Pretty simple actually. A tour group has a package were you can visit North Korea.
IS it OK to do so?
Pretty simple actually. A tour group has a package were you can visit North Korea.
IS it OK to do so?
Yes, you should definitely go. Bring us a souvenir.
Since I have neither unlimited vacation time nor unlimited money to spend on vacations, I’m not going to vacation in NK when there are loads of more pleasant places to go when on vacation.
What do you mean by “OK?” Do you mean, am I going? Then no. Not much interest. Do you mean should it be prohibited? Again, no. We’re free Americans and should be allowed to travel anywhere we want, including Cuba and North Korea.
However, I think it’s a generally bad idea and wouldn’t recommend it to my children. (North Korea, that is. Cuba is fine)
My issue is the bowing to Kim’s statues thing. If it weren’t for that, and also the high cost, ($3,000?), I think, yes, it’d be fascinating.
Seems like a very bad idea to me.
I’d rather visit Pripyat. Luckily, that’s a level of development NK can plausibly hope to attain, so there’s always the future.
I wouldn’t recommend it. But if you’re hell-bent on going, I’d be curious to hear the report out when (if) you return.
The thing is that its not even going to be very good as an adventurous holiday. Your entire trip is going to be carefully orchestrated by the government and you will be followed by handlers every where you go. Unless you want to pretty much guarantee you get the same treatment as Otto, you are only going to see what they want you to see, which will be a false Potemkin version of North Korea. Also to every extent possible your visit will be used as PR to bolster the Kim Regime, so its not as if your visit will in any way help the beleaguered North Koreans.
I guess the only thing is that you can boast to your friends that you did something really stupid and survived.
I wouldn’t vacation in North Korea if you paid me.
I should have been more specific. Permissions are not a consideration. I just wanted peoples opinions on whether or not going to NK as a tourist is a stupid idea.
I guess it’s assumed the tourist would be American. If not, I don’t know if it’s a great idea to visit NK, but by and large not as dangerous as it is for Americans. Or Japanese (the colonial history and largely imaginary war of resistance by the Korean communists) or ROK (which country is it?) nationals. But say PRC nationals I’d think the danger, in terms of the NK govt looking for a pretext to lock you up, is far less. The world at large somewhere in between (did the country participate on the UN side in the 1950-53 war? that might matter).
From US POV I answered no way. I would actually like to go there, but it’s pending a big change in the govt, assuming I live that long.
There are numberless places in the world to visit that are both safer and more interesting. Why bother?
I would say generally a stupid idea, but I can imagine exceptions.
But, hey, people make stupid decisions all the time. I’m not found of the idea of climbing Mt. Everest, but others think it’s a grand adventure.
Not at my current age, but there’s an off-chance that it’s something I might have been interested in when I was younger, though I would have made sure I got my Polish passport first and travelled on that instead of an American one. Most likely I would not have gone, but curiousity did bring me to places like Bosnia and Kosovo when I was in my 20s (though shortly after the main hostilities were over. It was under IFOR and KFOR back then, but it was still a tense place with landmines all over the place and towns divided by ethnicity.) I could imagine myself getting drawn in by the lure of a tourist company that has contacts there and arranges vacations. It’s a very low, low chance, but not completely something out of the realm of what I might have done back then.
I think people from the US who are traveling to North Korea need to sign a waiver: “I understand that I am traveling to North Korea at my own risk. No resources of the United States Government (Monetary, Personnel, or Negotiation) will be available in the event of arrest or detention.”
Too many other interesting places to see.
Are there beaches? When my brother was living in Germany, I turned down an invitation to visit. I prefer beach vacations, ideally Caribbean beach vacations.
Deal!
Sure.
If I had visited every other country in the world, and I just needed to check off North Korea in order to complete the set, I might think about vacationing there.
Not just no but Hell No.
My kids were both born in South Korea. I wouldn’t put it past the North Korean bastards to decide to grab them (if they were with me) or grab me and hold me for ransom just because.
If I wanted to experience the official fictions of a fascistic oligarchy, I would watch MSNBC.
Regards,
Shodan