North Korea 2013 – A travel journal | Hacker News Reader

North Korea 2013 – A travel journal

dominik-schwarz.net

162 pointspersonlurking82 comments

Hacker News loves North Korea!

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.

> all-around reinforcing that the people there are the same as people everywhere

This is the thing that's important to remember, and is incredibly difficult with the way our media portrays the DPRK.

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.

Maybe I just read too much Foucault. ;)

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.

The news generally talks about the leadership, not the people.

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

Reminds me 2 stories:

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.

(1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theresienstadt_concentration_ca...

(2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crazy_Eddie

In fairness to Crazy Eddie, they're prices were INSANE!

Wow. Dennis Rodman needs to see that.

That guy is brain dead. He is embarassing to watch or listen to anymore, unfortunately.

While I don't necessarily doubt the claims of widespread poverty and famine, propaganda can go both ways.

A 37 second video clip such as that could have been shot in many places in the world, could be entirely fake, etc...

I suspect reports like this are closer to reality: http://www.nknews.org/2013/01/life-on-the-north-korean-farm/

Of course, of course.

This paragraph: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korean_famine#Current_st...

+ the articles linked in it are interesting sources.

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.

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.

Hey buddy, where are you from? I'm asking because I see people in much worse condition in the streets of San Francisco and Oakland every day.

In addition; North Korea is not suffering from only their decisions. They and us suffer from the cold war.

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'm also having hard time to believe you have no idea about the starving people in neighbourhoods like tenderloin.

And; http://www.magnumphotos.com/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult&ALID=2K1...

See the heroin addicted family photo.

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.

What do you think about the fact that by traveling to North Korea you're lining the pockets of regime supporters?

He wrote a blog post about that: http://joshuaspodek.com/ethics-visiting-north-korea

I'd have a lot more respect for his conclusion if he didn't take such pains to relativise and intellectualise it.

He went because he wanted to go and nothing is ever without consequences, anyway.

Thanks for posting that link.

I'll also add something I put here in my two posts on common questions I got about North Korea -- http://joshuaspodek.com/common-questions-visiting-north-kore... and http://joshuaspodek.com/common-questions-visiting-north-kore....

> Aren’t you supporting a repressive regime?

> 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?

Are the tours done in English?

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 ;)

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.

The caption for picture 28 is important: "At this point, it's probably important to say that a typical street in Pyongyang is not a typical street in North Korea. Residence in the nation's capital is reserved for the political elite and their families, about 10% of the population. For the other ~22.7 million citizens, even visiting Pyongyang is not possible without a permit."

North Korea's control of even internal movement by its own citizens is more strict than pretty nearly anywhere in the world. The photos and their captions here are very illuminating about what Pyongyang looks like today, and I'm grateful that this was submitted here, but Pyongyang is indeed not representative of the northern part of Korea at all.

I think the author has a bias to show North Korea in a positive light (the pristine pictures, jabs at commercialism, readiness to accept a tour as fact), or, at least, tries to show a generous understanding of such a country and its culture. Personally, I think this does a disservice to actual testimony from former citizens [1][2].

[1] http://gawker.com/how-i-escaped-north-korea-479759525/@ParkJ...

[2] http://www.gq.com/news-politics/newsmakers/201306/kim-jong-i...

It seems to me as though he's simply describing and showing what he saw.

North Koreans are people too, and even if the tour is scripted and carefully controlled, the people he met were still real.

Edit - this is a fascinating documentary by another tourist who went to the DPRK: http://documentary.net/dprk-the-land-of-whispers-north-korea...

Again, lots of curated 'positive' images for the regime, a few hidden camera moments, and some fairly real commentary from the guy who filmed it.

I am kind of agree with MattyRad.

It's giving out a good light on North Korea saying overall it's different from our systems but not in bad way just different. Like the metro, where he is saying there is 16 stations and 3 lines and regular koreans are using it while we tend to think otherwise. Or, the final show that's one of the best he has ever seen. Like forgetting the slave labor behind it. Oh, no yeah, only one photo describing slave labor when he is talking about the south korea sending work to the north. Like if the south korea is responsible of the slavery of the north...

