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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. |
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.