"You do understand that you are entering a dangerous area, and that the possibility of injury or death is real."
October 31, 2008 2:11 AM Subscribe
At least the BoingBoing post doesn't point back to Metafilter.
posted by gman at 3:36 AM on October 31, 2008
posted by gman at 3:36 AM on October 31, 2008
Let me be the first to say, what is this boingboing you speak of? I kid.
The Vice Guide to North Korea that someone linked in that post is pretty terrific, too. Couple guys bribe their way into North Korea via Shenyang, China and film a freaking documentary. Insanity.
posted by empyrean at 3:38 AM on October 31, 2008
The Vice Guide to North Korea that someone linked in that post is pretty terrific, too. Couple guys bribe their way into North Korea via Shenyang, China and film a freaking documentary. Insanity.
posted by empyrean at 3:38 AM on October 31, 2008
And I would be referring to this Vice Guide in the previous comment.
posted by empyrean at 3:39 AM on October 31, 2008 [1 favorite]
posted by empyrean at 3:39 AM on October 31, 2008 [1 favorite]
The Vice Guide to North Korea that someone linked in that post is pretty terrific, too.
Yeah, THAT was a cool post, but what the fuck is this?
posted by gman at 3:42 AM on October 31, 2008 [1 favorite]
Yeah, THAT was a cool post, but what the fuck is this?
posted by gman at 3:42 AM on October 31, 2008 [1 favorite]
Is this something you'd have to be a part of the BB crowd to understand? Because this is just a badly-written tourist account of a trip to the North Korea border, given high traffic thanks to BB. There's no insight, there's nothing of depth here. The photography is tourist-grade, the story lacks anything of note (apart some spelling errors that indicate the author didn't even care enough to hit the spellcheck button once), and I really don't know why we should care about this Bob fellow in the first place.
Why are we linking to this? This is awful.
posted by barnacles at 3:59 AM on October 31, 2008
Why are we linking to this? This is awful.
posted by barnacles at 3:59 AM on October 31, 2008
He's never been the same since The Old Grey Whistle Test ended.
posted by panboi at 4:03 AM on October 31, 2008 [2 favorites]
posted by panboi at 4:03 AM on October 31, 2008 [2 favorites]
What? Who gives a shit, is my initial response, I've got to say. It takes like 50 bucks and the ability to wait in a hotel lobby in downtown Seoul for the bus to pick you up to do this. I've done it several times over the years. Every dipshit fannypack package tour snaphappy doofus who's ever done their obligatory rounds of the reconstructed attractions and shopping destinations within a 50km radius of Incheon Airport has.
Is it that I should recognize the name Bob Harris or something that makes this notable?
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 5:11 AM on October 31, 2008 [2 favorites]
Is it that I should recognize the name Bob Harris or something that makes this notable?
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 5:11 AM on October 31, 2008 [2 favorites]
Because I admit I haven't got a goddamn clue who Bob Harris is.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 5:13 AM on October 31, 2008
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 5:13 AM on October 31, 2008
even gman complained - ow
dude, if I weren't in my early 30's, I'd be the bitterest old man out there.
posted by gman at 6:02 AM on October 31, 2008
dude, if I weren't in my early 30's, I'd be the bitterest old man out there.
posted by gman at 6:02 AM on October 31, 2008
Indeed panboi, I was expecting more whispering, 'til I saw it was in fact a Rob Harris...
And stavros... That may be, but some of us haven't been to South Korea, and so it's not simply a 50 buck bus trip there, many times a year.
I feel happy for you that you can go so often and be intimidated by guards. Some of us, have to wait around for things like this to have any clue as to what goes on there...
posted by opsin at 6:42 AM on October 31, 2008
And stavros... That may be, but some of us haven't been to South Korea, and so it's not simply a 50 buck bus trip there, many times a year.
