I just did a little 'binging' (#china), and I'm surprised to find that tours usually cost in the region of $200 dollars a day. That's a lot more affordable than I was expecting, although I'd still rather spend a month in Vietnam than five days there. It does seem to me that Chli is being a little harsh here. All of the secret footage I've seen of regular tour groups indicates that it is at times a very uncomfortable experience.
I thought d1am0ndback was pretty diplomatic and fair in expressing that they personally felt unsafe visiting Pyongang, without having initially gone out of their way to attack North Korea as a government or its people. They yielded that "not many" Americans have been detained, just enough to make them uncomfortable - which is more credit than a great number of Americans would probably give when discussing North Korea. I think there's a difference between being personally uncomfortable with visiting a particular country and attacking its government or its people. There are countries I am not sure I would be comfortable in where I think the people, culture and government are fine - but just not a good fit for me as an individual.
I'm in agreement with FunkyGibbon and JVM. As an American who has been out of the country (although not to Asia), I would not be comfortable visiting that particular country either. To what extent my view of North Korea is biased by the media I can't say, but they have held and imprisoned American citizens enough times and the anti-American sentiment seems strong enough there that it's enough to dissuade me from seriously considering it. Same concerns for other countries such as Iran. There's also nothing there that I feel strongly enough about seeing to pull me to it, other than the value of experiencing North Korea as a whole. Chli does have a point about the US doing very similar things to foreigners here; however, my concern does not stem from the fact that it happens in the DPRK at all, but from the fact that Americans are more likely to be targeted.
this is sort of veering away into "how Americans view the world" which is right off-topic from the zoo. I'll just say that I personally would have no problems visiting North Korea in terms of my safety, although I have no wish or plans to do so. If other people feel differently for themselves, then that is fine. That's how the world is.
I think it was a Swedish person that brought most of the animals to that newly renovated Pyongyang zoo. I don't think the zoo is that bad either, because of the Swedish person, they have stopped the smoking chimpanzee attraction and the enclosures just lack some vegetation and climbing structures.
Here are some photos and a very one-sided article about the zoo: North Korea's 'worst zoo in the world' revealed in harrowing pictures Still thought people might find it interesting.
