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iodine posted:I'm pretty sure it's not just white people who visit North Korea. Who the gently caress cares?
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| # ? Feb 16, 2013 15:10 |
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| # ? May 23, 2013 17:28 |
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hitension posted:I haven't read the entire thread, so I apologize if this was brought up already: Lots of people have been referring to NK's current leader as just "Un". Is "flabby dictator" ok with you?
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| # ? Feb 16, 2013 15:17 |
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Devyl posted:Case in point: "American In North Korea" I wish, really really wish that just once these people could be accidentally taken off the beaten path and see the living conditions outside their little tours. Then again, you could stroll this doucebag and the "I've visited NK 100 times" guy through a Nork concentration camp with a torture in progress and they'd just flip their "mental blinders" on and rant and rave how great it is to go to North Korea as soon as they got back to their blogs.
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| # ? Feb 16, 2013 15:44 |
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Blistex posted:It's the new "Hipster/Ironic" tourist destination for white people who want photos from places their other hipster friends have not been. Yeah, I guess you can berate them, but the tour company they use isn't even owned by the DPRK (actually its British owned). The tour company obviously needs to supply DRPK with money, but so do a lot of companies that your own money has gone to at some point. So I feel its tough to get so up in arms about that when nobody really cares what companies are doing investments there. That transfers a lot more money than 12 tours a year do. Also, a lot of those people on those tours are there unironically, they really support the DPRK which is truly awful. If you really want people to hate: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCcATPPP0A4 Uncle Jam fucked around with this message at Feb 16, 2013 around 15:59 |
| # ? Feb 16, 2013 15:52 |
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And there's only one dislike.
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| # ? Feb 16, 2013 16:17 |
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I... know people like this. They'd seriously threaten to fight you if you listed similarities between North Korea and China to fascism.
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| # ? Feb 16, 2013 16:35 |
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Uncle Jam posted:Yeah, I guess you can berate them, but the tour company they use isn't even owned by the DPRK (actually its British owned). The tour company obviously needs to supply DRPK with money, but so do a lot of companies that your own money has gone to at some point. So I feel its tough to get so up in arms about that when nobody really cares what companies are doing investments there. That transfers a lot more money than 12 tours a year do. Yeah there are tons of these people, useful idiots all of them, I posted one earlier in the thread. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9_G7LjqzVc God I want beat this guy to the loving ground. pengun101 fucked around with this message at Feb 16, 2013 around 17:34 |
| # ? Feb 16, 2013 17:31 |
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Remember when Vice TV came out with this: http://www.vice.com/the-vice-guide-...th-korea-1-of-3 The "Vice Guide" to North Korea. While again it was a guided tour, he kept trying to turn on his camera and see things that they were trying to hide. While it's not perfect, it does give a bit more of a view. It's 4 years old so a bit dated, but aside from a regime and policy shift, not much has changed I think.
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| # ? Feb 16, 2013 17:34 |
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What the hell is this? I just can't wrap my mind around what he's trying to tell us here. Is it that hard to find chickens to shoot at home or is it the disgusted looking "cute korean rifle attendants" that makes this such a great experience?
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| # ? Feb 16, 2013 18:27 |
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Paxicon posted:What the hell is this? I just can't wrap my mind around what he's trying to tell us here. Is it that hard to find chickens to shoot at home or is it the disgusted looking "cute korean rifle attendants" that makes this such a great experience? Everything about that is creepy as hell, including the comments "This is so great. You can see the worry on the girls’ faces. With good reason – Neil looks like a champion. They’d probably never seen so much testosterone in one place before." Uhhh And theres all these stealth photos of the girls http://americaninnorthkorea.com/201...girls-and-beer/ Edit: holy poo poo that guy with the cigar wrote The Game, aaahahahahaha Uncle Jam fucked around with this message at Feb 16, 2013 around 18:35 |
| # ? Feb 16, 2013 18:32 |
