[crdoconnor]

I managed to glean a little from my visit, but not that much:

* They apparently have something resembling a dating website.

* They can download computer games (my tour guide complained that his son spent too much time playing them).

[bduerst]

Was that sincere or was it part of the show?

I haven't been, but from what I've read/seen the tours are almost like an orchestrated front aimed at changing foreigners' perspectives.

[crdoconnor]

>Was that sincere or was it part of the show?

I'm certain that part was sincere. There is a certain level of naive honesty among most of the North Koreans (similar to that of sheltered fundamentalist Christians). I could clearly detect this by seeing that some of them naively did or said the "wrong" thing a few too many times whereas others were clearly much more canny. The canny ones lied all the fucking time and probably knew they were lying. The naive ones let slip a few gems.

The 'dating' website is probably more like a website for arranging arranged marriages, incidentally. Just in case you were wondering.

>I haven't been, but from what I've read/seen the tours are almost like an orchestrated front aimed at changing foreigners' perspectives.

The tour is orchestrated and it is clearly partly aimed at changing foreigners' perspectives, but the parts which are just for show and the kernels of honest truth are actually pretty easy to distinguish.

Sometimes propaganda is embarrassingly terrible (e.g. just taking the number of actual US casualties in the Korean war and doubling it. facepalm).

I'm sure the years before I went were even more blatant and terrible, actually. I didn't see any fake shops like in the interview but I suspect they may have existed in the years prior to my visit. I think they probably figured out that that was an abysmal idea.

The North Koreans have very unsophisticated domestic propaganda compared to western domestic propaganda. They are NOT good at it. Getting better, but still terrible.

Interestingly, western propaganda about North Korea is equally facile. The isolation makes it easy for outright lies to be believed on both sides I guess. Provided you haven't experienced both.

Also there are certain things both sides refuse to talk about that the other side talks a lot about - propaganda that serves a purpose that is based in truth. North Korea doesn't talk about prison camps but every American knows about them. America doesn't talk about atrocities committed by GIs in the Korean war, but North Koreans schooled on them much like we are schooled on Nazi atrocities.

Weirdly, North Korea was pretty open about the famine in the 90s. I expected them to gloss over it. Western media glosses over the fact that it actually ended, of course.