Tag Archives: North Korea

North Korea

North Korea

To tell you the truth I was getting quite excited about visiting North Korea. A friend of mine had been there quite recently on a package tour from China; fully inclusive activities with not much room to breathe, but you do get to see a little bit of what it’s like on the other side. Not that we haven’t all been on the other side of midnight before.

I remember well walking from the incredibly lively and developed Kurfürstendamm in West Berlin through Checkpoint Charlie to the stark reality of East Berlin. I can remember walking through the Gum department store in Moscow and all I could buy was a pair of wooly gloves and a balaclava. Now it’s Gucci and all high-end shops. So I have been to the other side and crossed the line between capitalism and communism. I’ve even been to Cuba and saw what communism and years of blockades have done to that place.

But North Korea…now that’s a place I’d really like to go. Almost certainly, it’s grim. But there’s something amazing about grimness, when you know you can leave it after a few days. And who wouldn’t want to go to a country where one of my favorite films of all time, Team America, gives high profile to the leader and where another film gets self-censored by a bunch of wimps at Sony for fear of recrimination from the warlord! What’s this Darth Vader phobia? Let’s see the film – these are the same guys that were in Pineapple Express for goodness sake. You can’t be serious. I still fancy a few days in North Korea, it sure looks like fun from the outside…Not!