[easong]

I went to North Korea in January as an American (incidentally on the same tour as the kid who is currently being detained there and in the same group). As mentioned in the article, Americans can't go on the train, so I can't speak to his experiences specifically, but I have a few reactions to this.

1. He probably didn't need to modify his camera firmware - I took pictures of basically whatever I wanted and they didn't look or care. The only exception to this was the (singular) grocery store, which I thought was hilarious because it was actually pretty nice. (With surprisingly good food, too! I'm still snacking on some of the candies I bought there.) I went on a helicopter ride and took a bunch of pictures of anti-aircraft guns and the like hoping that they would make me delete them and I would have a story to tell, but no such luck.

2. There's a big difference between the different tour companies. Some of them really sold the dystopian totalitarian state experience, with extremely strict guides who yelled at people on the tour and checked everybody's cameras and so on. The people on those tours seemed to have signed up for that experience and were, I think, happy to receive it. My group was drunk off our collective asses literally 24/7, our guides were making dick jokes, a guy wandered off on his own on New Years Eve and didn't get back to the hotel until ~3am after getting in a fistfight with a cab driver, and it was generally a party. It seems to me like the author of this article went in looking for a dystopia to photograph, and the tour company gave him one.

3. North Korea is poor as hell, obviously has a horrible government, etc. If you've been to other extremely poor parts of the globe it's obvious that it's a poor country trying to pretend to be a rich one. The successful example of neighboring South Korea makes their failure to provide for their citizens even sadder. But I would guess total quality of life is comparable or better in the DPRK than many other places I've been. (Somalia, nasty bits of Bangladesh, etc)

4. The citizens and possibly government are (not totally unreasonably) terrified that the US is going to invade and crush them like ants at any given moment. I think this drives a lot of their government's malinvestments.

[ekianjo]

> 4. The citizens and possibly government are (not totally unreasonably) terrified that the US is going to invade and crush them like ants at any given moment.

Are you joking ? The US would never do that since China wants North Korea to keep acting as a buffer state against America's influence. Plus, the US has never hinted of any operation in the region.

[easong]

The North Koreans are totally obsessed with the Korean War, and seem to think that the entire world is too. They've convinced themselves that the US started the first Korean war because controlling the Korean peninsula is vitally important for some reason that I can't remember (the propaganda drones on a bit too much). It's a bit silly, but it seems to be what they believe. As an American I obviously don't think we have an all-consuming desire to invade and subjugate the Korean peoples or that it's a major goal of our government.

That said, it wasn't that long ago that North Korea was on Bush's hit list ("axis of evil"), we regularly organize large military exercises preparing for a new Korean war, and we've got all sorts of belligerent rhetoric that a paranoid DPRK intelligence officer would definitely take as a threat. Even confirmed war hawks like Bernie Sanders name them as the biggest threat to the US on the world stage (which is ridiculous, IMO).

[Ripsaw]

It's ridiculous to think of the DPRK as a threat at it's current level but allowing such an antagonistic state to research ICBMs is a long-term threat. Personally I would rather us a take them down now then let them fall apart in 50 years when they have the capability to nuke Seoul.

[easong]

Right, but imagine that you're the head of the DPRK military and you're reading this comment as the general attitude of America. Now you think that you have to get nukes ASAP, and you're risking US invasion at any time until you do (look what happened to Saddam!).

Once you have nukes, you think, you'll have a shred of leverage over the US since you'll have the capability to nuke Seoul. With that leverage, you can ensure that your glorious people's republic will continue to prosper without another devastating war. Who cares if you throw the economy under the bus until you're nuclear-armed - that's just the price you have to pay for security.

I personally don't think that the DPRK has any real intention of starting a war - they know that there's about five minutes between hostilities being declared and Pyongyang turning into a radioactive parking lot.

[kobayashi]

Pyongyang will almost certainly never be nuked by the US, even if the DPRK used nukes first. The reasons are manifold, and include the political costs (domestic + international) of using nuclear weapons against a captive and largely innocent people, as well as the actual nuclear fallout that would effect nearby neighbours.

Tom Nichols delves deeper into the topic in both article [0] and book [1] forms.

[0] http://nationalinterest.org/feature/if-america-could-rebuild...

[1] http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/15090.html

[ekianjo]

> Pyongyang will almost certainly never be nuked by the US, even if the DPRK used nukes first. The reasons are manifold, and include the political costs (domestic + international) of using nuclear weapons against a captive and largely innocent people, as well as the actual nuclear fallout that would effect nearby neighbours.

On second thought, if the DPRK were to nuke New York or something, I can't see how the US could afford not to nuke back without looking weak. At the same time, that would probably trigger a nuclear apocalypse scenario pretty quickly with retaliation from China and the like.

[ekianjo]

You don't need to nuke Pyongyang to put them on their knees in no time. Intensive bombardments with B52 are pretty effective as well.

