Swatting Down Cameras In North Korea
Dan Schoor just got back from North Korea, and blogged about it.
"When I pointed my camera at the large picture of Kim Il-sung that hung over the stadium, a woman in uniform swatted my camera down, resulting in a blurry shot of the chairs. I noted the stern, disapproving stares from at least a couple of them and I hoped they weren't about to take my camera - fortunately they didn't.
We exited the performance and saw a table selling "Arirang" posters - no North Koreans seemed to be buying them, but we Americans quickly descended upon the sellers like hungry imperialists and purchased every last one within minutes. Quite a scene. I bought two.
These sellers, and others in the DPRK, took euros, dollars, and Chinese RMB - we weren't allowed to have and never saw actual North Korean won. Exchange rates changed slightly from place to place with no clear pattern - usually a dollar was worth less than a euro (the current actual exchange rate) but some sellers treat them as being equal in value. A price might be quoted as ten euro, and when one of us would say he/she had dollars, ten dollars would be accepted. Sometimes the RMB was considered to be 10 euro, sometimes more. But we were in North Korea - odd exchange rates were one of the least unusual things about being there.
We got back to the hotel around 10pm and were told we were allowed to walk within 100 meters of the front door but no further. I had never experienced such a situation in my life - a very weird feeling to be told that you are locked down at home for the night like a child. But I knew this was part of the deal in traveling to North Korea."
"When I pointed my camera at the large picture of Kim Il-sung that hung over the stadium, a woman in uniform swatted my camera down, resulting in a blurry shot of the chairs. I noted the stern, disapproving stares from at least a couple of them and I hoped they weren't about to take my camera - fortunately they didn't.
We exited the performance and saw a table selling "Arirang" posters - no North Koreans seemed to be buying them, but we Americans quickly descended upon the sellers like hungry imperialists and purchased every last one within minutes. Quite a scene. I bought two.
These sellers, and others in the DPRK, took euros, dollars, and Chinese RMB - we weren't allowed to have and never saw actual North Korean won. Exchange rates changed slightly from place to place with no clear pattern - usually a dollar was worth less than a euro (the current actual exchange rate) but some sellers treat them as being equal in value. A price might be quoted as ten euro, and when one of us would say he/she had dollars, ten dollars would be accepted. Sometimes the RMB was considered to be 10 euro, sometimes more. But we were in North Korea - odd exchange rates were one of the least unusual things about being there.
We got back to the hotel around 10pm and were told we were allowed to walk within 100 meters of the front door but no further. I had never experienced such a situation in my life - a very weird feeling to be told that you are locked down at home for the night like a child. But I knew this was part of the deal in traveling to North Korea."
posted by Max Hartshorne at 12:32 AM
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