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North Korea 2013 – A travel journal
- adrow 13y agoI'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 13y agoI 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 13y agoI 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!
- power2u 13y agoI'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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oULO3i5Xra0
- dominotw 13y agoI don't think an average person can travel to DPRK on his/her own.
- steveklabnik 13y agoYou can... For example, Merrill Newman (who has been in the news lately) was taking a 10 day vacation there when he was detained.
- mikeash 13y agoBut not individually. You have to sign up for a group tour.
- steveklabnik 13y agoAh, you mean that kind of individually. I thought you meant "I'm not a journalist or a diplomat" individually.
- mikeash 13y agoWell, it wasn't me, but that's what I got from the "which is controlled by NK" comment. In short, I think he wanted to know if you could just go wander around without having government minders watching you all the time.
- steveklabnik 13y agoWhoops, my apologies for not double checking usernames.
- mikeash 13y agoNo problem, I'm pretty sure you're not the first person to make that mistake.
- spodek 13y agoHacker 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 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.
- steveklabnik 13y 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.
- GuiA 13y agoCompletely 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.
- steveklabnik 13y agoI will say that I'm not entirely comfortable with the volume of suggestions of mental illness as a way to discredit the DPRK leadership. I'm not suggesting that they're not in the wrong, but it really, really rubs me the wrong way, for the same way that suggesting the citizens of the DPRK are all branwashed monsters.
- GuiA 13y agoMmh, perhaps we were thinking of different "mainstream media". "Mental illness" is not the term I would use to describe DPRK leadership, just like I wouldn't use it to describe the 3rd reich's, or Mugabe's. I don't even care about justifying it- the facts speak for themselves about what they do, and it's certainly criminal. As for the people, I absolutely do not believe they are brainwashed monsters- merely that they do not have a choice, and get by as they can. For the ones in the higher levels (i.e. living in Pyongyang), it means doing whatever they can to stay in the favors of those in power and not get executed (remember what happened to the soccer coach when they got disqualified during the world cup?). For the vast majority of the rest, living in the almost-exclusively rural North Korean countryside, it means starving to death and not getting killed by the local military.
- ejdyksen 13y agoSemi-working mirror: http://www.dominik-schwarz.net.nyud.net/reisen/nordkorea2013/ http://www.dominik-schwarz.net.nyud.net/reisen/nordkorea2013...
- dualogy 13y agoWow, pics 57-61 showcase thousands of humans syncing together as... display pixels!
- breakall 13y agoWhy 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 13y agoIf you are on a device with a keyboard you can use the arrow keys to advance.
- jorge-d 13y agoGreat pictures, Thank you for sharing this!
- pekk 13y agoJust 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
- EliRivers 13y agoIt'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 13y agoI 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 13y 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 13y ago65? I thought that was well below the limit for a viable/self-sustaining gene pool.
- colinm 13y agoNK gets millions of tourists every year (mostly Chinese).
- WildUtah 13y agoThe 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 13y agoi found this collection of photos surprisingly illuminating. i feel like i have a better understanding of north korea just from seeing them.
- pradocchia 13y agoPyongyang 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 13y agoYeah, 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/72157633627597776/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/romantsisyk/sets/72157633627597...
- tokenadult 13y agoThe 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 13y agoThis annotated photo gallery is unusable without JavaScript. Why?
- thesis 13y agoThe answer to your question most likely is: Because that's how they wanted to make it.
- MattyRad 13y agoI 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/@ParkJiWoo http://gawker.com/how-i-escaped-north-korea-479759525/@ParkJ... [2] http://www.gq.com/news-politics/newsmakers/201306/kim-jong-il-sushi-chef-kenji-fujimoto-adam-johnson-2013 http://www.gq.com/news-politics/newsmakers/201306/kim-jong-i...
- Mikeb85 13y agoIt 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-travel-documentary/ 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 13y agoI 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 13y agoFor 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.
- resu 13y agoA tour of Sinuiju?
- b0rsuk 13y agoNorth 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.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- kapsel 13y agoI too went to North Korea a little more than a year ago. All my photos are here: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151040723772055.428189.754777054&type=1&l=332df9e16c https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151040723772055.... Feel free to ask any questions, i answered a couple in here last time the above album was mentioned.
- sakopov 13y agoThis was like going back in time to Soviet Russia of 1960s.
- RyanZAG 13y agoHas 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 13y agoIt'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.
- resu 13y agoI 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 13y agoIf 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.
- resu 13y agoYou 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).
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- gambiting 13y agoI 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?