Just make sure you are not a veteran of any war, or in any other way objectionable, before going. Because then you have a good chance of being detained and paraded around with a false confession.

The purpose of this "tourism," other than propaganda, is to get hard cash to the government of North Korea

It's a very small amount of hard currency compared to their main sources of hard currency; I suspect that if they took the resources they devote to tourism and instead put them into boosting their other revenue streams, they'd get more money.

Furthermore, a lot of the hard currency from the tourists does not go directly to the government but instead seeps into the hands of tour guides and other people the group encounters.

I suspect that a lot more cash is coming from the Siberian labour camps that VICE, for example, reported on, but it would be nice to get at least rough numbers.

>> In summer 2013 I traveled to the most isolated country in the world.

I thought it was the pitcairn islands ... (population 65, boat every 3 months ...)

65? I thought that was well below the limit for a viable/self-sustaining gene pool.

NK gets millions of tourists every year (mostly Chinese).

The Pitcairners aren't exactly a country. The UN calls them a non-self governing territory under jurisdiction of the UK.

I think Bhutan is the most isolated real country. NK is second. You'd much rather be a Bhutanese, though; by extreme contrast to NK, Bhutan is considered by many the happiest nation on Earth.

I'm always fascinated by images from NK, bit of a shame in this case that the captions are plastered in the middle of them.

I think it is an attempt at a different arrangement. Instead of text framed around the images thus making the images the size of quarter the screen, it is the opposite. You get the pictures on all available area, and the text box is partially transparent. I like it.

I have mixed feelings about the site. I for one feel guilt when reaping a small amount of enjoyment feeding my curiosity about the North Korean people and culture. I feel Western tourists are playing to the regime's interests, even if only in a small way, which furthers the enslavement of the people. It's fascinating to view, but I feel something similar to the bit of guilt about the conditions of captive animals when visiting a zoo.

That said, design-wise, I initially was a little apprehensive about the caption location but ultimately applaud the designer for trying something unconventional. Rather than the caption location, my gripe is that unless you size your window to the photo's original aspect ratio (the photos appear to be 2000x1333), you're going to be cropping off some of the content. I knew something was awry when I got to photo 12 ("Skyline with Pyramid") and could not see the pyramid because my browser window was too narrow.

Despite my mixed feelings about the content, and my misgivings about Westerns visiting North Korea in general, I don't have the willpower to not view the photos, and they are quite remarkable. Thanks for sharing!

For those visiting Beijing in the near future. Koryo has a 'day-trip' option to DPRK! You can board the night train at 18:00 and arrive at 07:00 at the border in Dandong. You hop in DPRK and the tour there starts at 08:30. At 18:31 your train leaves which will bring you back to Beijing (arrive 10:10 the following morning).

Don't forget to get a double-entry visa! At this point only 40 western tourist visited this part of DPRK! I'm aiming for a visit early January.

A tour of Sinuiju?

Has anybody ever played Jagged Alliance 2? You lead a band of mercenaries to free a country from a dictator. You start in the north and everyone is starving, then you eventually end up fighting in the south where the politically connected live, and it's all tanks in big white mansions.

I felt that matches up pretty well with North Korea.

Why isn't the advance button be in a fixed position? Why make the advance button's position dependent on some other dynamic element, like the text length in this case? This makes going through the slideshow very tedious.

Fascinating content, however.

If you are on a device with a keyboard you can use the arrow keys to advance.

Wow, pics 57-61 showcase thousands of humans syncing together as... display pixels!

NK is so far behind in the times they literally have human LCD's.

... or way ahead of us ....... (ominous gloomy face)

I find these pictures to be very misleading. Did the author have his camera 'checked' and all the not so great pictures deleted when crossing back into China?

Because when I went there what's shown in the pictures represents only what they want you to see. You can see a lot of poverty, undernourishment, and lack of basic infrastructure even if you follow the approved tour route to the letter. He managed to snap a lot of pictures from his bus, so why not show the less impressive shots as well? It's impossible to not see any this when you traverse the whole country from north to south.

