271–280 of 307 posts
I wish to know more about this time-capsule country. Currently the country seems to experience an extraordinary construction boom (modern apartment buildings). All we have are 20 years old pictures.
The concentration/prison camps are not often mentioned. I think there was a post about them on HN previously.
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It's seeing aspects of a fundamentally different form of government that's the appeal. If it was just seeing "Korean" culture, I'd have gone to South Korea years ago. (BTW, a good friend of mine told me he's been skiing in view of the DMZ, and they just laugh at the NK guards watching them ski with binoculars.)
I'd counter that the South is an interesting place in its own right. Skipping it because it's too much like Western countries is to miss out on all the fascinating ways it isn't. Furthermore, I'd question the value of finding out for yourself what life is like under a famine-stricken, xenophobic, totalitarian, hereditary absolute monarchy. What is it you're hoping to get out of an experience like that?
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I'm surprised you're surprised. I guess people from countries with fully functional monetary systems don't have an intuitive view how things work where money are essentially worthless. Most communist countries were like this during the centralized and hence highly disfunctional economy. You were paid a wage but essentially could shove it up your ass coze there was little to nothing to buy with it. Which made barter t…
> Non-fungible goods: alcohol, cigarettes and coffee. Aren’t all of these fungible?
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Meanwhile instead of some fancy building, their embassy over here is... Well, a little more domestic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embassy_of_North_Korea,_London
I went in once. They had an open-day demonstrating the skills of north Korean artists. The artwork was decent, and the experience a good one overall. Every room had a picture of Kim, obviously.
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I am intersted in your version of my answer. I don't think picking at elements from my list and just saying "no" is fruitful.
I disagree, and am deliberately not trying to start a protracted debate here. I'm just offering a data point, nothing more.
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The concentration/prison camps are not often mentioned. I think there was a post about them on HN previously.
The crazy negatives and activities of the NK government are the only aspect of the country that I see mentioned, usually.
Anything positive would require some effort to spin it that way.
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It's seeing aspects of a fundamentally different form of government that's the appeal. If it was just seeing "Korean" culture, I'd have gone to South Korea years ago. (BTW, a good friend of mine told me he's been skiing in view of the DMZ, and they just laugh at the NK guards watching them ski with binoculars.)
I'd counter that the South is an interesting place in its own right. Skipping it because it's too much like Western countries is to miss out on all the fascinating ways it isn't. Furthermore, I'd question the value of finding out for yourself what life is like under a famine-stricken, xenophobic, totalitarian, hereditary absolute monarchy. What is it you're hoping to get out of an experience like that?
In the case of North Korea: It's difficult to explain unless you're in a listening mode, but I'll try:
First: I would never go under the current government. Full stop. I won't go somewhere where I don't feel safe.
Second: I don't endorse their government in any way.
For me, the best analogy would be traveling to East Germany in the early 1990s after the fall of communism. IE, visit the Berlin Wall, and maybe listen to some locals tell their story.
So, assuming North Korea's government changes in my lifetime, I'd love to visit and "see it" before it gets torn down.
One of the things I like hearing is how people work around constraints and obstacles. These are the kinds of stories I'm interested in.
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I went in once. They had an open-day demonstrating the skills of north Korean artists. The artwork was decent, and the experience a good one overall. Every room had a picture of Kim, obviously.
Every public room in my state's DMVs has a picture of the governor, so that last bit may not mean as much as you think it does.
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I went in once. They had an open-day demonstrating the skills of north Korean artists. The artwork was decent, and the experience a good one overall. Every room had a picture of Kim, obviously.
Every public room in my state's DMVs has a picture of the governor, so that last bit may not mean as much as you think it does.
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Curious if anyone knows of any more recent descriptions about what life is like in North Korea, like in the last 5-10 years. Most things I've read including this article are decades old. How much have things changed there in terms of technology, food security etc?
There's hours and hours of NK footage if you search for North Korea Travel / Vlog in simplified chinese. They tend to have much laxer guides/minders, fluent in mandarin vs western travellers with minders with shit English (and I presume more suspicious / cautious). Very few of Chinese vlogs have auto subtitles which can be translated to english unfortunately. Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZgzAquCs-o&list=…
Educationally speaking, the DPRK would catch up pretty quickly if they were able to liberalize their economy as much as China, even without all the help they could get from ROK, Japan, USA. It isn't Afghanistan (where liberalization wouldn't stick), or even Laos where there is a lot of work to do on modernizing society, which makes its current state even more depressing.