A weird, bizarre, yet completely normal not dangerous stay in North Korea
About 20 years ago, my week unfolded in ways that might seem strange from the outside world but felt entirely ordinary whilst I was there: a man spent his mornings meticulously tending a small city garden, hundreds of children lined up to enter school, coworkers gathered for lunch, swapping jokes that sounded oddly familiar no matter the language. A couple of cute North Korean ladies showed me around their little state-owned mostly empty shop, while couples sat romantically in the park and strolled along the riverside. Women in bright beautiful dresses, and men in stately uniforms, and I socialized before filling a larger-than-the-Rose Bowl stadium to enjoy (or tolerate) the Mass Kyoro Games.
It wasn’t so foreign.…
But also, everywhere I went, the same dude always appeared nearby, behind me somewhere. He was there when I hung out on a captured US spy ship, there when I hung out in the middle of a 8-lane highway and not one car passed by, when I walked within 6 feet of the South Korean border near armed guards on both sides. To the outside world, their mysterious rhythms might feel unusual, even puzzling—but underneath it all were the same small fears, quiet joys, routines, and connections that define life anywhere. In the end, the week wasn’t so strange at all; it was just people being people, shaped by out of reach circumstances but connected by the same everyday worldwide humanity. How the hell was NK more simple then, than some parts of the U.S. today?