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hitension posted:"Kim Jong Un" is a Korean name, written in the East Asian order. "Kim" is a last name; "Jong-Un" is a first name. This is actually interesting and educational, thanks for the explanation. de_dust posted:I... know people like this. They'd seriously threaten to fight you if you listed similarities between North Korea and China to fascism. I once suggested to my Chinese ex-girlfriend on the way to the grocery store that the Chinese government was kind've hosed up in some ways (not that any government isn't) and then I had to sit in the parking lot while she berated me about how as an American reading American newspapers I knew nothing about China. The nationalism some Chinese/Korean citizens here and there feel is akin to the ridiculous patriotism some Americans display (disclaimer: I am in no way, whatever my political views, comparing the U.S. government to that of the DPRK). In San Francisco, a city where self-identified "Asians" are the majority population, copies of a city-wide free newspaper were taken out of their distribution bins the morning they were put out and discarded before anyone could read them because they 1) published an ongoing series numbering how many Chinese citizens have defected from the CCP and 2) ran a (truthful) piece about how local Chinese power-broker Rose Pak basically bought Ed Lee his mayor's seat (he was named interim mayor, said he wasn't going to run for a full-term, groups started by Pak in his name collected millions of dollars more than any actual candidate with no campaign financing limit because he wasn't technically running, then suddenly he said, "hey I'm running now, thanks for the money," and won; also there were videos of campaign members taking the ballots of elderly Chinese residents and filling them in just to make sure they voted correctly). I really wish there was some functional example of a government somewhere between unbridled nationalistic capitalism and authoritarianism masked by socialist/communist ideals. /\ /\ /\ The Vice video is surprisingly good, as are some of the other documentaries posted here. http://americaninnorthkorea.com/2011/12/03/north-korea-shooting-range-guns-girls-and-beer/ posted:Sure, the Gun Store in Vegas may have MP5s ready to rip up some paper targets downrange, but the shooting ranges in Pyongyang put that all to shame with cold beer and hot women in uniform reloading your weapon for you, then yelling at you in Korean to put down your beer while you fire for greater accuracy and safety or something. Yeah or maybe "don't hold a beer in one hand while firing a gun in the other around a bunch of people you dumbass" or something. How exactly do these guys get booked on oceanographic research ships? TheMammoth fucked around with this message at Feb 16, 2013 around 18:45 |
| # ? Feb 16, 2013 18:38 |
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TheMammoth posted:I really wish there was some functional example of a government somewhere between unbridled nationalistic capitalism and authoritarianism masked by socialist/communist ideals. While not perfect, lots of Europe falls into that category.
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| # ? Feb 16, 2013 18:46 |
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TheMammoth posted:This is actually interesting and educational, thanks for the explanation. Reminds me of when my friend's Chinese girlfriend broke up with him because he wouldn't wrap the Chinese flag around himself at a march against the Dalai Lama visiting the town. I drove past the march and it was so surreal because it was in this small midwestern town. I don't really understand the logic of being a nationalist while living in another country but there you go.
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| # ? Feb 16, 2013 19:02 |
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HonorableTB posted:I'm honestly tired of North Korea threads by this point. They always devolve into a cyclical nature: Vice Guide, military circlejerking over what would happen to Seoul, human rights violations, labor camps, back to Vice Guide. It's a bit stale by now considering they do this saber rattling literally multiple times per year, and have done so for many years and nothing has come of it because no one involved wants the regime to collapse. I agree that every quarterly North Korea thread is dull and follows exactly the same trajectory. I don't get why the military circlejerk happens though, I mean surely we all know this ISN'T going to lead to wear? Its almost as bad a the military circlejerking in the Iran threads, as if Iran is actually planning for an ariel war over the Persian/Arabian Gulf. However... pentyne posted:This has been discussed to death in this thread and you are completely wrong. The NK artillery is hilarious outdated, the shells probably not stored properly, the army not trained to aiming and fire, etc. We do have a very recent example of a North-South Korean artillery duel, when North Korea shelled a South Korean island where South Koreans were carrying out an artillery exercise. Strangely the North Korean artillery did not seem to explode or collapse, their untrained gunners managed to kill two South Korean gunners, and the South Korean counterfire...well.. http://lewis.armscontrolwonk.com/ar...low-earth-orbit  Perhaps not super effective. EDIT: If I could introduce some novelty to a North Korea thread I would recommend this Sigfried Hecker talk on North Korea's nuclear programme, and his impressions of North Korea in general. Very informative: http://cisac.stanford.edu/events/go...why_it_matters/ mediadave fucked around with this message at Feb 16, 2013 around 19:31 |
| # ? Feb 16, 2013 19:28 |
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Uncle Jam posted:Reminds me of when my friend's Chinese girlfriend broke up with him because he wouldn't wrap the Chinese flag around himself at a march against the Dalai Lama visiting the town. I drove past the march and it was so surreal because it was in this small midwestern town. I don't really understand the logic of being a nationalist while living in another country but there you go. Irony being that they are able to protest in US/Canada/UK/etc. China's policies, and the way the rich see themselves is so hosed up that it really deserves its own thread and will only serve to derail this one with stories about coal-boss weddings and disposable Mercedes. Point begin, they really don't understand that "other people" should be allowed to have their own opinions, because they come from a society where they are always right because they are filthy rich, and that's all that matters in the PRC.
