Hacker News Reader

Comment by gwbas1c | Hacker News Reader

Years ago, I was lucky enough to listen to a talk from an American who got to be a tourist in North Korea. Ever since then I've been fascinated with stories like this.

North Korea is on my bucket list, but hopefully after the state loosens up.

View on HN

Or, you can visit South Korea today, and if you want to go off the beaten path, leave Seoul. The east coast is a beautiful and fascinating place. Go to Gangwon, ride a cable car up Seoraksan, eat the best seafood of your life.

Or you could visit the world’s largest thermometer, float on the LSU lazy river. Go to Kerala and drink some delicious chai, watch the Rockies play a game in the Mile High Stadium. There is a whole world of things that are entirely unlike North Korea

It's seeing aspects of a fundamentally different form of government that's the appeal. If it was just seeing "Korean" culture, I'd have gone to South Korea years ago.

(BTW, a good friend of mine told me he's been skiing in view of the DMZ, and they just laugh at the NK guards watching them ski with binoculars.)

I'd counter that the South is an interesting place in its own right. Skipping it because it's too much like Western countries is to miss out on all the fascinating ways it isn't.

Furthermore, I'd question the value of finding out for yourself what life is like under a famine-stricken, xenophobic, totalitarian, hereditary absolute monarchy. What is it you're hoping to get out of an experience like that?

You're trying to adjudicate why someone thinks something is interesting when you do not by attempting to formulate a rational reason for why their interest is wrong. A difficult challenge.

I don't understand why you're trying to push me to visit a country I have no interest in visiting. (There's plenty of places I'd rather visit before South Korea.)

In the case of North Korea: It's difficult to explain unless you're in a listening mode, but I'll try:

First: I would never go under the current government. Full stop. I won't go somewhere where I don't feel safe.

Second: I don't endorse their government in any way.

For me, the best analogy would be traveling to East Germany in the early 1990s after the fall of communism. IE, visit the Berlin Wall, and maybe listen to some locals tell their story.

So, assuming North Korea's government changes in my lifetime, I'd love to visit and "see it" before it gets torn down.

One of the things I like hearing is how people work around constraints and obstacles. These are the kinds of stories I'm interested in.

North Korea can take you with whatever justification they feel like and return you as a vegetable.

I know the mass games look cool and people like to go to weird places, please avoid North Korea

> North Korea can take you with whatever justification they feel like and return you as a vegetable.

That’s most/all countries (or their embassies) you visit, no?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Jamal_Khash...

I’m sure some countries are more willing to treat guests to the vegetable treatment than others.

A big political enemy of the saudi family that been a pain in their ass (rightly so since they are an evil dictatorship) vs random student that just took a poster as a souvernir.

Not the same thing. Anyone can be killed in North Korea. 99,99999999999% of people are not on the saudi familys enemy list.

> random student that just took a poster as a souvernir.

Let's not mince words here, he stole government property in a country with some of the harshest laws on earth.

Did he deserve to die for it? No, but it was an incredibly stupid thing to do.

One might even argue that the stupidity began when he decided to visit NK.

His fellow travelers say this was impossible, the “recording” was fake, and the timestamps are at a time when he wasn’t even in the hotel. Why would you assume n. Korea is being honest here?

I would not say that I would assume that North Korea is being honest but what makes you think that his fellow travelers are being honest either?

His fellow travelers were from many different countries

yeah for sure, because otherwise NK has fantastic relations with USA!

Nice victim blaming.

It's no more victim blaming than being honest about what happens to people who visit Singapore with pot.

I don't think it really makes sense to talk about "laws" for places like North Korea, as it's not a rule of law state.

Perhaps, but Saudi Arabia is pretty close to North Korea as far as my desire to ever visit the place. Both of them are extremely unappealing.

> assassination by western trade partner VS assassination by isolated country

Not the same thing!!!

Is an airplane the same thing as a car? After all, they both have wheels.

