Visiting a country with concentration camps is morally reprehensible. His visit helps to finance and prop up the deplorable North Korean regime.
But it's not so black and white - I totally understand your position. But if people don't visit no one will really understand how bad it is.
There is no good answer.
I feel so bad for them, I want to do something. War even. I have no ability to. And in any case I don't know if war is even a good idea or not.
But the truth is I only think about it when I see photos like this, then I move on and continue my regular day. These photos need to be constant to have people remember all the time.
It's a mixed bag. That morally reprehensible money raises awareness of exactly what's going on, and just how abused their citizens are.
One wonders if, ever there were a just war, it wouldn't be to free the North Koreans.
the entire population of north korea is ~24m. while i have no doubts that the nork prison camps are hideously inhumane, there's no way they approach the extermination camps in eastern europe of ww2
European camps lasted, what, maybe 6 years total? They were used to commit attempted genocide. They were hell on earth but those camps are done.
North Korean camps have been around 40 years? They're used to "re-educate wrongdoers". They are a continuing hell on earth that the world allows to continue (unfortunately, due to realpolitik).
Each is hell, but each is it's own kind of hell.
The more contact the people can have with outsiders, the better, even if it provides some tiny amount of financial support for the regime.
Finally, economic sanctions don't work very well - as demonstrated by Cuba, Russia and North Korea. They hurt the people more than the regime.
This thread is great for watching college educated Americans pontificate with great moral indignation about things they know nothing about (but think they know everything about).
One could argue that it is wrong to visit the U.S. and I have advocated that people refrain from visiting the U.S. for similar reasons that I advocate that people not visit North Korea. However, the crimes of North Korea seem to be at quite a different level than the U.S.
That's debatable. It's all a matter of perspective and the difference here is that the people of NK are the ones that suffer mostly from the crimes of NK whereas the people in the US are definitely not the ones paying for the crimes perpetrated by the US.
This seems to be a recurring thing for communist nations (in so far as they are really communist, but that's another matter entirely), they are very hard on their population.