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| # ? Feb 16, 2013 19:33 |
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Blistex posted:China's policies, and the way the rich see themselves is so hosed up that it really deserves its own thread and will only serve to derail this one with stories about coal-boss weddings and disposable Mercedes. Point begin, they really don't understand that "other people" should be allowed to have their own opinions, because they come from a society where they are always right because they are filthy rich, and that's all that matters in the PRC. Definitely true and I've seen it first hand, but I've encountered more than one Chinese grad student who acknowledges that China is hosed up politically and human rights-wise (universally though, I've yet to meet a mainlander who has any idea what I'm talking about when I bring up the 'tank man' - not that I'm trying to troll them or anything). Of course, those also tend to be the ones that stay in the US after earning their PhDs. Taiwanese and Hong Kong grad students know exactly what the gently caress is up though. I don't think I've ever met someone from Hong Kong who identifies as anything else as 'from Hong Kong.' Definitely not as a citizen of the PRC.
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| # ? Feb 16, 2013 19:58 |
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Jiro Kage posted:Remember when Vice TV came out with this: http://www.vice.com/the-vice-guide-...th-korea-1-of-3 Literally from 2 pages ago: HonorableTB posted:I'm honestly tired of North Korea threads by this point. They always devolve into a cyclical nature: Vice Guide, military circlejerking over what would happen to Seoul, human rights violations, labor camps, back to Vice Guide. It's a bit stale by now considering they do this saber rattling literally multiple times per year, and have done so for many years and nothing has come of it because no one involved wants the regime to collapse. And that same guide has been posted to death in this thread. What the hell people? I get that it's a very stark and revealing look at how all the corruption in North Korea is swept under the rug and hidden from tourists, but y'all are just not reading the thread at this point. Or even the last couple pages of it before posting.
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| # ? Feb 17, 2013 03:24 |
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Jiro Kage posted:Remember when Vice TV came out with this: http://www.vice.com/the-vice-guide-...th-korea-1-of-3 The one about NK labor camps in Russia is really good too. It's less depressing than you would imagine and full of hilarious awesome Russians. It's very revealing how pissy the NK higher up guys get too.
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| # ? Feb 17, 2013 03:31 |
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Hey guys have you seen this documentary? I think it's pretty informative. http://www.vice.com/the-vice-guide-...th-korea-1-of-3  Enough fuckery, I want to know about the relationship between China and North Korea; do they want to keep NK as a buffer zone because they dislike the United States? The United States outsources a lot of labor to China, so wouldn't they be on friendly-ish terms? What's with the strong nationalism in many Asian countries? My Japanese family members vehemently dislike North Korea, but not to the point where they describe the NK as autocratic swine or whatever.
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| # ? Feb 17, 2013 03:33 |
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Uncle Jam posted:Everything about that is creepy as hell, including the comments I know the guy in the second photo, and he knows exactly how hosed up the situation over there is. He's been kidnapped and held for ransom twice in his travels, so he knows how dangerous it is, too. It's more of a morbid fascination with the whole thing, like how people study serial killers and Hitler, just with more money and free time.
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| # ? Feb 17, 2013 03:51 |
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Poniard posted:What's with the strong nationalism in many Asian countries? My Japanese family members vehemently dislike North Korea, but not to the point where they describe the NK as autocratic swine or whatever. Well, I think the way Japan basically dominated most of Asia in WW2 goes a long way to explaining why their own brand of nationalism (at this point) is quite different from other countries in Asia.
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| # ? Feb 17, 2013 03:54 |
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It's also, essentially, the same brand of nationalism North Korea boasts about now - Superiority amongst the asians,only ones keeping Dirty Whitey from doing as he pleases amongst our poor poor brothers etc. Seriously, the parallels between Imperial Japan and They-wish-they-had-the-petrol-to-be-imperial-beyond-their-own-borders North Korea in terms of ethno-centricity are equally humorous as they are depraved.
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| # ? Feb 17, 2013 07:37 |
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WarpedNaba posted:It's also, essentially, the same brand of nationalism North Korea boasts about now - Superiority amongst the asians,only ones keeping Dirty Whitey from doing as he pleases amongst our poor poor brothers etc. As commented on in the Cleanest Race lecture, it is almost exactly the same: the early NK propagandists were Japanese collaborators. If people havent seen the lecture yet and are interested about NK, they should just drop whatever they're doing and watch it.
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| # ? Feb 17, 2013 08:09 |
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Devyl posted:Case in point: "American In North Korea" It seems he noticed the hits from this thread. quote:Haters gonna hate – this “doucebag” will be going to the DPRK 6 times this year while Blistex and those like him sit in their parent’s basement, lurking on forums, and spreading hate. 
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| # ? Feb 17, 2013 08:23 |
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There was a blog floating around where two guys just caught the train into NK from Moscow. They were basically unescorted until they got closer to the cities and were basically in places where they shouldn't have been. At the same time they were literal trainspotters so it didn't have the annoying ironic edge to it because they were train sperges and not much else.
