World Hum | Travel | Knife Tricks: A Blogger Goes to North Korea

Travel dispatches from a shrinking planet

World Hum Travel Movie Club: National Lampoon’s ‘Vacation’

Philadelphia Welcomed Record Amount of International Visitors in 2007

Denali National Park Buses Going Hybrid?

Susan Sessions Rugh: ‘The Golden Age of American Family Vacations’

Elyse Franko asks the author of “Are We There Yet?” about the rise and fall of the family vacation, segregation in travel and how family trips are changing today

As a Woman, Can I Really Travel Without Much Fear for my Safety?

Vagabonding traveler Rolf Potts answers your questions about travel

Inside Slum Tourism

With mixed feelings, Rob Verger recently signed on for a tour of Rio de Janeiro’s favelas. He looks back on the experience—and the photos he was allowed to take.

Break Bread and Brie in France

Great cheese abounds in the land of Gaul, but dig in and you risk committing any number of faux pas. Terry Ward explains how to partake of the nation’s famed fromage with savoir faire.

10 Wanderlust-Inducing Summer Concerts

Call it world music or global pop or the sound of the world hum. Ben Keene reveals 10 acts on tour that are sure to transport you. Plus videos.

A Journey Into ‘The Second World’

Some bureaucrats joke that they would never claim expertise about countries they had not at least flown over. In an excerpt from his new book, Parag Khanna argues that real global understanding can only come from serious travel.

BOOKS

�The Worst Guidebook Writer Ever�?

Lonely Planet author Robert Reid reviews Thomas Kohnstamm’s “Do Travel Writers Go to Hell?” and weighs in on the controversy surrounding it

TRAVEL BLOG

5.10.07

Knife Tricks: A Blogger Goes to North Korea

On his blog Knife Tricks, Paul Karl Lukacs posts a Q&A with himself and asks this: Why go to North Korea? His answer: Why not? He knows the $2,200 he paid for his trip will mostly go to subsidize Kim Jong-Il’s totalitarian regime—he went with a Beijing-based group called Koryo Tours to attend a government-sanctioned festival—but he sees a benefit. He writes: “As the Dalai Lama said about travel to Tibet, ‘Go, and tell the world what you see.’”

Lukacs has started to blog and post photos from the experience, including his flight from Beijing to Pyongyang on a Soviet Union-made Ilyushin 62-M airplane. “I was placing my life in the hands of a 28-year-old machine built by a country that no longer existed and operated by a country that could not generate enough electricity to power its capital,” he writes. “I had to laugh.”

Lukacs says he’ll post more on his weblog, but not in other media. The North Korean government apparently doesn’t care what he writes online because the country’s citizens have no Internet access and, thus, there’s very little chance what he writes will influence or subvert the regime.

Image courtesy Guy Delisle from his graphic novel/travelogue, Pyongyang.

Posted by Michael Yessis • 5.10.07
Categories: Weblog • North Korea

Permalink • Comments (1)

COMMENTS

Good work in your blog, it’s a nice one. I have a new site hope you will like it as well. Please check this out http://www.2-clicks-kitchenknives.com.

By karl on 9.30.07 at 08:09 PM