV in to North Korea I would expect the US and South Korean forces stationed on the border to be very upset. I wouldn't be surprised if they shot your drone down as a precaution.
[+] [-] elisehein|13 years ago|reply
One of my most memorable take-aways was also a visit to a school that we were told was one of the best in the country. We were taken to a room where students had formed groups around several desks, all performing different tasks (one desk had microscopes, the other a pc, yet others had more contraptions, probably for demonstrating mechanical processes). As was mentioned in the story, they weren't actually doing anything, they were just sitting there looking at the machinery in front of them and trying to look like they were about to discover something huge. They must've been the best actors in the school, and probably were very proud of themselves to have been chosen to present to such a prominent audience.
[+] [-] caf|13 years ago|reply
Their headsets weren't even plugged in.
[+] [-] RaphiePS|13 years ago|reply
Another group we met said their guides would fulfill almost any request, so go figure.
[+] [-] martinced|13 years ago|reply
Basically I'm not sure the author understood she realized the "stock tour" and that it was all fake and propaganda.
Even the one school people get to visit is fake: the students are actors as you're saying. They take the few genius kids they have and force them to perform the exact same music in front of nearly every delegation that gets there.
Once I realized that every single "official" trip there tells the exact same story, my girlfriend and I decided not to go.
The drones and spy cameras tell a whole different story than the communist party's propaganda of course.
It's really scary what communism did to North Korea...
[+] [-] travisp|13 years ago|reply
>Go to North Korea if you can. It is very, very strange.
Is it really a good idea to go if you don't have a particular reason (such as this diplomatic trip)? I recall that most human rights groups recommended that tourists not visit Burma until recently so as not to support the regime. For someone like me who would only be going to satisfy my own curiosity, would I not simply be supporting the North Korean regime? I would be giving them money and possibly helping them in their propaganda efforts (see, look, at this American who has come to visit our great country!). I can't think of any ways in which my visit would be good or helpful.
[+] [-] mynegation|13 years ago|reply
And the second reason is that you can try to direct your money more to the people than government by staying and eating in small family establishments rather than pricy hotels that are almost always are controlled by the government.
[+] [-] ezequiel-garzon|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nikcub|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] RaphiePS|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jcfrei|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sandis|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kapsel|13 years ago|reply
I took about 5000 photos, and uploaded about 500 of them to my Facebook profile. There's descriptions to many of them. If you're interested, check them out here: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151040723772055....
And feel free to ask any questions. I'll recommend visiting their country if you get the chance.
[+] [-] knowaveragejoe|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] philwebster|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] user24|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cocoflunchy|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nhebb|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 89vision|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shocks|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fatbird|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rince|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] marco_salvatori|13 years ago|reply
As an example, I am an American, but I have not lived in the United States for a long time. And each time I go back I find my own country both intensely familiar / strange and both comfortable / uncomfortable at the same time. I remember a couple years ago going back in Dec 2008. Obama had just been elected president and it was the oddest feeling, as I walked about the Chicago airport waiting for my delayed plane to Boston, to see Obama's face on T-shirts, to see Obama's face on Time (or was it Newsweek?), to see Obama's wife on the cover of the ladies magazines. I suppose all the Obama sign-age didn't seem at all strange to the natives but then again I suppose, pictures of the Great Leader don't seem out of place to the natives in NK either.
I could tell you more stories about the strangeness of seeing flags everywhere months after 9-11 or the horror of the rhetoric that is casually accepted by the audiences during national conventions. But what I am trying to get at is that political and nationalistic symbols exist in every country and the trick is not to do the easy work and point out its baseness or ridicule it when we see it some place else. The trick is is to see what Jung would call our own "shadow"; do the hard work; see where we have let our own institutions manipulate our thoughts and feelings. When we can do that then one has had a successful trip.
[+] [-] mathattack|13 years ago|reply
It's a strange question, almost science fiction, "What's it like to be in a country that is entirely brainwashed?" It's also a philosophical and ethical question, "Are we morally required to intervene"?
The most interesting piece of the article was noting that computer science students have access to our internet, beyond their closed off version. That means A TON. Their minds won't be closed forever. The idealist says, "They won't be closed forever" and there is a realization there. I think it could take longer than people think - their poverty will be a large cause. What will hurt more is the well educated opening their minds.
It was a very well written article. And the Eric Schmidt political cartoon was great on many levels.
(And yes, every website should be readable on Chrome. It's no longer a one-off browser)
[+] [-] refurb|13 years ago|reply
It's from 2002, so things were quite different back then, but the dialogue the traveler gets into with his guide is very interesting!
The next room contained more gifts from the South, including a Hyundai Grandeur donated by the former chairman of Hyundai (whose family is originally from the North). Mr. Huk asked me if I had ever seen one of these cars during my time in the South. When I said, "sure, my neighbor has one just like it," he gave me another one of his 'you have to be lying' looks. How could such a great gift, a gift implying so much respect, belong to some normal person like my neighbor? This was obviously a car reserved for the elite, capitalist oppressors, not some common car for the masses. When I told him I wished the chairman had given away a lot more so there'd be less traffic in the South he got fed up with my obvious lies, gave me a disgusted look and moved on to talk to someone else.
