This was a great post when I read it last. I really wish the author would repost the pictures or post them to a service that they eventually don't disappear from.
Is it ever immoral to visit a country as a tourist? If North Korea does not fall into this category what country does? I can't imagine being excited about visiting Phnom Penh during the Khemer Rouge killing field days. Is visiting Pyongyang acceptable when conditions in North Korea are so deplorable? Why contribute to propping up such an evil regime?
I've never visited any such countries, but the argument could be made that every tiny bit of foreign exposure the residents get helps to counteract the local propaganda, even in tightly controlled settings like Pyongyang.
Yes, one can make that argument. Is there ever a situation in which it is immoral to visit a country and help its regime by spending money there? For me I think North Korea qualifies.
It's complicated. Yes, tourism brings money and legitimacy. However, the citizens of every country are our brothers and sisters, and the more we get to know and understand each other the better.
Consider, "You're not allowed to know and talk to this person." Wait, what?
Well, consider. If I go to NK and in doing so help the regime by $5, but I get to talk to a few people unchaperoned, giving them some exposure to the outside, is that worth it?
If instead, it's $5,000 - is that worth it?
So on and so forth.
You also have the consideration as to where that money goes - if 90% goes towards maintaining infrastructure - even if it's infrastructure the average person never gets to use - is that worth it, for the future of the country, regardless of government? But what if 90% is pocketed by corrupt officials?
It is not immoral or unethical to visit North Korea. You have to realize that autocratic regimes thrive in isolation. The most effective tactic they have to remain in power is to keep the population ignorant of everything else around them. By visiting the country you may put a small amount of money in the regime's pockets, but you're doing the far nobler duty of bringing the outside world to the North Koreans.
Also spending money in North Korea is likely to put more money in the locals' pockets than in the regime's.
Not only it isn't immoral, it is highly moral and the best you personally can do for them.
I was born in the Soviet Union. It has fallen because of Western tourists coming there, providing the real evidence of the world from the other side of the curtain. Soviet government welcomed foreign tourists, as they were genuinely concerned about what Western countries are thinking about the USSR (for some reason; BTW, Russia is still very sensitive to this). But soon, Soviet people started to think of unthinkable questions, such as "why all these tourists from purposedly struggling capitalist countries are so well fed and well dressed?".
North Korea's government is making the same mistake.
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).
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.
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?
The Prime Directive, used in four of the five Star Trek-based series, prohibits Starfleet personnel from interfering with the internal development of alien civilizations.
I don't mind different countries, societies, civilizations develop on their own place base on their own values.
I believe in diversities, not just diversity of people, and class in one society, but also diversity of societies, countries and value system in our planet and other planets.
I strong dislike to force our societies' "moral/religious" values on other countries as much as other wants to impose their "moral/religious" values on me.
Especially after we see the results of
Invading Iraq because of the WMD
Or Destroy Syria, kill 400K people and make millions homeless because of we claim its leader used chemical weapon on a few hundred.
Or Destroy Libya and turn it into hotbed of Terror because we don't like its leader.
It is OK to let other societies develop, evolve in their own place. Don't force a Electricity, TV, Internet IPad on some isolated tribe in Amazon.
No, it's not OK. Concentration camps are not OK. Killing fields are not OK. Brutal tortures are not OK. And North Korea is so evil that Iraq, Libya and Syria are practically well-developed Western countries in comparison.
> Don't force a Electricity, TV, Internet IPad on some isolated tribe in Amazon
Why the need to force? Just show them once the benefits of civilization and they will happily abandon their old ways, because they are genuinely harder. Yes, we can prevent it for our own curiosity's sake, but this is quite inhumane.
And North Korean society is not an isolated tribe. They have elecricity, water and weapons of mass destruction, officially confirmed.
The only reason why US or anybody else keeps this atrocity running is the protection of China and (somewhat lesser) or Russia, who do it for their geopolitical reasons.
If you know you will kill 400,000 and make millions homeless in Syria, would you act because of the claim of the "chemical war" on a few village? That sounds absolute "evil" when it came out of CNN, ABC, NBC. Those news reports are a lot worst than the claim "Brutal tortures".
Would you act to completely destroy a reasonable stable society.
How many Iraqis do you need to kill to justify the WMD?
Killing civilians is wrong in any case. In fact, wars are also wrong — so if any state starts warmongering, it's necessary to take measures to stop the escalation.
What if that 'Alien Civilization' is in the process of occupying/oppress another 'Alien Civilization'? What if these other aliens would actually like to be helped? Is that still interfering in the internal affairs?
You are assuming that North Korean regime is bad for the world.
It is not necessarily the case. North Korea serves as a warning to other countries about what NOT to do.
It works especially well because there is South Korea right next to it.
North Korean leadership learned coexist with countries around it and even let outsiders research itself to some degree. It would be a shame not to use that possibility.
Some contextual notes on how this compares to today:
* American citizens have been denied access to anything except specially chartered train cars since 2013.
* Train service runs daily between Pyongyang and the Chinese border at Dandong. It takes much of a day to travel to the borer.
* Train service from Rason up through Tumangang runs twice each month, and a car from that train will hook up with the next trans-Siberian train outside of Vladivostok and continue to Moscow.
