DPRK - Part 1

19 Mar 2016 . category: Travel . Comments
#DPRK

This begins a series of blog posts about my spring break 2016 trip to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea with Aaron Roper (stopping for a couple days in Beijing en route). Though it would’ve been nice to blog along the way, the DPRK of course didn’t have internet access, so I’m writing these after returning back to Boston. I’m going to try to split the posts into two parts. The first will be concerned with what we saw and did while in the country. And the second about what we heard and thought, basically reflections about our experiences and interactions with our guides and other locals.

Introduction

After Iceland and the Balkans, we obviously had to up the craziness for the third and final installment of our spring break travel, so we settled on North Korea! I realize this choice is…unorthodox: why would I go somewhere where I have a markedly nonzero chance of being indefinitely detained by the government? This first post is dedicated mostly to explaining myself and then the mechanics of getting there.

Why North Korea

First, please see my previous post about traveling philosophy for a general sense of why I think it’s worth it to go to weirder countries like the DPRK.

Specific to this trip, North Korea is just a fascinating country for so many reasons. It occupies a unique position in the West, both a source of fear and irreverent jokes, perceived as absolutely mystical and crazy. And given that I had the chance to check it out, I jumped on it. Some more specific things that I find personally compelling:

• In a world that’s increasingly globalized and connected, the average North Korean citizen doesn’t have internet access, or McDonald’s, or Coca Cola. And in fact, they’re propagandized to daily and entirely reliant on their state for views of other peoples and nations.
• With the fall of the Soviet Union and the increasing openness of China and Cuba, it’s the last true vestige of the socialist authoritarianism feared in the Cold War.
• It’s a country that promotes itself as being actively hostile to the US, and was part of George W. Bush’s “Axis of Evil” with Iraq and Iran.
• It’s one of the few places where US citizens must be supervised by local guides. Two others, Turkmenistan and Iran, are pretty high on my list too!
• This picture:

• More personally, it’s probably the closest I’m able to get to the China of my parents’ youth.

How Dangerous Is It?

Most people I spoke to about this trip were surprised that Westerners could go at all, and then incredulous that I would take such a risk. And I do concede that North Korea probably wasn’t as safe as going to Miami. But, the number of Americans detained for any reason has actually been quite small, and a good number of foreign tourists visit every year. I’ve seen estimates in the thousands for Westerners, and hundreds of thousands overall (the difference is mostly due to the number of Chinese tourists). Furthermore, the stories of the American citizens detained all point to some sort of “transgression” that resulted in that detention. Now I’m not suggesting that it is legally or ethically right for a country to detain someone just for leaving a bible behind. But the evidence before we left indicated that a careful tourist who refrained from any nefarious activities would have no trouble. While the situation definitely got dicier in the first couple of months of 2016, Aaron and I stuck to this opinion, and we’re glad we did. Indeed, I’m writing this post from the comfort of my bed!

Mechanics of Getting There

It’s actually relatively easy for most foreign tourists to visit the country. You just have to go through a tour group that partners with the official North Korean tour company, the KITC (they watch you like a hawk when you’re there…more on that later). It’s also 100% legal according to US law to visit there for normal tourism, unlike, for example, Cuba. As U.S. citizens, we were required to fly first into Beijing, and from Beijing to Pyongyang via Air Koryo, the DPRK’s national airline. But citizens from other countries are able to take a 24-hour train ride from Beijing. We personally went with Young Pioneer Tours on their St. Patrick’s Day themed tour. We’re of course not Irish or anything, the dates just worked out with our Spring Break. Though I think the theme resulted in the tour having a slighly different composition than normal.

Pre-Trip Happenings

First and foremost was the detention of Otto Warmbier. If you’re reading this, you’ve probably seen the articles about his detention, confession, and then sentencing to 15 years of labor. The latter actually occurred while we were in the DPRK! And we were able to find a newspaper article about his sentencing in copies of the Pyongyang Times:

I won’t lie, reading the coverage of his detention certainly gave me pause, more so given our similar ages and backgrounds. But, we were assured by YPT that Otto had committed some sort of offense, and that there was no increased risk. The details that have emerged since his detention seem to confirm this…but it’s impossible to say until he is safely returned to the US. Best wishes to both him and his family.

There was also a general escalation of tensions on the Korean peninsula, with the DPRK launching satellites and making repeated threats, and the US and South Korea holding joint military exercises. Again though, this did not fundamentally change our perception of the tourist situation, so we soldiered on.

And finally, there were some morbidly humorous moments. I wrote out a formal will, leaving various possessions like cocktail shakers, tech t-shirts, and cash for McDonald’s dinners to my friends. And a letter to the Swedish Ambassador registering our travel (they represent US interests in the DPRK) received an attachment from a US State Department “Casualty Officer for Civilian POW/MIAs”:

If you insist on going into North Korea despite the advice in our Travel Warning, ‘Behave like a boy scout troop visiting someone’s grandmother for tea. Be unfailingly polite and respectful. Behavior that would be dismissed as hijinks and shenanigans here can land you in jail there. Wait until you leave to have your rowdy post-game celebration.’

With this advice in mind, we finally left early Friday morning for Beijing after a stressful couple of hours brought on by the extremely last minute receipt of our North Korean flights and Visas. Not necessarily YPT’s fault, but better communication would’ve at least let me get more than half an hour of sleep. Given that we had problems the last two spring breaks, Aaron and I hoped this would be our one stress-inducer with everything else to go smoothly…

---