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Absolutely not, unless I was going to kill their leaders.
Rather my sentiments. As a lifelong fanatic anti-communist a visit would be unthinkable. Going one step farther, a couple of years ago had a chance to tour China at a very good price and flat turned it down. Will never go to a communist country, and even former communist nations would be iffy. Russia is out, although might consider former Soviet bloc nations such as Poland or Hungary.
Well, why not? It's not very high on my to-visit list, but if I ever do get the chance to go for some humanitarian mission or something similar, I'll probably jump on it!
Location: A circle of Hell so insidious, infernal and odious, Dante dared not map it
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No.
I went on this amazing rock climbing trip on Ganghwado, just off the coast of Incheon. It was beautiful and lush, but with low clouds and drizzle. We climbed to this ridge that looked like a backbone, and from where I stood I could see peaks cresting above the clouds only a couple hundred feet away. Eventually the clouds began to break and I could see the Yellow Sea and the Korean Peninsula come into clear view... and then there was North Korea, just sitting there and sucking. It actually looked bleak just on the other side of the border.
I also was dating someone stationed in Dongducheon some time earlier than that excursion, and got a somewhat up-close look of that situation. That was enough for me to not want to go there.
I'd buy that if you had freedom of movement and interaction like you have even in other repressed nations like China or Cuba. But you're not getting to know anything about PDRK on a trip like this; you're being shown a manufactured facade of the country. The most you can hope for is to glean clues about what really goes on there while they immerse you in propaganda from the time you step foot there until the time you leave. That would get old really quickly.
I traveled to China in 1979. Everywhere our small group went we were "controlled". What we saw. Who we spoke to. Where we stayed (government guest houses on military bases). But there were opportunities within that control to get a glimpse of life and briefly speak to the Chinese. A similar restricted trip was one I took to the USSR in 1980. Less restrictions but carefully orchestrated. Carefully controlled hotel choice. I learned a lot from these two trips ... even with the restrictions and I don't doubt I could learn more about North Korea and its citizens if I had the opportunity to visit this year.
I think it would be interesting, so long as I had a guarantee that I could leave when my trip was over, written in blood by Kim Il Wackadoodle Jr. himself.
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