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Is a minder just the person who watches over you when you visit North Korea?

• sorbus 17y ago
  Like a tour guide, only with a duty to constant watch visitors and keep them away from anything deemed unsuitable, including unsupervised talks with normal citizens. (Disclaimer: I haven't been to North Korea, this is just the definition I've gotten from what I've read about people who have. Take it with a grain of salt.)
  • jerf 17y ago
    Yes. Totalitarian regimes have been using those for a long time. In the anthology "Expanded Universe", Heinlein has an extended description of his trip to the USSR with his wife who could speak Russian, which they for some mysterious reason neglected to tell the Russians. North Korea may not be structurally communist, but this article really reminded me of Heinlein's story. There's definitely an established pattern of how a totalitarian regime deceives its visitors. (Which it desires despite the danger, as it wants the visitors to take back good propaganda to their host country. I suspect it's getting harder as the wealth gap grows larger every year. Even putting on a "decent face" is getting hard/expensive when you're from a country where the Wal-Mart, at or near the bottom of the wealth scale, is clean, brightly-lit, and full-to-overflowing of products for sale.)