Korean Job Discussion Forums

yoda · Joined: 19 Jan 2003 Location: Incheon, South Korea

mithridates · Posted: Mon Jan 12, 2004 3:06 am Post subject:

My thoughts after the article:
1)I'm still planning to go.
2)North Korea's definately not the most dangerous place in the world for a tourist. It's quite safe for the tourists; it's not always safe for the North Koreans who talk to them.
3)The money part was interesting though...brought to mind a book I read back in Japan by an ethnic Korean from Japan, the first to be allowed to study in North Korea. The first night after arriving there with his scholarship he was taken out to a restaurant with a lot of people, ate, drank, chatted, etc. and thought them all to be quite kind. After the meal though they presented him the bill for each and every one of them...

ohahakehte · Joined: 24 Aug 2003 Location: The State of Denial

the article is sort of interesting, although predictable to the degree of verbatim. one could scarcely expect anything different from an article on NK in the wall street journal. NK is definitely not the most dangerous place on the planet to visit. israel/palestine is far more dangerous, as is colombia, china, indonesia and afghanistan, among others.

i plan on visiting NK sometime soon, although the soonest i could do it will probably be this coming november. my teaching schedule has few vacations that are long enough that i could go to the north.

im sure i would be disillusioned and maybe even horrified at many of the things i would see and hear in the north, but it would be a tremendous learning experience and im really looking forward to it. i dont think i would be anymore horrified at visiting certain sites in israel, china, or even parts of the US. i think that if i saw the incredible degree to which ideological propaganda is so centrally controlled and dispersed in the north i would learn a helluva lot about how ideology and propaganda works in north american culture.