Are you game for a summer holiday in North Korea?
Even before the outright ban, the American government, and many others, warned that travel to North Korea is ill advised, at best. Be that as it may, if someone gave you a plane ticket, would you board?
I’ve often wondered whether I’d go to North Korea if given the opportunity, and I would, even if I find its style of government repugnant... the country, in many instances, is surprisingly normal.
When one thinks of potential tourist destinations, North Korea isn’t likely to come to mind as a first choice. It is, after all, the most isolated country in the world today, with a hardline, Communist regime seemingly stuck in the mindset and the colourfully worded propaganda of Stalin’s Soviet Union. Despite that, every year a small but steady stream of tourists continue to flock to the “Hermit Kingdom,” often in spite of warnings from their governments.
The hazards of tourism to North Korea were highlighted this week with the announcement that the US government is banning its citizens from travelling there. The move comes in response to the death of an American student, Otto Warmbier, who was arrested in 2016 after being accused of stealing a propaganda poster from a hotel.
Even before the outright ban, the American government, and many others, warned that travel to North Korea is ill advised, at best. But every year, thousands of tourists — including approximately 5,000 Westerners — travel to the country, almost all under the auspices of a number of high-profile tour operators. What is it that takes them there?
If you believe North Korea’s official online tourism portal, the country offers a “beautiful and picturesque landscape,” with beaches “in which the sand is white as snow,” “multifarious” mountain peaks, and a “harmonious” capital city, Pyongyang. For golfers, there are courses with “an adequate number of service personnel.”
History buffs have a choice of ancient temples or go to the Pueblo, “an armed spy ship of the US imperialists” captured in 1968. The website even promotes North Korea as a potential surfing destination, noting “the sea sometimes runs high in some districts, thus giving favourable conditions.”
Other NK-specialised tour groups offer even more exotic options. The Beijing-based Koryo Tours, for example, offers visitors the chances to participate in the Pyongyang Marathon, celebrate May Day, or travel the country on a Kimchi-focused food tour.
The US State Department, on the other hand, paints a hellish picture of the country. A travel warning notes that tourists are constantly spied on and any form of disrespect for the country’s leaders may result in years of detention in a Soviet-style hard labour camp. So does unauthorised travel.
Many visitors to North Korea have found that the truth lies somewhere in between.
“Western visitors to North Korea… must be accompanied by North Korean guides at all times and follow a regimented itinerary. One cannot travel on their own at all,” says American travel writer Justin Ames. “But one can certainly still visit the country and have a good time.”
Ames’ 2013 travels in North Korea took him across the country and included a trip to the Arirang ‘Mass Games’ — a 100,000-people strong choreographed show — as well as visits to steel factories, water bottling plants and an eerily empty rural highway. Also on the itinerary: grandiose monuments and the excellent subway system of Pyongyang.
According to Ames, the country, in many instances, was surprisingly normal — like when his minders dropped him off at a lively beach.
“Forget about all those grim, depressing pictures one sees coming out of North Korea… it’s not always like that,” he wrote. “No place is grim and depressing all the time.”
“We set out to meet as many North Koreans as we could and to try and get an unfiltered sense of what North Korean people and their life were really like,” he added. “We were not prevented at any time from speaking with the people of North Korea during our visit to the country.”
I’ve often wondered whether I’d go to North Korea if given the opportunity, and I would, even if I find its style of government repugnant. Few countries in the world have been as demonised in the media as North Korea has. Full-length feature films have been made lampooning North Korea, and the US government in particular has done its best to isolate the country.
Ames questions whether the US or any other government has the right to tell its citizens where they can go. “That is completely outrageous to me,” he said in an interview with the Khaleej Times. “How can some politician in Washington possibly know what is best for every single individual and what their personal circumstances are? Where I travel is my concern and I do not believe that self-serving political figures need to make me a pawn in their political grandstanding.”
Just as importantly, if there ever is a sense of normalcy between the US, its allies, and North Korea, people need to learn about each other. You’re unlikely to meet many North Koreans outside of their own country, so why not go see them where they live? A simple conversation is a form of soft diplomacy.
According to Ames, the demonisation of the “other” works both ways.
“America is presented as a dangerous threat in North Korea, with Americans portrayed as firebreathing savages thirsting for blood and destruction. You should see some of the propaganda posters — they are comical,” Ames recalls. “When an American goes visiting North Korea and North Koreans get to see what Americans are really like… this completely undermines the propaganda.”
“The North Koreans that Americans interact with are given a chance to see that Americans really aren’t so bad after all, and maybe their government is not telling the truth about Americans, and maybe they aren’t telling the truth about other things as well,” Ames added. “It can be a way of reducing hysteria and tensions on both sides.”