U.S. bans travel to North Korea by American citizens

boing
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IKR? I mean c’mon, stealing propaganda signs? Kids these days…

/snark

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If you haven’t read this, I recommend it.

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Could be this. Could be more distraction from the woes of the administration. Fox news front page is all North Korea and nothing about Mueller.

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I didn’t know it was a thing too, other than for special National Geographic footage and such

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I’ve read his book Jerusalem. I would also highly recommend that.

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but … ooooh forbidden fruit …

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OFFS, as if anyone going there wouldn’t know that. If you want to go there, and NK will let you in, I don’t see what business is it of anyone else’s. Certainly we have a state department and one of the things they do is warn people about dangerous situations in other countries but it’s the height of ridiculous paternalism to tell people where they can and can’t go once they leave the country.

The most plausible explanation is this is simply an anti-NK distraction ploy.

Or else they are planning to launch strikes soon. :frowning:

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Probably the best book about North Korea that I read was Andrew Holloway’s “A Year in Pyongyang” which is available for free at http://www.aidanfc.net/a_year_in_pyongyang_1.html.

  1. He actually lived in the country for a year – typically a Westerner spends a couple of days or at most a few weeks there and thinks they know the country.
  2. He actually tries to understand the country – too often North Korea is reduced to a comic relief piece about crazed dictators and brainwashed citizens. Not terribly surprisingly, things are more complicated, much as they were in the Soviet Union which was similarity characterized when it existed.
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Ignoring the question of how much of this directive is just pandering to american jingoism, the DPRK has a habit of taking foreign nationals hostage and using them for leverage. Most recently they grabbed a bunch of a malaysians and held on to them until Malaysia gave up the body of Kim Jun Un’s assassinated brother.

So, in that sense, it is the US Govt’s business. They don’t want give up any leverage in whatever negotiations are to come. The new president of South Korea is trying to restart talks with the DPRK that were rejected under the previous administration.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/17/world/asia/north-korea-south-military-talks.html

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Eveyone can see the danger, but there’s a reason why balconies have railings.

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If a person jumps into a predator’s mouth, can they really be surprised when they get eaten?

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OK, but the real reason this is only happening now is because Kim Jong Un denied Trump’s Facebook friend request.

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Well that would have to be one really tiny person…

Maybe it and Ash Homoculus would fit.

Army-of-Darkness-tiny-Ashes-with-fork-Bruce-Campbell.png853×480 422 KB

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I would have bet the farm that the administration would have allowed the travel and thereby bettered their chances of ginning up a distracting war when NK started imprisoning and harming US tourists… but I guess they’re saving that sort of thing for the Middle East.

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This all seems like posturing more than anything and nothing is different than before.

It’s not like there’s a North Korean embassy anywhere in the US where you can go and get a visa to travel there or hop on a plane from Seattle to Pyongyang.

The only way I know of for an ordinary American to get a visa is through their embassy in Beijing which also means you first need to get a multiple entry visa to China. I believe it has to be through a tour group as well.

I don’t see how the state department can really enforce anything to begin with since there’s no bilateralism.

Am I missing anything here?

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Could the deciding factor be that North Korea doesn’t have oil?

Ha! I amuse myself!

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It makes more sense than the travel ban to Cuba, at least. I remember an old discussion on a forum about how to travel to Cuba for diving. It was suggested that you go to Canada and fly to Cuba from there, apparently the Cubans were pretty friendly when it came to not putting a stamp in US passports if you asked fearing government repression when you got home.

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Yeah, I get why they’re doing it, but isn’t a travel ban a restriction of freedom? Whatever, I live in a country that doesn’t tell me where I can’t go. First Cuba, now NK; Mexico next?

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Are you sure about that? I’m pretty sure all we have is Rex, and he’s got his hands full as it is.

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