North Korea 2013 – A travel journal

http://www.dominik-schwarz.net/reisen/nordkorea2013/

by personlurking • 13 years ago

162 82 13 years ago

adrow• 13 years ago

I'm always fascinated by images from NK, bit of a shame in this case that the captions are plastered in the middle of them.

deletes• 13 years ago

I think it is an attempt at a different arrangement. Instead of text framed around the images thus making the images the size of quarter the screen, it is the opposite. You get the pictures on all available area, and the text box is partially transparent. I like it.

bhauer• 13 years ago

I have mixed feelings about the site. I for one feel guilt when reaping a small amount of enjoyment feeding my curiosity about the North Korean people and culture. I feel Western tourists are playing to the regime's interests, even if only in a small way, which furthers the enslavement of the people. It's fascinating to view, but I feel something similar to the bit of guilt about the conditions of captive animals when visiting a zoo.

That said, design-wise, I initially was a little apprehensive about the caption location but ultimately applaud the designer for trying something unconventional. Rather than the caption location, my gripe is that unless you size your window to the photo's original aspect ratio (the photos appear to be 2000x1333), you're going to be cropping off some of the content. I knew something was awry when I got to photo 12 ("Skyline with Pyramid") and could not see the pyramid because my browser window was too narrow.

Despite my mixed feelings about the content, and my misgivings about Westerns visiting North Korea in general, I don't have the willpower to not view the photos, and they are quite remarkable. Thanks for sharing!

power2u3• 13 years ago

I'm wondering if he was allowed to travel individually or as part of a group (which is controlled by NK).

If anyone is interested, here is a great documentary which I say a few days back: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oULO3i5Xra0

dominotw2• 13 years ago

I don't think an average person can travel to DPRK on his/her own.

steveklabnik8• 13 years ago

You can...

For example, Merrill Newman (who has been in the news lately) was taking a 10 day vacation there when he was detained.

EliRivers5• 13 years ago

If you go as a tourist it must be a guided/accompanied tour (or rather, you arrange it through one of DPRK tourism bodies, and they only do guided/accompanied - you can't just turn up at Pyongyang airport and ask to come in), but there is nothing stopping you having a group size of one (i.e. just yourself).

People working there and diplomats and so forth come under different rules.

vignesh_vs_in• 13 years ago

I watched this just few hours ago. I guess i am not the only person to surf documentaries on youtube.

power2u3• 13 years ago

;)

Found it from here: www.youtubedocumentaries.com

Xylakant• 13 years ago

If you follow the slideshow to the end, there's a link to a blog post where he discusses his reasons, the travel arrangements and some FAQ, among them the question about solo traveling. tl;dr: No, he didn't travel alone. It's impossible to do legally and very much inadvisable to try otherwise.

spodek2• 13 years ago

Hacker News loves North Korea!

I can't help but share some videos from my second trip there -- http://joshuaspodek.com/summary-of-north-korea-videos. Especially the ones singing with North Koreans in Kim Il Sung Square, playing Frisbee with kids, and all-around reinforcing that the people there are the same as people everywhere, just in different environments.

steveklabnik8• 13 years ago

all-around reinforcing that the people there are the same as people everywhere

This is the thing that's important to remember, and is incredibly difficult with the way our media portrays the DPRK.

GuiA5• 13 years ago

Completely agreed- the people there (just like the people in Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.) are the same as the people everywhere (albeit exploited and starving).

The DPRK government, however, is not too far off from how our media describes it.

RaphiePS2• 13 years ago

Did you go with Koryo Tours? I went the summer before last and it was undoubtedly the most interesting trip I've ever taken. It definitely humanized the people who were previously thought of, just a little bit, as "the enemy." Waitresses giggling while singing karaoke, rowdy schoolboys asking for a picture, soldiers laughing as we smashed into them on the Funfair bumper cars, that sort of thing.

One thing we were surprised by was the openness of our guide. She asked us what our country thought of North Korea, and wanted to hear all about our elections and political system.

At first we thought it was genuine curiosity, but after a while and some pretty dubious claims (come look at this average farmworker's house! everyone in North Korea has a computer!), we suspected that it was designed to "butter us up."

That, I think, was my only real problem with the trip. A lot of what I saw surprised and impressed me (boy, could those children play their instruments!), but I never knew if it was all a ruse for the tourists.

GuiA5• 13 years ago

Are you serious? Of course it is a ruse for the tourists- Koryo Tours is not the only operator allowed to run trips there for no reason.

What you saw was just a show run by the North Korean government to further their own agenda. The people that you saw are the people that Koryo Tours (and by extension the government) wants you to see.

