Flutterby™! : North Korea tourism

Metafilter has a link to an awesome site: A Korean speaking American's visit to North Korea. A travelog in North Korea. Many of the pictures remind me of slides of my youth; my dad's images from East Germany, other images from family friends who'd visited Moscow with the chandeliers in the subway. What also struck me was something that reminded me of that link to Eason Jordan's apologia for suppressing news coming from Iraq:

Ever wonder why CNN seems to be the only Western news organization regularly allowed into North Korea? The next room perhaps offered a clue. In the 'Gifts from America' room a whole section of one wall is taken up by gifts from CNN. A few engraved plaques, a coffee cup (yeah, a freaking coffee cup!), a logo ashtray, etc. Probably at most a couple hundred bucks worth of crap that nonetheless get pride of place in the museum - for they reveal obvious signs of respect from a world famous news organization. The people at CNN are certainly using their heads and showing they know how to play the game. Though one wonders how that fits in with journalistic integrity . . .

Anyway, strongly recommend reading this, it's a good reminder not only that closed societies still exist, but in reading it I found myself asking why the narrator was making waves, which quickly reminded me that unless we make waves, unless we celebrate the dissent, we risk that sort of fearful conformity.