If you look at his blog, and read the captions you get an idea of how controlled his experience is.

First, the camera doesn't get checked (although it might have been) because they have a "no photos" rule in certain places, like the mausoleum. The tour is guided and controlled and he never allowed to go anywhere or leave on his own, so he is only taken to the best places DPRK has to offer.

The simple reason for not having less impressive shots is he was never taken anywhere or allowed to take pictures where things were less impressive. It's not misleading, he only had pictures of the places he was allowed to go (which they wouldn't likely let him into areas that gave him a negative impression) and was allowed to use his camera.

You are not allowed to take photos while sitting in a vehicle at any time.

Trust me, I've been on this same tour. If he managed to sneak those pictures from the bus he could have taken a lot more.

What I'm saying is that when you are taken on a tour of many parts of the city, and around the country, it is impossible to hide the reality of the situation there, no matter how hard the government tries (and it does try very hard with its limited resources).

Pyongyang looks like Beijing in the 1990s: same road design, same light traffic, same electric bus lines, lots of bikes, lots of simple concrete construction, a few glitzy high rises.

Yeah, had the same thought after viewing the albums. However, modern Beijing looks more capitalistic than U.S. and Western Europe cities: http://www.flickr.com/photos/romantsisyk/sets/72157633627597...

I'm wondering if he was allowed to travel individually or as part of a group (which is controlled by NK).

If anyone is interested, here is a great documentary which I say a few days back: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oULO3i5Xra0

I don't think an average person can travel to DPRK on his/her own.

You can...

For example, Merrill Newman (who has been in the news lately) was taking a 10 day vacation there when he was detained.

But not individually. You have to sign up for a group tour.

Ah, you mean that kind of individually. I thought you meant "I'm not a journalist or a diplomat" individually.

Well, it wasn't me, but that's what I got from the "which is controlled by NK" comment. In short, I think he wanted to know if you could just go wander around without having government minders watching you all the time.

Whoops, my apologies for not double checking usernames.

No problem, I'm pretty sure you're not the first person to make that mistake.

Yes, that's what I meant.

He didn't go on his own. He was part of a tour group.

If you go as a tourist it must be a guided/accompanied tour (or rather, you arrange it through one of DPRK tourism bodies, and they only do guided/accompanied - you can't just turn up at Pyongyang airport and ask to come in), but there is nothing stopping you having a group size of one (i.e. just yourself).

People working there and diplomats and so forth come under different rules.

I watched this just few hours ago. I guess i am not the only person to surf documentaries on youtube.

;)

Found it from here: www.youtubedocumentaries.com

If you follow the slideshow to the end, there's a link to a blog post where he discusses his reasons, the travel arrangements and some FAQ, among them the question about solo traveling. tl;dr: No, he didn't travel alone. It's impossible to do legally and very much inadvisable to try otherwise.

North Korea is - for the wrong reasons - a beautiful country.

It's not as crowded, filled with cars, smog and litter as "developed countries". It's not as dirty, crowded and poor as India. It's filled with trees, quiet, clean. Buildings look okay from afar. Almost an eco-utopia.

It's great to see images where billboards and signs advertising junk are not covering every square millimeter. Even the author mentions "The way you think about consumption is entirely different"

New Zealand has a law limiting advertising like this, and it's fantastic.

I was always fascinated by cars in North Korea - how are they imported there? How do people fill up? How would you get a driver's licence? Does the concept of speeding even exist?

Also - I think that in the second picture there is a BMW to the bottom left?

Semi-working mirror: http://www.dominik-schwarz.net.nyud.net/reisen/nordkorea2013...

i found this collection of photos surprisingly illuminating. i feel like i have a better understanding of north korea just from seeing them.

Great pictures, Thank you for sharing this!

This was like going back in time to Soviet Russia of 1960s.

This annotated photo gallery is unusable without JavaScript.

Why?

The answer to your question most likely is: Because that's how they wanted to make it.

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