Comment by cfcef | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cfcef | Hacker News Reader

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That's absurd. We are talking about a totalitarian regime which does not care in the least what the West thinks, which carefully ushers tourists who feed it the hard foreign currency it needs through a well-honed propaganda machine (read the blog posts of people doing the tour - they all get bused to the same damn statues and propaganda museums and places) surrounded only by hand-picked minders & chaperones chosen for their loyalty with no contact with the general population, with most tours in a city, Pyongyang, whose populations is also chosen for loyalty to the regime. Try to go 'off script' and you'll see how they treat tourists. Thinking you'll change anyone's mind is as sad and pathetic as the people who go there and drop a Bible behind a toilet and think they have any chance of making a difference.

Real evidence of the world from the other side of the curtain is provided by Chinese & Korean smugglers smuggling in K-dramas and hard drives stuffed full of forbidden foreign media and balloon drops from missionary networks.

You aren't doing jack by going to NK as a tourist. You're propping up one of the most evil regimes with your money - no ifs, ands, or buts. At least when people waste money climbing Mount Everest, they're only endangering themselves.

> We are talking about a totalitarian regime which does not care in the least what the West thinks

You are wrong. First, totalitarian regimes care _a lot_ about what the West thinks. I know it because I grew up in one. They have to be just scary enough, look crazy enough, and display some signs of "progress" enough (like — can anybody in the West organise Mass Games? Look at our highly efficient society!) Modern Russia is, unfortunately, now falling in the same behaviour pattern.

Now, of course, tourists that are allowed to contact foreigners, especially Westerners, are filtered through layers and layers of state security. But it is impossible to do thorough filtering. You can't stop kitchen talks (they attempted to do it in Soviet Union and East Germany, but failed). Despite you always are in well-staged Truman show, it is not perfect, and real world is always showing through cracks, and most importantly, they can see _you_ through cracks.

Back in USSR, in town of Omsk in Siberia where I grew up, a foreign tourist was a legendary event to be talked about for months (which is why it is of uttermost importance to travel beyond capital cities, where life is less staged and opportunities of random encounters are more numerous) — and if he managed to leave some artefacts, like US-made pen or postage stamps, they were caressed as real treasures, the evidence of world beyond the wall.

And, of course, smugglers and missionaries are also doing their jobs (VHSs with Hollywood movies also played their part in the fall of USSR). But not everybody can be a smuggler or missionary. Everybody can be a tourist and do their part, though.

And about the money — as a tourist, you'll hardly help the evil regime with more than $1000-$2000 (do you know how much a rocket costs? This is a small change). North Korean government is not doing it for your money. They want to look good in your eyes, to pretend they are not that evil (see that other comment in this thread — they want more people to think that way).

> I know it because I grew up in one.

You did not grow up in North Korea. North Korea is not the USSR, and it operates differently. I laid out several ways in which it differed in explaining why being a tourist is only harmful.

> Everybody can be a tourist and do their part, though.

You know what part you can do which is even more helpful? Donate to malaria bed nets, or donate to the missionaries and other NGOs.

> And about the money — as a tourist, you'll hardly help the evil regime with more than $1000-$2000 (do you know how much a rocket costs? This is a small change).

And how 'small change' is maybe contacting a regular North Korean and maybe changing their view about something and this someday maybe having an effect?

Every dollar of hard foreign currency counts for a tiny impoverished country under sanctions. The NK economy is small and stagnant and regularly straining under the burden of the rocket & nuclear programs.

The NK regime believes that the tourism is very useful and effective, and it is not endangered in the least by the prospect of toilets with Bibles behind them, or the chance a tourist will see through 'a crack', and I agree with them.

> North Korean government is not doing it for your money.

They are absolutely doing it for the money. Just like they were doing Kaesong for the money, not to 'look good' based on some obsolete analogy to the USSR.

Have you ever had an actual conversation with a live North Korean? Because I had, and I still insist on my point of view. :)

How do you say in one sentence that the regime "does not care in the least what the west thinks," and then in the next sentence that they feed westerners a propaganda machine? Obviously they care very much what the west thinks...

They feed westerners a propaganda machine to fill the time and provide a trip. You need paying customers for the hard cash, but you can hardly let them wander around in the general population. The propaganda is there, might as well use it. And it helps with domestic propaganda too: the spin put on the aid and payments made to NK, and trips to NK by high profile politicians like Bill Clinton, is the East Asian motif of tribute. What better tribute to the glories of the NK regime is showing your people how foreigners come from around the world to visit the shrines of the Kims?

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