I feel happy for you that you can go so often and be intimidated by guards. Some of us, have to wait around for things like this to have any clue as to what goes on there...
posted by opsin at 6:42 AM on October 31, 2008
I love posts about North Korea as much as the next guy, but this dude comes off as a bit of a jerk ass. And by a bit, I mean a lot. Who makes fun of other peoples memorials? Really?
posted by chunking express at 6:45 AM on October 31, 2008 [1 favorite]
posted by chunking express at 6:45 AM on October 31, 2008 [1 favorite]
OMG. I can't believe Bob Harris did this. I mean, holy fucking shit. Bob Harris!
*Shakes head. Shakes head some more. Logs off.*
posted by From Bklyn at 7:20 AM on October 31, 2008
*Shakes head. Shakes head some more. Logs off.*
posted by From Bklyn at 7:20 AM on October 31, 2008
*Logs back on because he just can't emphasize it enough*
Bob Motherfuckin' HARRIS!
posted by From Bklyn at 7:22 AM on October 31, 2008 [1 favorite]
Bob Motherfuckin' HARRIS!
posted by From Bklyn at 7:22 AM on October 31, 2008 [1 favorite]
Some of us, have to wait around for things like this to have any clue as to what goes on there...
The blog post linked is not a revelation or a sensation. It's pedestrian. It's dull-ass, institutional touristical bullshit snapshottery. It's unexceptional. It's goddamn substandard. It tells nobody nothing about 'what goes on there'. Bog-standard tourist photos that every package tourist has taken, over and over again, tens of fucking thousands of times, and are in every Flickr set tagged with 'DMZ' are not really worthy of a Metafilter thread, given all the actually interesting shit that has been posted in the past about the place, is what I'm saying.
It's a WOW EIFFEL TOWER photoset. If you are so uniformed about the world that that's woweegoshlookee to you, well that's no disgrace, you know, if you're in middle school. Otherwise: time to buy a plane ticket, friend.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 7:23 AM on October 31, 2008 [1 favorite]
The blog post linked is not a revelation or a sensation. It's pedestrian. It's dull-ass, institutional touristical bullshit snapshottery. It's unexceptional. It's goddamn substandard. It tells nobody nothing about 'what goes on there'. Bog-standard tourist photos that every package tourist has taken, over and over again, tens of fucking thousands of times, and are in every Flickr set tagged with 'DMZ' are not really worthy of a Metafilter thread, given all the actually interesting shit that has been posted in the past about the place, is what I'm saying.
It's a WOW EIFFEL TOWER photoset. If you are so uniformed about the world that that's woweegoshlookee to you, well that's no disgrace, you know, if you're in middle school. Otherwise: time to buy a plane ticket, friend.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 7:23 AM on October 31, 2008 [1 favorite]
Damn, I was hoping for 'Whispering' Bob Harris...
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 7:30 AM on October 31, 2008
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 7:30 AM on October 31, 2008
... as have several people up thread it seems.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 7:34 AM on October 31, 2008
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 7:34 AM on October 31, 2008
@stavrosthewonderchicken
DUDE! You know... Bob HARRIS!!
(hopefully this photo makes it that much more obvious to you *cough*)
posted by mrzer0 at 8:17 AM on October 31, 2008
DUDE! You know... Bob HARRIS!!
(hopefully this photo makes it that much more obvious to you *cough*)
posted by mrzer0 at 8:17 AM on October 31, 2008
Bob was featured in the prologue of this episode of This American Life (which I thought was funny - and instructive). He also seems to be a friend of Jane Espenson, a Battlestar Galactica writer. I don't know if anyone else cares about that, but he wins serious points for that from me.
