- Joined
- May 9, 2006
- Posts
- 1,888
Really interesting report. What nationalities were on the tour, How many were on it
What were most people's reasons for going?
I find it fascinating
but just don't think I'm game enough to do it.
AFF Supporters can remove this and all advertisements
Australia X 5
Netherlands X 2
NZ X 1
Peru X 1
Belgium X 1
Hong Kong X 1
Canada X 1
We Aussies are soooooo nailing it again.
Very good question.
Most are seasoned travellers, where we really want to go somewhere different, to see what it is about, so the DPRK has always been on everyone's mind. It has also been mentioned that the meeting with Donald Trump really accelerated that 'want', because we want to see the country before it is opened up too much.
Birthday boy from Peru told me, the first time he went to China was during the cultural revolution. (I wasn't even born then)
Canadian told me, the first time he went to China was 2 years before Tiananmen Square (1987)
One Aussie was a former journalist.
Another one Aussie now works in foreign affairs field.
Both Belgium and myself were going into the DPRK for the second time. Turned out our first time were both in 2018, about 1 month apart.
The person from Hong Kong is actually a tour guide who takes Hong Kong people into the DPRK. He told me that he does the run the mill tours, so he is coming in this time as a tourist, in order to see places outside of run of the mill like Pyongyang and DMZ. He had taken 5 tour groups from Hong Kong into DPRK, and this would be his 7th times going into the DPRK. He works in finance full time in Hong Kong. He started being a tour guide into the DPRK because he developed an interest in Korea (both north and south), especially in history geopolitics stuffs. He though, instead of wasting his money from his full time job on going into the DPRK, why not be a tour guide so he would get paid to go in?
He speaks very good South Korean, so he gets picked on in the DPRK . This is actually to his advantage, because he could have a lot more, deeper conversations with other tour guides and locals, build rapport much quicker. When we had 2 nights of home stay, he was able to communicate with his host family, he told me that the family was really excited, put on karaoke for him, drank with him, talked until very late into the night.
There are 2 more points of interest I could make here. 2 of our Korean tour guides were quite young (as you could see from the photos, with one looking for a boyfriend). Those 2 were checking him out at the beginning, but it didn't last long, because he could speak Korean and was chatting local girls up everywhere and anywhere. I think by day 3, we would get off the bus, go somewhere, he would run off to chat with whatever local girl he could get his hands on, the 2 young girl tour guides would make sure he hasn't gotten himself into trouble, see him chatting up local girls, they would and then leave him alone and walk off.
Point 1, is he was able to get a lot more information from the locals he talked with, which may tell him different stories to what the tour guides had to say to us;
Point 2, is the fact that, as long as you have proven yourself to be trustworthy, the tour guides don't 'watch' you, like some people think, being watched by a hawk. It just does not happen, we were allowed to wonder around many places, shops, as long as we stayed within the area.
The tour guide from Hong Kong described it this way: You learn something new, you discover new things, about the DPRK every time you go in, so you want to go back in for more, and again, and again.
I personally would not recommend living in there, or staying for too long. You can actually easily become too comfortable, which is what some people call 'security risks'. However, going in, and following the rules when you are told, is all that is needed. In fact, because there are people telling you what is OK what is not OK, the rules are clear, and the expectation is set early, I found it easier to go to the DPRK.
China scares me 100 times more, because you don't know what you are dealing with, you don't know what is OK what is not OK.
Then there are many African countries I would like to go to, but their security situations are much worse (like you really should learn French if you go to some of the places).