I can't help but share some videos from my second trip there -- http://joshuaspodek.com/summary-of-north-korea-videos. Especially the ones singing with North Koreans in Kim Il Sung Square, playing Frisbee with kids, and all-around reinforcing that the people there are the same as people everywhere, just in different environments.
Did you go with Koryo Tours? I went the summer before last and it was undoubtedly the most interesting trip I've ever taken. It definitely humanized the people who were previously thought of, just a little bit, as "the enemy." Waitresses giggling while singing karaoke, rowdy schoolboys asking for a picture, soldiers laughing as we smashed into them on the Funfair bumper cars, that sort of thing.
One thing we were surprised by was the openness of our guide. She asked us what our country thought of North Korea, and wanted to hear all about our elections and political system.
At first we thought it was genuine curiosity, but after a while and some pretty dubious claims (come look at this average farmworker's house! everyone in North Korea has a computer!), we suspected that it was designed to "butter us up."
That, I think, was my only real problem with the trip. A lot of what I saw surprised and impressed me (boy, could those children play their instruments!), but I never knew if it was all a ruse for the tourists.
Are you serious? Of course it is a ruse for the tourists- Koryo Tours is not the only operator allowed to run trips there for no reason.
What you saw was just a show run by the North Korean government to further their own agenda. The people that you saw are the people that Koryo Tours (and by extension the government) wants you to see.
Make no mistake, the vast majority of North Korea is a giant interment camp. This is more like what you would see if you were to go off the shiny beaten track that Koryo tours makes you follow:
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=1dd_1364601643
1) the Nazi's set up a "public friendly" concentration camp in the Czech Republic, Theresienstadt (1), which they took officials from the Red Cross to and used in media reports sent to the West which demonstrated the "rich Jewish cultural life." of their camps.
2) Crazy Eddie, an electronics store in the early 1980's which turned out to be a massive investor fraud, (2) had a warehouse filled with boxes so he could have an audit, a necessity to go public - the first row of boxes were filled with merchandise, the rest of the boxes were empty.
TL;DR - Humans are trusting people, show them something, and tell them "everything else is just like this thing", and most people will believe you at your word.
I'm from France, have lived in half a dozen countries and visited about 4 times that amount, currently live in Oakland and work in SF, and I'm having a hard time believing that I just read someone on HN say that living conditions for some people are worse in SF/Oakland than North Korea :)
I've recently been strangely interested in DPRK. I watched as many youtube videos as I could find and you're right nearly every tour is the same.
If North Korea interests you, I highly recommend the documentary: Camp 14: Total Control Zone. You can find it on Netflix and Youtube. In short, it's about a man born in a labor camp with no exposure to the outside world who managed to escape to China and later South Korea.
Koryo Tours is not the only operator allowed to run trips there for no reason.
Are all the other tour companies fake? They must have some seriously dedicated Western actors to spend their lives pretending they went on a tour with one of those fake companies.
When were you there? I was there in April 2012 and recall both the funfair in Pyongyang and the claim that every family would have a computer (although I recall it being future tense, rather than present).
HN contains the most people I've ever found who've been to the DPRK. Must be something in the water :)
August 2012, so a little while after you. For all I know, the guide did mean the future (she was a little hard to understand -- our second guide barely spoke English at all! We assumed he was the "minder.")
I think it'd be really interesting to compare notes about what happened on the tours. Of course the formal itinerary was probably very similar, but I wonder if comparing some of the "random" occurrences might reveal something?
For example, while we were touring a park, we happened upon a group of men having a happy little barbecue and singing. It's possible this was totally genuine, but for all I know it was a setup.
Oh yes, big park up on a hill. I was there during a four-day national holiday, and the whole place was heaving with people having barbecues and so forth.
Completely agreed- the people there (just like the people in Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.) are the same as the people everywhere (albeit exploited and starving).
The DPRK government, however, is not too far off from how our media describes it.
I will say that I'm not entirely comfortable with the volume of suggestions of mental illness as a way to discredit the DPRK leadership. I'm not suggesting that they're not in the wrong, but it really, really rubs me the wrong way, for the same way that suggesting the citizens of the DPRK are all branwashed monsters.
Mmh, perhaps we were thinking of different "mainstream media". "Mental illness" is not the term I would use to describe DPRK leadership, just like I wouldn't use it to describe the 3rd reich's, or Mugabe's. I don't even care about justifying it- the facts speak for themselves about what they do, and it's certainly criminal.
As for the people, I absolutely do not believe they are brainwashed monsters- merely that they do not have a choice, and get by as they can. For the ones in the higher levels (i.e. living in Pyongyang), it means doing whatever they can to stay in the favors of those in power and not get executed (remember what happened to the soccer coach when they got disqualified during the world cup?). For the vast majority of the rest, living in the almost-exclusively rural North Korean countryside, it means starving to death and not getting killed by the local military.
I'm speaking of the tendacy to say "Oh man those crazy North Koreans, what wacky thing are they doing today?" The portrayal is one of total irrationality, with no way to figure out what the underlying motivations are.
Can you cite somewhere the mainstream media actually suggests the citizens of the DPRK are brainwashed monsters? I've never seen anything close to that.
> Briefly, I know of no popular tourist destination where tourism hasn’t strongly affected the indigenous culture. I believe touring North Korea will increase its trade with the rest of the world and open it up.
> Many people have tried many solutions, including aid, sanctions, diplomacy, and military action. None have decreased the regime’s hold. Doing nothing sustains it as well. If you have a better plan, please let me know.
The regime has shown itself incredibly stable over several generations. I don't see how tourism makes it more stable. Lack of tourism doesn't hurt them. For anyone who wants to change it, what do they propose that hasn't been tried unsuccessfully repeatedly?
Does the trip really begin with bowing to a statue of Kim Il Sung? I don't have any moral problems with visiting the DPRK, but I've always harbored doubt that I could bring myself to do that one thing. Otherwise it looks like a fascinating tour.
What level of Korean would you say someone (I'm Canadian) needs to be able to get by? I understand there is always a tour guide, who is a government official. But I just want to know if some Korean is recommended. Thank you.
North Koreans speak a pretty different dialect of Korean than South. Some words are the same, grammar is a little different, a lot of modern words are completely different. As such you wouldn't be expected to know any Korean at all, and even if you knew some, you probably wouldn't be able to use it. At best they would struggle to understand you, at worst they'd be offended and kick you off the tour ;)
I can't help but share some videos from my second trip there -- http://joshuaspodek.com/summary-of-north-korea-videos. Especially the ones singing with North Koreans in Kim Il Sung Square, playing Frisbee with kids, and all-around reinforcing that the people there are the same as people everywhere, just in different environments.