Make no mistake, the vast majority of North Korea is a giant interment camp. This is more like what you would see if you were to go off the shiny beaten track that Koryo tours makes you follow: http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=1dd_1364601643

EliRivers5• 13 years ago

When were you there? I was there in April 2012 and recall both the funfair in Pyongyang and the claim that every family would have a computer (although I recall it being future tense, rather than present).

HN contains the most people I've ever found who've been to the DPRK. Must be something in the water :)

ngoldbaum• 13 years ago

What do you think about the fact that by traveling to North Korea you're lining the pockets of regime supporters?

steveklabnik8• 13 years ago

He wrote a blog post about that: http://joshuaspodek.com/ethics-visiting-north-korea

kafkaesque• 13 years ago

Are the tours done in English?

What level of Korean would you say someone (I'm Canadian) needs to be able to get by? I understand there is always a tour guide, who is a government official. But I just want to know if some Korean is recommended. Thank you.

lewispollard• 13 years ago

North Koreans speak a pretty different dialect of Korean than South. Some words are the same, grammar is a little different, a lot of modern words are completely different. As such you wouldn't be expected to know any Korean at all, and even if you knew some, you probably wouldn't be able to use it. At best they would struggle to understand you, at worst they'd be offended and kick you off the tour ;)

justanother• 13 years ago

Does the trip really begin with bowing to a statue of Kim Il Sung? I don't have any moral problems with visiting the DPRK, but I've always harbored doubt that I could bring myself to do that one thing. Otherwise it looks like a fascinating tour.

ejdyksen• 13 years ago

Semi-working mirror: http://www.dominik-schwarz.net.nyud.net/reisen/nordkorea2013...

dualogy2• 13 years ago

Wow, pics 57-61 showcase thousands of humans syncing together as... display pixels!

rfnslyr• 13 years ago

NK is so far behind in the times they literally have human LCD's.

dualogy2• 13 years ago

... or way ahead of us ....... (ominous gloomy face)

breakall• 13 years ago

Why isn't the advance button be in a fixed position? Why make the advance button's position dependent on some other dynamic element, like the text length in this case? This makes going through the slideshow very tedious.

Fascinating content, however.

k-mcgrady• 13 years ago

If you are on a device with a keyboard you can use the arrow keys to advance.

jorge-d• 13 years ago

Great pictures, Thank you for sharing this!

pekk• 13 years ago

Just make sure you are not a veteran of any war, or in any other way objectionable, before going. Because then you have a good chance of being detained and paraded around with a false confession.

The purpose of this "tourism," other than propaganda, is to get hard cash to the government of North Korea

EliRivers5• 13 years ago

It's a very small amount of hard currency compared to their main sources of hard currency; I suspect that if they took the resources they devote to tourism and instead put them into boosting their other revenue streams, they'd get more money.

Furthermore, a lot of the hard currency from the tourists does not go directly to the government but instead seeps into the hands of tour guides and other people the group encounters.

agilebyte• 13 years ago

I suspect that a lot more cash is coming from the Siberian labour camps that VICE, for example, reported on, but it would be nice to get at least rough numbers.

alphydan• 13 years ago

> In summer 2013 I traveled to the most isolated country in the world.

I thought it was the pitcairn islands ... (population 65, boat every 3 months ...)

lmm• 13 years ago

65? I thought that was well below the limit for a viable/self-sustaining gene pool.

colinm• 13 years ago

NK gets millions of tourists every year (mostly Chinese).

WildUtah• 13 years ago

The Pitcairners aren't exactly a country. The UN calls them a non-self governing territory under jurisdiction of the UK.

I think Bhutan is the most isolated real country. NK is second. You'd much rather be a Bhutanese, though; by extreme contrast to NK, Bhutan is considered by many the happiest nation on Earth.

benhirashima• 13 years ago

i found this collection of photos surprisingly illuminating. i feel like i have a better understanding of north korea just from seeing them.

pradocchia• 13 years ago

Pyongyang looks like Beijing in the 1990s: same road design, same light traffic, same electric bus lines, lots of bikes, lots of simple concrete construction, a few glitzy high rises.

rtsisyk• 13 years ago

Yeah, had the same thought after viewing the albums. However, modern Beijing looks more capitalistic than U.S. and Western Europe cities: http://www.flickr.com/photos/romantsisyk/sets/72157633627597...

tokenadult• 13 years ago

The caption for picture 28 is important: "At this point, it's probably important to say that a typical street in Pyongyang is not a typical street in North Korea. Residence in the nation's capital is reserved for the political elite and their families, about 10% of the population. For the other ~22.7 million citizens, even visiting Pyongyang is not possible without a permit."

North Korea's control of even internal movement by its own citizens is more strict than pretty nearly anywhere in the world. The photos and their captions here are very illuminating about what Pyongyang looks like today, and I'm grateful that this was submitted here, but Pyongyang is indeed not representative of the northern part of Korea at all.

qwerty_asdf• 13 years ago

This annotated photo gallery is unusable without JavaScript.