Plus, I laughed at the post. Thanks alby!
posted by Hypnotic Chick at 9:07 AM on October 31, 2008
Plus, I laughed at the post. Thanks alby!
posted by Hypnotic Chick at 9:07 AM on October 31, 2008
I hate to sound like I'm shitting on this as well, but I'm going to have to agree with stavros on this one. Really, a trip to the DMZ is not that special. Wait, that came out wrong. I mean, yea, it's special in that it's cool/heartbreaking/scary/whatever to see first hand the area of truce for a war that has not ended (and this is hardly well-written enough to even be that sort of account, it's definitely a "gee whiz" travelblog/MYVACATION post) but this is hardly FPP worthy because it's like every other tourists' account of a visit to the DMZ/JSA. And I'm sure there are a billion out there. Which makes the fact that this is a one-link FPP especially annoying. If it at least gathered several accounts of a trip to this place I'd get it. I mean, at least give it some background.
If the guy had maybe, I don't know, taken the DMZ tour from the North Korean side (an obviously totally different side of the story is told to you by the tour guides according to a primary school friend of mine whose dad worked as a diplomat for Russia back when it was still the Soviet Union, so he's one of the few people I know who's taken the DMZ tour on both sides), or if he'd actually been close enough to the North Korean border from the Chinese side, talking to defectors, people who travel back and forth between it, people smugglers, the beggar kids who come to the Chinese side to scrounge for food, then that might've been FPP-worthy. If he maybe even just wrote a feature piece after interviewing the South Koreans living in the village a stone's throw away from the DMZ and talked about how life was there (strict curfew, only people with ancestral ties can live there or be married into the village, they're guarded by soldiers as they do their work), that would've been an interesting FPP.
posted by kkokkodalk at 10:00 AM on October 31, 2008
If the guy had maybe, I don't know, taken the DMZ tour from the North Korean side (an obviously totally different side of the story is told to you by the tour guides according to a primary school friend of mine whose dad worked as a diplomat for Russia back when it was still the Soviet Union, so he's one of the few people I know who's taken the DMZ tour on both sides), or if he'd actually been close enough to the North Korean border from the Chinese side, talking to defectors, people who travel back and forth between it, people smugglers, the beggar kids who come to the Chinese side to scrounge for food, then that might've been FPP-worthy. If he maybe even just wrote a feature piece after interviewing the South Koreans living in the village a stone's throw away from the DMZ and talked about how life was there (strict curfew, only people with ancestral ties can live there or be married into the village, they're guarded by soldiers as they do their work), that would've been an interesting FPP.
posted by kkokkodalk at 10:00 AM on October 31, 2008
In North Korea the border visits YOU!
posted by ...possums at 12:10 PM on October 31, 2008
posted by ...possums at 12:10 PM on October 31, 2008
Wasn't going to do an FPP on this, but here's the blog of a company started by three twentysomething Swedes with plans to manufacture high end jeans in North Korea: http://nokojeans.com/process/
posted by specialfriend at 12:30 PM on October 31, 2008 [1 favorite]
posted by specialfriend at 12:30 PM on October 31, 2008 [1 favorite]
Noko Jeans should be an FPP. It makes this post look all the more lame. (And i'm sorry for shitting in this thread.)
posted by chunking express at 12:34 PM on October 31, 2008
posted by chunking express at 12:34 PM on October 31, 2008
I'm buying a plane ticket because of internet.
posted by basicchannel at 3:24 PM on October 31, 2008
posted by basicchannel at 3:24 PM on October 31, 2008
I'd like to apologize for being a bit shouty upthread. Sometimes I get carried away.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 7:39 PM on October 31, 2008
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 7:39 PM on October 31, 2008
Vice Guide was amazing. I've seen a couple other good NK tourist stories before too.
This one, however, is weak.
posted by Xezlec at 11:25 PM on October 31, 2008
This one, however, is weak.
posted by Xezlec at 11:25 PM on October 31, 2008
*Logs back on, very quietly, to admit he has no idea which Bob Harris this was about or why Bob Harris' take was especially interesting, and also to thank empyrean for the link to the Vice video. *
posted by From Bklyn at 1:11 AM on November 3, 2008
posted by From Bklyn at 1:11 AM on November 3, 2008
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