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> 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.