[PhasmaFelis]

As I understand it, the main reason that we and/or South Korea haven't moshed all over NK like we did in Afghanistan and Iraq is that they've got enough ancient, obsolete, but still quite explosive artillery aimed at Seoul to do at least Hiroshima levels of damage to it.

It'll only get worse once they've got actual nuclear capability, but it's not like you can just declare that you've decided to sacrifice SK's capital and largest city because bad stuff might happen in the future.

[Grishnakh]

Well the big reason the US hasn't "moshed" all over NK is because they have nothing we want. They don't have any really significant resources that I'm aware of, and certainly don't have any oil. They're also right next to China, and China likes to keep them there as a buffer from American-aligned nations like SK and Japan.

Basically, both China and the US are probably rather worried about the situation there, because the NK leadership is so wacky and volatile; neither side actually wants to take over NK because that'd mean having to deal with their internal problems and a giant, starving population that's been fed crazy propaganda from birth about the divinity of their leaders. No one wants to deal with that problem.

[kobayashi]

They already have the capability to nuke Seoul. Don't need an ICBM for a few dozen KM.

[ekianjo]

Seoul is next door, you don't need an ICBM for something that's as close as that. ICBM stands for inter-continental ballistic missiles and they are made to be able to strike anywhere on Earth.

[mmmBacon]

The DPRK are a real threat. They have long range conventional artillery aimed at Seoul that could cause large loss of life there. We are talking WW2 type loss of life.

[SixSigma]

> Even confirmed war hawks like Bernie Sanders

I hope you mean "doves" not "hawks"

[easong]

No sarcasm tag on HN, sorry.

[fennecfoxen]

> we regularly organize large military exercises preparing for a new Korean war

And as long as we have a military that organizes exercises to keep itself prepared, that's one of the exercises that makes a lot of sense (whereas we can presumably keep preparations for invasion of (say) Belgium on paper only for the time being).

[easong]

Definitely! But imagine you're North Korea, looking at the world's most powerful military by a huge margin, practicing the invasion of your country a few miles from your border, on a regular basis. Makes you feel pretty nervous, right?

[jacquesm]

You are mistaken about the audience of that message. The audience is the people of North Korea, not the outside world, that it has no basis in reality doesn't change that because the people of NK for the most part do not have access to information that will confirm to them that it is not real.

[PhasmaFelis]

> Plus, the US has never hinted of any operation in the region.

I agree that we're not at all likely to invade NK any time soon, but GWB declared Iran, Iraq, and NK to be "the Axis of Evil" and then promptly invaded Iraq. To an outside observer, that's a hell of a lot more than a hint.

[blackguardx]

How do you square the drunken nature of your tour group with the American student that was detained after presumably doing something he regretted while drunk?

Are you sure they are not related?

[easong]

They're totally related.

That said, it doesn't mean that the paranoia you see in these sorts of blogs is entirely warranted - in my experience NK wasn't particularly interested in oppressing random tourists (they want those sweet, sweet dollars). They will take a great deal of offense if you go in and rip down their propaganda posters, though. :)

[DanielBMarkham]

Did it ever occur to you that maybe you were still watched and "handled" much the same as any other group, you just didn't notice it?

I've got 100 sources saying that the North is a dystopia where brainwashing is common, starvation is not unusual, and the "Dear Leader" is believed to be able to read minds, etc. These sources are diplomats, researchers, former citizens of NK, defectors, and so forth.

I've got one guy on HN who talks about having fun in a drunken boozefest where the guides told dick jokes.

I'm perfectly fine with changing my view, but Occam's Razor here tells me that, at best, both these stories are true. That is, you had the dystopian tour. You had the "indulge the rich westerners while we take their tourist money" version. After all, if you're not a political threat, and they can isolate/watch you, for them it'd be like being visited by a cadre of millionaires. Who cares if they're undisciplined and unruly? Keep them away from the normal folks and let them feel like they're on a junket.

[easong]

Hrm, that's the not impression I tried to give in my comment. Obviously I was in a dystopia, and it was made very clear that we were being handled - not even the guides tried to pretend we were being shown the North Korea that civilians see. The guy who sat in front of me on the bus was literally arrested on the way out of the airport and is still stuck there! I'm pretty aware of the situation.

The way the North Korea tours work is as following:

1. The government-run North Korean tourist organization partners with foreign tour companies (all based in China, AFAIK). There are several foreign tour companies (Koryo Tours, Young Pioneer Tours, etc), which all cater to different segments of the market and advertise their services differently.

2. Every tour goes to the same locations and in theory gets the same commentary, but the various tour companies can send different foreign guides, and have some power to get different Korean guides. This, combined with the different sections of the market, has a pretty huge effect on your experience on the tour. I went with YPT, which is why it was a party with a bunch of mid-twenties Americans/British Commonwealth guys. If you go with, say, Koryo Tours, you're signing up for what I referred to as the dystopia experience where it's an older, primarily continental European crowd and the guides yell at you for taking pictures. I personally think that this is what the people taking the dystopia tours are looking for - they want to go home and talk about how they braved the tyranny of the government minders and snuck pictures of random rice fields.

