NORTH KOREA: Visiting North Korea At Your Own Risk

Visiting north Korea is indeed at your own risk.

Government lies to the people,people lie to each other,Tour guides lie to tourists.

Otto Warmbier of Cincinnati was in North Korea with a tour group when officials there detained him on Jan. 2.

When Otto Warmbier signed up for an "adventure tour” in North Korea, he probably wasn’t expecting a relaxing vacation.

Such a trip carries unsettling risks, such as arbitrary arrest and indefinite detention. The sights include anti-American propaganda and surreal displays of military might, in a country beset by poverty and starvation.

And then there's the long list of no-nos.

Warmbier, of Cincinnati, was detained Jan. 2 at the Pyongyang airport just as his tour group was leaving the country. The North Korean government accused him of committing a "hostile act" against the country.

Since then, there's been no new information about his or well-being. The tour company that took him to North Korea, Young Pioneer Tours, did not respond to emailed questions about their operations. The State Department declined to comment on Warmbier’s case. Ohio elected officials said they're monitoring the situation and advocating for Warmbier's release as best they can.

Warmbier, a University of Virginia student, is hardly alone in seeking a glimpse of the reclusive dictatorship. Exact numbers are hard to come by, but Uri Tours, the largest provider of North Korea travel in the U.S., estimates that at least 1,200 Americans venture to North Korea every year, despite ominous warnings from the State Department.

“Sheer curiosity” prompted Earl Baron, a seasoned traveler from Massachusetts, to sign up for a tour of North Korea in 2013. Now working as a travel guide in India, the 38-year-old Baron was looking for an off-the-beaten-path destination. North Korea, one of the least visited countries in the world, fit the bill.

Other Americans want to go because it’s isolated, it’s bizarre, and it’s off the grid — a Cold War relic frozen in time.

North Korea is “one of the most magical places still untouched by the outside world,” reads an enticement from Rebel Tribe, a travel agency that organizes trips to the communist dictatorship and other destinations.

Jordan Harbinger, a Rebel Tribe tour guide based in California, said the firm’s clientele aren't typical tourists.

“They think outside the box and live outside the box,” he said

Like other tours, those organized through Rebel Tribe begin in China, where participants are given specific instructions on what they can and can't do inside North Korea.

Harbinger said he keeps it simple: “Always ask before you take pictures. Don’t try to be sneaky. And last but not least, don't talk politics,” he said. “There’s no politics to talk about.”

Andrea Lee, CEO of Uri Tours, is a little more specific. For starters, tourists are told not to wander off without their guide, she said in an email from Shanghai. They are also told “not to take photos of the military, not to bring in publications that could be deemed anti-state, and (to) generally show respect for local culture and norms,” Lee said.

Visitors fly from China into Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, where they are met at the airport by their North Korean tour guides. Those guides “stay with you the entire time,” Harbinger said, making sure you don’t run afoul of the country’s draconian laws restricting where you can go and what you can say.

What do visitors get to see? Not what you might think. An amusement park, a bowling alley and a microbrewery seem to be on every tour group’s itinerary, according to interviews with tour guides and a review of their company websites. Other highlights include the embalmed bodies of Kim Il-sung, North Korea's founding president, and his son, Kim Jong-Il, who led the country until his death in 2011. Both men are on permanent display in glass mausoleums at a monument called the Kumsusan Palace of the Sun.

“On a visit with many tense moments, the time I spent in here was the tensest,” one American tourist, Tim Urban, wrote in a 2013 account of his trip. “We had to walk single file in and out and bow three times to each of the two bros.”

He could not have called the two revered leaders "bros" while he was in the country.

“It is a criminal act in North Korea to show disrespect to the country's former leaders, Kim Jong Il and Kim Il Sung, or to the current leader, Kim Jong Un,” the State Department notes.

Baron, the tourist-turned-tour guide, said his six-day trip to North Korea was fun, fascinating and creepy.

Pyongyang looks like a modern city, he said, but it’s actually a throwback, with no Internet, no Facebook, no Hollywood movies and no cable news.

He had casual conversations with local North Koreans, but constantly wondered if they were staged by the government. When his tour group arrived at the bowling alley, it was filled with young North Koreans. But Baron couldn’t figure out if they were enjoying a typical night out — or were part of the scenery set up to project an image of normalcy to Western tourists.

“When I left I was probably more confused about the country than before I went,” Baron said by phone from Bundi, India. “You really have no idea what’s real and what’s not.”

A few venues that are not on any itinerary for foreigners visiting North Korea: forced labor camps, impoverished rural villages where residents have limited access to food, and anything remotely authentic about average people’s lives.

“You will see what the government wants you to see,” Baron wrote in a blog about his trip. “What I saw of North Korea was a tiny, tiny slice of that country and what I learned was also only a tiny, tiny piece of the truth.”

He and others wrestled with the ethics of traveling there, since a portion of their vacation tab goes to North Korea’s repressive government. But even as they conceded the downside of such trips, he and other travelers said it wasn't as dangerous as the U.S. government leads people to believe.

“Do not assume that joining a group tour or using a tour guide will prevent North Korean authorities from detaining you or arresting you,” the State Department warns in its travel advisory urging Americans not to visit the country. “U.S. citizens have been subject to arrest and long-term detention for actions that would not be cause for arrest in the United States or other countries.”

The U.S. has no diplomatic relations with North Korea, so American tourists who are arrested there, or become ill or injured, must rely on the Swedish embassy for help, the State Department notes.

But Harbinger and Baron said they never felt scared or threatened while in North Korea.

Harbinger said he tried to go jogging once — with permission from his guide -- only to be repeatedly turned back by various guards who seemingly appeared out of nowhere. He said being in North Korea was “surreal” and a bit of a “freak show.” But, he said, “I’ve never felt in danger, never felt nervous.”

Baron said he was able to wander off on his own once or twice, within confined settings such as the amusement park. And he said he was able to “loosely” challenge the propaganda dished out by the guides, although he knew there were limits and he knew not to test them.

The State Department warnings suggest Americans can’t anticipate what might trigger an arrest or detention in North Korea, due to willy-nilly enforcement of the country's harsh laws. If nothing else, happy tourists and scolding officials seem to agree that trips to North Korea are unpredictable.

“The government lies to the outside world. The government lies to the people,” Urban wrote. “The people lie to each other. The tour guides lie to tourists. It's intense.”