The first thing our guide Mr. Li said to the people whom he knew had inflicted untold suffering onto his country was “Welcome. I hope you had a good flight.” Then he paused. “We call you the U.S. Imperialists, since you came in and divided our homeland. When some Korean calls you U.S. Bastards or U.S. Imperialists, I will just translate that. I hope that’s okay, I’m just doing my job.”
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Mr. Li was one of the guides on a tour of Pyongyang in October of 2008, the last month that American tourists were allowed access to the city. I visited as part of a group of 25 Americans, mostly young professionals and students; many said they wanted to see the country before it collapsed under the weight of its own obsolescence. We knew beforehand that our movements would be strictly controlled throughout the tour, and that we were not allowed to wander freely. Our guides showed us the parts of Pyongyang that we were supposed to see. Their filtering the trip was a very valuable way to process information in a place so radically different from anything resembling our definition of normality.