On a personal note, I've been to some of the worst places on Earth by most objective and subjective measures, and digging under the skin (and into the dumpsters) of dysfunctional places is a hobby of mine. It's always a little funny to me that if you try to humanize the North Koreans a little (not even trying to make excuses for their government!), the default assumption from people who've never been there is that you're a rube who has been taken in by obvious propaganda.

[dangero]

Do you know if the guy who was arrested actually tried to steal something? Did you see it happen? One of the questions I have about this whole thing is, did they just select someone and charge them with something for hostage leverage or did he actually do something?

Also, in regards to the prior post you were responding to, did you consider that your drunken tour group was targeted by the government? If I were looking to get a hostage by getting someone to step over an invisible line I might give the group free booze and make the environment seem relaxed till it wasn't relaxed any more.

[easong]

I don't want to get into too much detail on this out of respect for Otto. I wasn't there when he took the poster down, but I definitely believe that he did.

Also, no invisible lines were crossed - we were told very specifically before arriving in NK by the tour company that under no circumstances should we go to the staff-only floor of the hotel and that people had gotten in trouble for going there previously (it's moderately infamous). My memory of that is hazy, but it may even have been in response to a question about that floor from Otto. As I said in another comment, I really don't think that the NK government is interested in oppressing tourists for no reason.

[MzHN]

1. Correct. He has confirmed that he didn't modify his camera firmware. [1]

[1] https://twitter.com/m_huniewicz/status/709674892975874048

[jorge-d]

My bad, I originally found the photos from this french version of an euronews article [1] which states that he “modified the camera's firmware so that the delete button doesn't exactly remove the photos" [2]

[1] http://fr.euronews.com/2016/03/14/rares-photos-ostensiblemen...

[2] "Ses photos, il a réussi à les prendre parfois au su des gardiens guides qui encadrent sans aucune relâche les touristes dans le pays, puis à les cacher de la censure en “modifiant le logiciel de l’appareil photo afin que le bouton effacer n’efface pas vraiment les photos” mais simplement ne les affiche plus."

[mc32]

My take is neither your nor his journey can be representative of another's journey. So, your experience can differ for many different reasons, from bosses to bribes, to group dynamics to personal circumstances, etc.

So, maybe some of the handlers are sticklers others just don't care. No doubt as there are people into ruin porn [like Detroit or the Ruhr] there are people who think it's neat to get a glimpse of what it's like to visit a desperate place --that does not mean the place is not desperate and a devastating place for the locals and for that reason I would not find blame in people taking "pictures everyone else has already taken".

It does not matter the veneer the person touring is looking for, what matters is the subsurface substance and that is the total backwardness and despair these people experience, just as the people of Venezuela experience at the hands of an inept ruler who blames the [American] "imperialists" or whatever accusation for any misfortune and misgovernance.

This is akin to blaming Christopher Anderson for his take on Venezuela.

[peterburkimsher]

I went to North Korea with CYTS back in 2009. I wasn't allowed to take a laptop or mobile phone at all.

My group only spoke Chinese. But they weren't drunk all the time, nor intimidating. They were surprised to see a Westerner in that group, but continued as normal. I think that some of the choreographed activities (e.g. train station actors) were skipped for my group - what little movement I saw on the street seemed pretty legit.

I used data recovery software to get a photo back of a North Korean labour camp in Chegdomyn after a Russian guard caught me and told me to delete it. Maybe I'll upload it some day.

[jonah]

No judgement, only honest curiosity:

Why did you visit NK? What were you hoping to see/experience? What did you get out of your visit? Did it meet your expectations going in? If not, how so?

We hear things about hard-to-get-to places like NK but I'm sure it's nothing like being there.

[easong]

Whenever I got home from my previous vacations, my mom would say, disapprovingly, "Where are you going next, North Korea?!". I had a spare week this winter and thought that sounded like a pretty good idea. Also, it's an interesting place that's much maligned (rightly), and I wanted to see it for myself. It occupies a unique place in the modern international mythology.

To be honest, I didn't get a whole lot out of my visit. Everywhere I go, humans are pretty much like humans elsewhere. If you've been to another repressive third-world country and pay attention to posts like this, you have a pretty good idea of what North Korea looks like - its aesthetic form is just more extreme and it's trying to pretend to tourists that it's a second world country. My inner giant-statues fan was pretty pleased. I would say that it met my expectations going in. If anyone is ever in China and has a few days and a few hundred dollars to kill, I would highly recommend it. I wouldn't recommend making the flight just for the DPRK.

My personal takeaway is that I no longer like the hard-line stance against North Korea, don't think the sanctions are a good idea (I did going in), and would rather see them brought into the international community via the inexorable march of global capitalism. I suspect that isolating them only makes them more dangerous to the civilian population and more willing to lash out to the international one. (In other words, they behave like humans everywhere else in the world!)

[newman314]

Which tour group did you use?