Ghost of Darwin promoting tours of North Korea. Selectively.
I can’t improve much on of the latest American doofus to get himself arrested in North Korea, despite all my considerate public service warnings to stay the f**k out of there. For some people, neither ethics nor personal safety are good enough reasons to heed these.
In fact, some North Korea tour companies claim that arrests are good for their business. If this is true, it’s cause for us to reflect on how quickly the genetic blessings of natural selection fade once man triumphs over nature. One curse of a modern civil society is that the sort of people for whom the bright flashes and zapping sounds only make the light more alluring can survive, and tragically for us all, procreate. It’s futile to warn these people. They can’t hear you over the whispered vengeance of Darwin’s spirit, telling them how adventurous all their hipster friends will think they are after they come home. Now, fly to the pretty light. It’s kinder this way.
North Korea claims that its latest cull is one Miller Matthew Todd, but the tour company that sold him down the Taedong says his name is Matthew Todd Miller. North Korea also claims that Miller sought asylum in the North (Uri Tours claims to know nothing about this). If that’s true, the voices in Miller’s head could have belonged to just about anyone, although I hesitate to accept North Korea’s claim at face value.
As G.I. Korea points out, Miller was actually detained two weeks ago, but North Korea only announced the arrest now, to coincide with President Obama’s visit to Seoul. This is interesting, because the U.S. Criminal Code’s definition of “international terrorism” includes “violent acts that … would be a criminal violation if committed within the jurisdiction of the United States, [and] appear to be intended … to affect the conduct of a government by … kidnapping.” (I realize that the Foreign Assistance Act’s definition of terrorism is narrower, but it also arguably fits, given that kidnapping and hostage-taking are generally considered to be crimes of violence.)
North Korea was removed from the list of state sponsors of terrorism on October 11, 2008. Discuss among yourselves.
Uri Tours, the unethical tour agency that sold Miller his tour of North Korea, claims that it’s trying to get Miller released. Incredibly enough, Uri Tours still insists that it’s safe to visit North Korea, something Uri Tours isn’t in a position to say. Assurances like these become null and void the instant North Korea decides to arrest a doofus or two in advance of a presidential visit or a nuke test. And if some tour companies say it’s actually good for business when tourists are arrested, you’re entitled to question how much urgency they attach to getting them released. Furthermore, any tour company that operates in North Korea knows that pushing the regime too hard for a customer’s release risks bankruptcy, or worse.
It’s tempting to write Miller’s detention off as a disguised act of mercy to our gene pool, but if (as seems likely) he’s mentally unstable, someone will whine loudly enough to force the State Department to bargain for his release. At some point, our government will either have to tell Americans that they enter North Korea at their own risk, re-invoke the Trading With the Enemy Act to ban transactions incident to travel to North Korea, or both.
Unfortunate to ironically invoke natural selection in any discussion of North Korea. North Korea is the sine qua non of functioning Darwinian states in the world today, and is no advert for whatever benefits natural selection brings to societies. Too, the very name of that travel racket –Uri Tours- is ironic. “Uri”, as anyone semi conversant in Korean will know, means our, us, we, etc, but not in reference to any universal brotherhood of man. The sense is more akin to us Koreans, we Koreans, our Koreans. In the same way Sinn Fein means We Ourselves in Gaelic, and is a moniker of exclusivity rather than inclusivity, so the term uri is more or less used to rope off the object to Koreans (ex-president Roh Moo-hyun’s old political party was called Uri Party). No travel agency on God’s clean earth is working for the man more than Uri Tours. There will be speculation that poor Miller is schizophrenic, borderline, etc, but I’d say that anyone “holidaying” in North Korea and handing cash to that cabal of Hieronymus Bosch role-players who isn’t there on an unspoken politicking visit needs to check the working order of their psychology.
Darwin’s good, but Hobbes is better….
“In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain, and consequently, not culture of the earth, no navigation, nor the use of commodities that may be imported by sea, no commodious building, no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force, no knowledge of the face of the earth, no account of time, no arts, no letters, no society, and which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death, and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”
Although it means believing KCNA, I can very easily see some stupid college kid thinking “derp I saw that thing online that said weed is like, in North Korea. I’m gonna be a political guy like that Snow-dude it’s gonna be cool.”
Please stay home for the remainder of your life so your television can feed you everything you need to know about the world and tell you how and what to think. It’s very convenient, just tune into their talking points and thought templates; press 1 for Fox News and the neocons, Press 2 for MSNBC and the liberals and Press 3 for CNN maybe pushing a middle of the road version of the world.
Save your judgments and proselytizing for someone else.
And press 4 for Juche. That will be $10,000. Here are your minders.
I like that….BTW, the trips are considerably cheaper than that. They run from around 1000Euro-1300Euro with the right company, mostly based out of China.
I will be pressing 4 for Juche in a few months, not sure I will be able to keep a straight face!
May the spirit of Darwin be with you.
Johnson, that 1,000 euro entry fee will be like the discount entrance ticket price to an amusement park in which you then have to pay for all the rides. But do be sure to tick off all of the following on the usual zany North Korea travelers checklist.
1. Bow nice and deep in front of the giant hollow statues of two mass murderers of their own men, women, and children. Offer those flowers at the statue’s foot -as I’m sure you’ll tell your kids you did- “ironically”.
2. Think two or three times before you make any utterance to your official tour guides for fear of offending their extremely brittle sensibilities. This is one you and your fellow travelers will spend very little time admitting to each other as you get on the bus. Off the bus. On the bus. Off the bus.
3. Enjoy a wide variety of Korean cuisine. It’s more authentic in the north because it is unsullied by elements of barbarian fusion! Pay no heed to the relationship between the authority which has granted you a visa and the millions of humans in the same geographical space who make soup from tree bark, etc. YOU know that is Fox News hamming it up.
4. Get drunk on Taedonggang beer and let loose in a noraebang. I mean it. Do this. This will be YOUR war story. Back in YOUR hometown bar.
5. Go see the DMZ from the North Korean side. Observe through binoculars if they let you the sheeple on the southern side being herded through the gates of imperialistic propaganda.
6. Switch your phone off.
7. Be where they allow you to be.
Oh, and come back to the site and tell us how wrong we all were. Start planning that post now.
Dan,
Great summary of what I already expect to occur during the visit. Sounds like you enjoyed yourself during your tour!