Other countries have a larger denominator to reduce the proportion of visits vs arbitrary detention and torture.

I feel a lot better about my chances in pretty much any other country than NK.

I am sorry but if you travel somewhere like Iran or North Korea you are doing so explicitly against the advice of most governments. Every single person visiting these places is told that they need to keep their shit together, otherwise the consequences could be dire for them or for those they come into contact with.

Iran doesn't chill my blood in the same way imagining being in North Korea does. I have no desire to go there. I wouldn't go if offered. It still strikes me as a more or less rational country that stridently disagrees with my own country's politics (and my own), not a boot stamping on a human face — forever.

Honestly I’d still like to visit both (particularly Iran) and I know people who have. But there is definitely advice you need to heed in both places (tbh in all places…)

I've been to both and can report a positive experience. The DPRK trip was fascinating. The thing I remember most about Iran is how friendly everyone was to us.

If you've been to South Korea (and I haven't, only have a bunch of friends who have), was there anything fascinating about North Korea that you couldn't have gotten from South Korea and that didn't hinge on how messed up North Korea is? Genuinely curious.

> was there anything fascinating about North Korea that you couldn't have gotten from South Korea

yes, a different perspective.

EDIT/ADD:

Witness one of the world’s most secretive states, firsthand experience of a communist regime, dynastic leadership, and a pervasive cult of personality.

If you’d like to see a pervasive cult of personality in South Korea, check out the Unification Church.

Iran is a bucket list country for me. The politics are a disaster, obviously, but it's an amazing, deep culture. The government of Iran is a disaster, but it's a real, functioning country, in ways North Korea isn't.

Ironically, Iran is probably much more dangerous than North Korea is (not least because you apparently basically can't do anything in North Korea), at least for an American. But like, if you want Korean culture, fly to Seoul and rent a car. I don't know how you get Iran's culture without actually going there.

I met plenty of Americans in both Iran and North Korea. American tourists often receive extra interest and admiration from the locals, who express a genuine warmth and fascination towards them.

Oh, 100% my understanding as well! Sorry, I didn't mean to suggest that ordinary people in like Tehran were hostile to Americans, but I can see how it came across that way.

Add Afghanistan to that list. Some Austrian far-right dumbass went there to make a YouTube video to claim Afghanistan were safe (obviously to justify deporting refugees there) - and lo behold, he got arrested by the Taliban on espionage charges and ultimately released after 9 extensive months of negotiations [1].

[1] https://www.zdf.de/nachrichten/politik/ausland/oesterreich-r...

Na. To hell with North Korea completely.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Warmbier

Ah yes, we should hate a totalitarian state not for the oppression they subject their people to but instead because that oppression was turned on a young American who was quite possibly trying to steal something.

It's kind of a default evil. Should I really need to spell that out too?

Same. I want to also visit Iran in the next few years. I fully expect that 90% of what I think I know about these countries is CIA propaganda.

I’m not sure that’s true based on Persians I know that live in the USA and are extremely angry about what happened to the country. I love looking at their old photos of Iran before it was consumed by a theocracy. They look like this.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-47032829

Yes, I’m aware. But that can’t be what most of the population in Iran thinks, since some of the Persians I know in the US support a full scale war and regime change in Iran, while acknowledging that hundreds of thousands of their country people would die as a result and chance of success is near zero. More disturbingly they also seem to suggest that people outside Tehran and other large cities should have no say in how Iran is run, and when I say there’s no way they’ll allow that, there’s a blank stare. Also BBC is not a reliable source for information about either country. It’s quite literally government affiliated media.

I doubt what I hear about North Korea is propaganda. The problems in their government are very obvious without any need for propaganda: The "propaganda" is just oversimplifying a topic that doesn't fit nicely into soundbites.

I don’t doubt it at all. I’ve been to a couple of countries the US propagandizes heavily against (China and Russia) and what you hear about them in the US is almost entirely horseshit. My expectation is NK and Iran will be similar.

Michael Malice?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com