Why?

thesis• 13 years ago

The answer to your question most likely is: Because that's how they wanted to make it.

MattyRad• 13 years ago

I think the author has a bias to show North Korea in a positive light (the pristine pictures, jabs at commercialism, readiness to accept a tour as fact), or, at least, tries to show a generous understanding of such a country and its culture. Personally, I think this does a disservice to actual testimony from former citizens [1][2].

[1] http://gawker.com/how-i-escaped-north-korea-479759525/@ParkJ...

[2] http://www.gq.com/news-politics/newsmakers/201306/kim-jong-i...

Mikeb852• 13 years ago

It seems to me as though he's simply describing and showing what he saw.

North Koreans are people too, and even if the tour is scripted and carefully controlled, the people he met were still real.

Edit - this is a fascinating documentary by another tourist who went to the DPRK: http://documentary.net/dprk-the-land-of-whispers-north-korea...

Again, lots of curated 'positive' images for the regime, a few hidden camera moments, and some fairly real commentary from the guy who filmed it.

hartator• 13 years ago

I am kind of agree with MattyRad.

It's giving out a good light on North Korea saying overall it's different from our systems but not in bad way just different. Like the metro, where he is saying there is 16 stations and 3 lines and regular koreans are using it while we tend to think otherwise. Or, the final show that's one of the best he has ever seen. Like forgetting the slave labor behind it. Oh, no yeah, only one photo describing slave labor when he is talking about the south korea sending work to the north. Like if the south korea is responsible of the slavery of the north...

Saus• 13 years ago

For those visiting Beijing in the near future. Koryo has a 'day-trip' option to DPRK! You can board the night train at 18:00 and arrive at 07:00 at the border in Dandong. You hop in DPRK and the tour there starts at 08:30. At 18:31 your train leaves which will bring you back to Beijing (arrive 10:10 the following morning).

Don't forget to get a double-entry visa! At this point only 40 western tourist visited this part of DPRK! I'm aiming for a visit early January.

resu3• 13 years ago

A tour of Sinuiju?

b0rsuk• 13 years ago

North Korea is - for the wrong reasons - a beautiful country.

It's not as crowded, filled with cars, smog and litter as "developed countries". It's not as dirty, crowded and poor as India. It's filled with trees, quiet, clean. Buildings look okay from afar. Almost an eco-utopia.

sakopov• 13 years ago

This was like going back in time to Soviet Russia of 1960s.

RyanZAG• 13 years ago

Has anybody ever played Jagged Alliance 2? You lead a band of mercenaries to free a country from a dictator. You start in the north and everyone is starving, then you eventually end up fighting in the south where the politically connected live, and it's all tanks in big white mansions.

I felt that matches up pretty well with North Korea.

grecy• 13 years ago

It's great to see images where billboards and signs advertising junk are not covering every square millimeter. Even the author mentions "The way you think about consumption is entirely different"

New Zealand has a law limiting advertising like this, and it's fantastic.

resu3• 13 years ago

I find these pictures to be very misleading. Did the author have his camera 'checked' and all the not so great pictures deleted when crossing back into China?

Because when I went there what's shown in the pictures represents only what they want you to see. You can see a lot of poverty, undernourishment, and lack of basic infrastructure even if you follow the approved tour route to the letter. He managed to snap a lot of pictures from his bus, so why not show the less impressive shots as well? It's impossible to not see any this when you traverse the whole country from north to south.

surge• 13 years ago

If you look at his blog, and read the captions you get an idea of how controlled his experience is.

First, the camera doesn't get checked (although it might have been) because they have a "no photos" rule in certain places, like the mausoleum. The tour is guided and controlled and he never allowed to go anywhere or leave on his own, so he is only taken to the best places DPRK has to offer.

The simple reason for not having less impressive shots is he was never taken anywhere or allowed to take pictures where things were less impressive. It's not misleading, he only had pictures of the places he was allowed to go (which they wouldn't likely let him into areas that gave him a negative impression) and was allowed to use his camera.

resu3• 13 years ago

You are not allowed to take photos while sitting in a vehicle at any time.

Trust me, I've been on this same tour. If he managed to sneak those pictures from the bus he could have taken a lot more.

What I'm saying is that when you are taken on a tour of many parts of the city, and around the country, it is impossible to hide the reality of the situation there, no matter how hard the government tries (and it does try very hard with its limited resources).

gambiting• 13 years ago

I was always fascinated by cars in North Korea - how are they imported there? How do people fill up? How would you get a driver's licence? Does the concept of speeding even exist?

Also - I think that in the second picture there is a BMW to the bottom left?

North Korea 2013 – A travel journal

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