* It shouldn't be expected that the same train runs from Pyongyang to rason as onwards to Russia. The state of the tracks between rason and Pyongyang have apparently deteriorated (largely in terms of intermittent power) such that it can take several days to make the trip down the east coast.
* Russians in the Pyongyang embassy regularly book train passage between the city and the Russian border.
* Standard visas issued by DPRK continue to list tumangang as a valid port of entry.
I visited North Korea on a tour in 2010. Back then, I had to leave my mobile phone in China, and the Google Maps of North Korea was totally blank.
The most important things for me - Jesus and technology - are illegal in North Korea. It was a fascinating experience! What surprised me most is that it is a "country", with working trains and postal service and businesses. The government just has totally different priorities to me.
I'd recommend North Korea for a honeymoon. There's no choice of hotels or restaurants, because you have to go to the government-approved ones. Other people can't contact you, so there's no disturbances. It was actually very relaxing!
On another note, I took the Trans-Siberian train across Russia in 2009, and narrowly avoided being arrested when trying to see if a North Korean logging camp is still active (I guess it is). Do you think it's safe to write up that experience now?
32 comments
[ 4.6 ms ] story [ 74.6 ms ] threadhttp://vienna-pyongyang.blogspot.de/2008/04/how-everything-b...
Unfortunately, all images here have bit rotten.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10875434 (4 points, 41 days ago, 2 comments)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2155794 (124 points, 1847 days ago, 19 comments)
Consider, "You're not allowed to know and talk to this person." Wait, what?
If instead, it's $5,000 - is that worth it?
So on and so forth.
You also have the consideration as to where that money goes - if 90% goes towards maintaining infrastructure - even if it's infrastructure the average person never gets to use - is that worth it, for the future of the country, regardless of government? But what if 90% is pocketed by corrupt officials?
Passing judgment is complicated.
Also spending money in North Korea is likely to put more money in the locals' pockets than in the regime's.
I was born in the Soviet Union. It has fallen because of Western tourists coming there, providing the real evidence of the world from the other side of the curtain. Soviet government welcomed foreign tourists, as they were genuinely concerned about what Western countries are thinking about the USSR (for some reason; BTW, Russia is still very sensitive to this). But soon, Soviet people started to think of unthinkable questions, such as "why all these tourists from purposedly struggling capitalist countries are so well fed and well dressed?".
North Korea's government is making the same mistake.
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.
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).
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.
The Prime Directive, used in four of the five Star Trek-based series, prohibits Starfleet personnel from interfering with the internal development of alien civilizations.
I don't mind different countries, societies, civilizations develop on their own place base on their own values.
I believe in diversities, not just diversity of people, and class in one society, but also diversity of societies, countries and value system in our planet and other planets.
I strong dislike to force our societies' "moral/religious" values on other countries as much as other wants to impose their "moral/religious" values on me.
Especially after we see the results of
It is OK to let other societies develop, evolve in their own place. Don't force a Electricity, TV, Internet IPad on some isolated tribe in Amazon.> Don't force a Electricity, TV, Internet IPad on some isolated tribe in Amazon
Why the need to force? Just show them once the benefits of civilization and they will happily abandon their old ways, because they are genuinely harder. Yes, we can prevent it for our own curiosity's sake, but this is quite inhumane.
And North Korean society is not an isolated tribe. They have elecricity, water and weapons of mass destruction, officially confirmed.
The only reason why US or anybody else keeps this atrocity running is the protection of China and (somewhat lesser) or Russia, who do it for their geopolitical reasons.
Would you act to completely destroy a reasonable stable society.
How many Iraqis do you need to kill to justify the WMD?
And who killed those 400,000 Syrians? Americans?
It is not necessarily the case. North Korea serves as a warning to other countries about what NOT to do. It works especially well because there is South Korea right next to it.
North Korean leadership learned coexist with countries around it and even let outsiders research itself to some degree. It would be a shame not to use that possibility.
* American citizens have been denied access to anything except specially chartered train cars since 2013.
* Train service runs daily between Pyongyang and the Chinese border at Dandong. It takes much of a day to travel to the borer.
* Train service from Rason up through Tumangang runs twice each month, and a car from that train will hook up with the next trans-Siberian train outside of Vladivostok and continue to Moscow.
* It shouldn't be expected that the same train runs from Pyongyang to rason as onwards to Russia. The state of the tracks between rason and Pyongyang have apparently deteriorated (largely in terms of intermittent power) such that it can take several days to make the trip down the east coast.
* Russians in the Pyongyang embassy regularly book train passage between the city and the Russian border.
* Standard visas issued by DPRK continue to list tumangang as a valid port of entry.
The most important things for me - Jesus and technology - are illegal in North Korea. It was a fascinating experience! What surprised me most is that it is a "country", with working trains and postal service and businesses. The government just has totally different priorities to me.
I'd recommend North Korea for a honeymoon. There's no choice of hotels or restaurants, because you have to go to the government-approved ones. Other people can't contact you, so there's no disturbances. It was actually very relaxing!
On another note, I took the Trans-Siberian train across Russia in 2009, and narrowly avoided being arrested when trying to see if a North Korean logging camp is still active (I guess it is). Do you think it's safe to write up that experience now?