Trying to sample the nightlife scene in Pyongyang. Executive summary: it doesn’t exist and you’re not allowed to leave the hotels at night anyway. Or during the day, sans keeper. Or ever, really. This entire revelation is beggared by the fact that North Korea apparently has a tourism industry. Why in God’s name would anybody go there, if they didn’t have to? Sheer sadism?
…Don’t answer that: I suspect that the answer would be even more depressing.
Moe Lane
http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2011/12/satellite-image-shows-kim-jong.html
[embed]http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2011/12/satellite-image-shows-kim-jong.html[/embed]
Dadgummit, I know other people have embedded stuff here, why can’t I get the hang of it?
People gather around train wrecks, wouldn’t North Korea be the equivalent of a national train wreck? The tracks are crooked, the driver crazy, and the wheels are spinning off at a high rate of speed. Come to think of it, the tourists could have just stayed home to watch the same thing here…
qixlqatl — you have to fall back on basic HTML: <a href=”link destination”>visible text</a>
Sorry.
Regards,
Ric
Nah, Kresh. In most cases it’s hobbyist completionism, one more item to add to the brag list. It’s the same impulse that leads some people to pay a year’s salary for the last, rare baseball card that fills out the 1953 Topps sequence. Sometimes it’s for personal satisfaction, but more often it’s for bragging rights.
There are of course the minority of Duranty-wannabees, but they wouldn’t be writing that type of article.
Regards,
Ric
Thanks Ric. That is not what the wordpress site suggested, but I will give it a try. Of course, that may have been intended for wordpress admins, sooooo…. gimme my hammer, I’ll fix it!!
There are certain companies that focus on military history tours and that take vets and their families up north for battlefield tours.
The last guy I saw who wrote about tourism in NK wasn’t a ‘tourist’ per se; he was an animator who had been sent there as part of his job (evidently a bunch of anime/cartoon/whatever that are actually animated by Nork labor… who knew?) and was trying to get around on his off time.
He put out an illustrated book about his adventurs in Norkland oh, maybe ten years ago; a friend of mine borrowed it and I now I can’t even remember the name.