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| # ? Feb 17, 2013 08:47 |
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Tobaccrow posted:It seems he noticed the hits from this thread. Everyone on the internet you don't like is "in their parents' basement." And hipsters rarely dress the role or think of themseves as such. Hey guys look how great I am I'm funding fascism six times this year.
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| # ? Feb 17, 2013 08:54 |
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I can't really bring myself to hate or rag on the tour dudes or whatever because they're probably contributing a piddling amount of money to NK "for torture" or "propping up the regime" or whatever in exchange for giving a few people a little bit of a glimpse or humanizing face on the actual (pre-approved I know) people who live there and try to go about their daily lives and don't really give a poo poo about the US or great satan or whatever. Also OMGVBFLOL posted:Hey guys look how great I am I'm funding fascism six times this year.  seeing as to how it's pretty much solely foreign aid that's preventing the government from collapsing I'd say if you want to mock someone for "propping up the regime" you should find another target...But that's a whole other can of worms.
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| # ? Feb 17, 2013 09:19 |
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I'm surprised none of these new donglordes have bothered suiciding in an interesting manner after they arrive in North Korea. It's the perfect end for the attention whore, climbing up the Kim Jong Il/Sun statue and sticking your dick in its mouth while a friend covertly sends the pics world wide with a hidden sat phone. Hell, you'd get a posthumous Nobel Prize for  Chemistry .
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| # ? Feb 17, 2013 09:33 |
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Israfel posted:Also The question wasn't "who props up the regime the most." It was "is this guy a douche who thinks he's doing something great by giving North Korea money and patting himself on the back for it." Yes. Yes, he is. The scale of his contribution is irrelevant.
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| # ? Feb 17, 2013 10:30 |
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OMGVBFLOL posted:Everyone on the internet you don't like is "in their parents' basement." And hipsters rarely dress the role or think of themseves as such. It's easier to label them as such - deep down it belies a psychological need to "look" better and "do" more (By willingly funding Fascism, no doubt) than actually doing. And as if basement dwellers don't have anything good to offer themselves. Of course people who disagree with me are basement dwellers, and not geniuses with model looks, like me!
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| # ? Feb 17, 2013 10:50 |
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Who would want to go to North Korea six times a year?
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| # ? Feb 17, 2013 11:03 |
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Mind Loving Owl posted:Who would want to go to North Korea six times a year? Are you paying?
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| # ? Feb 17, 2013 11:08 |
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OMGVBFLOL posted:The question wasn't "who props up the regime the most." It was "is this guy a douche who thinks he's doing something great by giving North Korea money and patting himself on the back for it." Yes. Yes, he is. The scale of his contribution is irrelevant. He's not gleefully donating his money to get Dear Fatty a pizza every day and patting himself on the back dude, I think you're missing the point of what he's doing. Also every other government involved has a vested interest in and does support the regime/helps prop it up so hey why not.
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| # ? Feb 17, 2013 11:37 |
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Israfel posted:Also every other government involved has a vested interest in and does support the regime/helps prop it up so hey why not. Head in the sand logic.
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| # ? Feb 17, 2013 12:38 |
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/\ Is this a quality the Merchant Marine looks for? Wow, spot on about the blinders!  "You're giving money to, and are praising a horrible regime by choice!" I'm going to NK six more times! I'm in the Merchant Marine! You live in a basement! Irony being that the house I bought doesn't have a finished basement.
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| # ? Feb 17, 2013 13:59 |
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I know hipsters in the real military and the Merchant Marine is basically the hipster version of that, so...
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| # ? Feb 17, 2013 15:31 |
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Systemic Flaw posted:Are you paying? Maybe not to get there but definitely for the tail.
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| # ? Feb 17, 2013 15:44 |
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mr. nazi posted:Head in the sand logic. Uh no, South Korea certainly doesn't want to deal with the shitstorm of NK government dissolution, China sure as poo poo doesn't, the US can't really do much...everyone involved has a vested interest in propping up the regime. So while it's there if it's your idea of fun to get your jollies by strolling around Pyongyang taking pictures of dear leader's bronze dick then good for you I don't see the problem.
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| # ? Feb 17, 2013 15:48 |
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The difference is that you don't have any choice to where your tax dollars go, and it is pretty much impossible to trace money you spend in a company to ensure it doesn't go to supporting the regime. What you do know and have control over is paying North Korea directly to process your visa and go there to spend even more money without the "middle man" that is a government of corporation.
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| # ? Feb 17, 2013 15:56 |
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| # ? May 23, 2013 17:28 |
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I can't say I'm against North Korea tourism, if it brings a better life for a few people. The tour guide, the escorts, the local artists and artisans, the locals who are smiling (happy or not), etc. Some of them could live a crappier life if it weren't for promoting the regime's good look. If paying a new ivory backscratcher for Dear Leader is the price to pay for that, it might be the lesser of a few evils.
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| # ? Feb 17, 2013 16:13 |
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