A Motorcycle Ride Through North Korea

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wow you've done that? awesome. for some reason north korea has always interested me. how did you get in? what did you go for? what was it like?

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I went in through China. There is usually one window a year or so when Americans can get in, and it's during the Arirang games in late summer. I went in May, which means that I wasn't going during that window, and thus my passport was not shown. It cost me a pretty penny in bribes and I do have some guilt about where that money went to.

The trip itself was okay. Everything was tailored in my itinerary without much say. This was about three years ago when I was still in college, and I wouldn't do it again because it's not worth seeing again, or worth losing my clearance.

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Can't say a trip to NK is high on the bucket list, but sounds like quite an adventure.

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Check out the video above and other Vice videos at least. If anything, they add a human element to a state which we rarely, if ever, get to see up close.

Thanks for posting, Mr. Rodman....

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Thanks for posting, Mr. Rodman

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There will be a very interesting book about his visits in the future, and we will all be very surprised at what we learn.

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There will be a very interesting book about his visits

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Probably ghost written.....

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When they were riding through the farmlands, I was trying to find signs of production quotas, laziness, etc.

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Not surprisingly, we don't have much in the way of reliable statistics coming out of there. Most of what we do know comes from defectors. In the fall, I sat in on some of the UN Human Rights Council's commission on the DPRK meetings here in Seoul, and they had defectors speaking their about their experience. Other than the personal testimonies about their experiences in the prisons or the starvation of their families and friends (which can move a grown man to tears), we were able to learn quite a bit of qualitative info about the work ethics and the economy.

However, from my personal experience, the best way to describe it is an odd combination of Russia in the 1930's and China in the 1950s with traditional Korean customs and culture. The former makes it seem as though the entire state is one from a fiction novel, while the latter makes it very real and hit home, as they are the same traditions that my soon-to-be wife and in-laws and their ancestors have adhered to for thousands of years. Their landscape looks similar to that of the South, they eat the same food, speak the same language, celebrate the same holidays, and, until 1948, had the same history. There are virtually no places on Earth that are as homogeneous as the Korean peninsula, and that's a very depressing reality when one considers the present situation.

Asia fascinates me. Seriously dude, post everything you can all night and I'll sit here and read it.

On a scale of 0 to 10, what was your average level of unease throughout the trip?

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On a scale of 0 to 10, what was your average level of unease throughout the trip?

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With 10 being pissing in my pants, I was probably about 7 when I got in that boat and saw glimpses of North Korean soldiers with AK's on the other side. Once I realized I wasn't going to be thrown into prison, it was fine. I payed off the right people apparently.