How I Spent My North Korean Vacation
Sophie Schmidt — that’s former Google CEO Eric’s daughter — went to North Korea. Then she filed the most amusingly grim or grimly amusing travelogue since Tony Bourdain decided to get all deep about stuff. A quick mention of the lodgings in Pyongyang:
My father’s reaction to staying in a bugged luxury socialist guesthouse was to simply leave his door open.
Since we didn’t have cellphones or alarm clocks, the question of how we’d wake up on time in the morning was legitimate. One person suggested announcing “I’m awake” to the room, and then waiting until someone came to fetch you.
OK, Eric Schmidt would do that — apparently he regards his own privacy the way he regards yours. If you don’t have time to read the whole thing, at least take a look at the DPRK’s leading library.
That pegged my Creep-O-Meter.
(Hat tip to Will Collier, who knows exactly how to waste half my day.)
It’s why I’m content to let North Korea stay North Korea. We’d otherwise have to deprogram an entire country. At least East Germans had knowledge of the rest of the world. This is a cult.
Looks like their revolution has been frozen in amber.
Perhaps it will be a theme park some day.
I personally enjoy whipping out the North Korea card whenever a leftie tries the, “Oh, so you think the perfect country is Somalia, huh!” trope.
They really don’t like that.
I’m fascinated by the e-library. Or rather why they thought that was a worthy demonstration.
Was there a real library in the building? or just two floors of dudes staring at screens?
I’m guessing they don’t know that in this country, computers like that are in regular libraries and used mostly by lower income folks. The rest of us have several kinds of devices to do that same task literally anywhere, any time we please.
Funny. Kind of like a high tech cargo cult. They know high tech brings investment, or at least admiration, but have no clue the context at which a normal citizen would use the web.