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by elisehein 4895 days ago
I've been lucky enough to have visited NK as well and unsurprisingly everything I read lined up perfectly with my own experience. Most likely tourists from all over the world are always shown the stock tour. Our guides were incredibly insistent that we see everything, too -- that means no suggestions for other activities and definitely no wandering off.

One of my most memorable take-aways was also a visit to a school that we were told was one of the best in the country. We were taken to a room where students had formed groups around several desks, all performing different tasks (one desk had microscopes, the other a pc, yet others had more contraptions, probably for demonstrating mechanical processes). As was mentioned in the story, they weren't actually doing anything, they were just sitting there looking at the machinery in front of them and trying to look like they were about to discover something huge. They must've been the best actors in the school, and probably were very proud of themselves to have been chosen to present to such a prominent audience.
3 comments
caf 4894 days ago
Friends of mine used to work in a building that also contained the help desk for external customers. One day when a customer delegation was visiting the help desk, they were all brought in and told to sit at the empty desks and pretend to take calls.

Their headsets weren't even plugged in.

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elisehein 4894 days ago
It just makes my skin crawl :/
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RaphiePS 4895 days ago
When I went our tour guides were somewhat lenient. They were happy to take us to the Pyongyang Pizzeria when we asked, but insisted that the Opera would "not be fun for us."

Another group we met said their guides would fulfill almost any request, so go figure.

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martinced 4894 days ago
Exactly. I "ranted" about it in response to the article.

Basically I'm not sure the author understood she realized the "stock tour" and that it was all fake and propaganda.

Even the one school people get to visit is fake: the students are actors as you're saying. They take the few genius kids they have and force them to perform the exact same music in front of nearly every delegation that gets there.

Once I realized that every single "official" trip there tells the exact same story, my girlfriend and I decided not to go.

The drones and spy cameras tell a whole different story than the communist party's propaganda of course.

It's really scary what communism did to North Korea...

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