Well, would you look at that. North Korea, one of the world’s most popular tourist destinations (according to North Korea) and definitely NOT one of the world’s worst totalitarian regimes (also according to North Korea) has gone and got itself an official tourism website.
Launched to convince foreign tourists to travel to the country, dprktoday.com is written entirely in Korean, so… probably not super helpful to most foreign tourists after all. (Also, considering the borders have been closed for over a month due to fears of Ebola, they’re kind of advertising to people they’re not going to let in anyway. But details shmetails – there’s videos!)
Just like North Korea itself, the website appears to have taken a ‘nothing to see here’ approach to the accusations of horrific human rights abuses often levelled at the country. Everything is glossy and more than a few pictures include some kind of cartoon flower graphic.
Now, given that the whole thing is in Korean, the website is a little hard to navigate. But that kind of just makes it a bit of a bizarre online lucky dip – you never quite know what kind of definitely-not-staged photo you’re going to land on next.
So, after much random clicking, we’ve chosen the 9 most notable parts of North Korea’s new tourism website:
1. The homepage is the epitome of cutting edge design:
2. It’s almost definitely running on some kind of 1990s-style dial-up connection.
This thing is slow to load. SLOW. Each picture appears chunk by chunk. You know the internet first became a thing and it would take half an hour to upload a single picture of Hanson and/or the Buffy cast. dprktoday.com is pretty much like that:
(almost) via dprktoday.com
Top Comments
'The Orphan Master's Son' - freaking fab fictional book about a North Korean spy, based on the accounts of many defected North Korean people. I highly recommend it for anyone with more than a passing fancy in understanding more about North Korea.
Totally agree! Great book, and definitely an 'easy' way to educate yourself on North Korea.
In the same vein, I'd recommend The People Smuggler for a quick insight on Iraq and the smuggling trade from Indonesia to Australia. A definite must read for people who think people smugglers are "scum" profiting off "queue jumpers".
Should also read "Escape from Camp 14" about a guy who was born in one of the labour camps and escaped from it. It's really chilling to learn about the camps and how cruel people can be to each other.
Thank you, I will seek it out and read it post-haste!
Another fun fact for those interested in North Korea. Kim Jong Il got 5 holes-in-one the first time he ever played golf! Reported on North Korea News .Yes, there is actually a newspaper you can read online which has the most ridiculous biased stuff. So ridiculous it's actually entertaining.
Please, no, Apple. There is nothing funny about North Korea and its regime. They starve and torture people. It is a Stalinist country.
It's called irony Luxxe. Take a chill pill.