[+] [-] edwinnathaniel|13 years ago|reply
You can check out some of the video clips of their trip:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFJJSx3Vr0c (some intro..)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nr3lt34bnWQ (elementary school)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRZvwaObOXc (school)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Moq6ZkKZJm0 (Arirang Mass Games)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tMoAoFy3JQ (War Museum)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqA7pNN2r9k (Kim Il Sung Burial)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbUxLAj_k18 (trip somewhere)
[+] [-] ladzoppelin|13 years ago|reply
I always wondered if the North Koreans interviewed really have no idea what is going on or just acting that way out of fear. I highly recommend watching the Vice guide to North Korea to understand what I am talking about.
[+] [-] Spazze|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jrockway|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mikeevans|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sunwooz|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] penrod|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jrogers65|13 years ago|reply
> Go to North Korea if you can. It is very, very strange.
This is essentially advocating a visit to a huge concentration camp which is still in operation. The abuses that go on in this country are beyond belief. This whole article brings about a feeling of sickness in me.
[+] [-] funkaster|13 years ago|reply
In any case, I have planned to go to North Korea at some point :)
[+] [-] sakopov|13 years ago|reply
Part 1 (general): http://www.tema.ru/travel/north-korea-1/ Part 2 (military) : http://www.tema.ru/travel/north-korea-2/ Part 3 (culture): http://www.tema.ru/travel/north-korea-3/ Part 4 (Roads & transport): http://www.tema.ru/travel/north-korea-3/
[+] [-] endianswap|13 years ago|reply
Edit: thanks all :)
[+] [-] mshafrir|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ecmendenhall|13 years ago|reply
This Flickr photostream by "Moravius," who is some sort of humanitarian aid worker in NK. There are lots of photos from outside Pyongyang, which I rarely see elsewhere on the web: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kernbeisser/sets/
The Twitter account of James Dresnok, the last living US defector to North Korea: https://twitter.com/JamesDresnok
There's a great documentary on Dresnok called "Crossing The Line." His Twitter account is one of the weirdest internet artifacts I've discovered: he only posts every 2-3 months, and the first account he followed was a Kim Jong-il parody.
[+] [-] to3m|13 years ago|reply
`North Korean Economy Watch', often has something of interest - http://www.nkeconwatch.com (also has a comprehensive-looking page of links)
[+] [-] Umalu|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] namastasyai|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jccalhoun|13 years ago|reply
An interesting one is The Red Chapel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Red_Chapel where two Korean-born Danish-adopted guys travel to North Korea. Because they are of Korean-ethnicity but don't speak Korean or know much about Korea, they get interesting responses from their handlers. One of them is also in a wheelchair and since North Korea allegedly kills all handicapped infants, it leads to some very tense situations.
[+] [-] oftenwrong|13 years ago|reply
http://www.judiciary.senate.gov/hearings/testimony.cfm?id=4f...
[+] [-] bluepaper|13 years ago|reply
[1] http://www.amazon.co.uk/Pyongyang-A-Journey-North-Korea/dp/0... [2] http://www.amazon.co.uk/Nothing-Envy-Lives-North-Korea/dp/18...
[+] [-] joshz|13 years ago|reply
[1] http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/15lw49/histor...
[+] [-] justincormack|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stdbrouw|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jerser|13 years ago|reply
A gew gems of the post:
"How that squares with official NK agitprop that Americans are super-evil imperialist bastards is beyond me. " Like every Korean over there wants to eat Americans for breakfast, sigh. Yes, their official pollicy is very anti-American, but has it every stroke her mind that they are also people? And that they can make the distinction between "the American people" and their government. Just as much as I hope that she can make a difference between a person and their leaders.
"When we asked how old Un had turned (29? 30?), we were told that "Koreans keep track of age differently" than we do. Alright, then." This one kinda says everything about the author.
"No, silly North Koreans, you're under international bank sanctions."
All in all, whatever she writes down is an accurate observation, but I would have wanted the tone to be much different. No I mostly read this as a rant from someone who believes is superior to them. I would have liked it more if it was written from a more neutral point of view. But hey, it's the internet, ranting is what has to be done :-)
For what it is worth, I've been there a bit over a year ago and what she has seen (besides the official visits) is more or less the same as I have seen. So yes it is all fake of course. But I would definitely visit it again to see other parts of the country.
[+] [-] TeMPOraL|13 years ago|reply
How many international treaties would I break if I were to sneak in some surveillance tech in there? Just a small robot that looks like mouse and shoots photos, or a small UAV deployed on the South Korean side of the border? Just to get out to the world some photos of how real NK looks like. I wonder what kind of consequences would such an attempt have and why no one seemed to have tried so far.
[+] [-] djhworld|13 years ago|reply
You might set off a diplomatic incident.
[+] [-] lotu|13 years ago|reply