Unbearable lightness of Pyongyang tourism during nuke crisis

When the American university student Otto Warmbier died back in June soon after coming home in a coma following a 17-month detention in North Korea, the China-based tour company that took him there announced it would no longer sell such tours to United States citizens. Then I started paying attention to the Western enthusiasm to see the world's last remaining iron curtain. However, I was not aware that selling excursions to North Korea had become "a thing" in Turkey too until I read travel notes of my colleague Savaş Özbey in daily Hürriyet last week.  

Hats off to Özbey for his intellectual curiosity, which drove him all the way to the mysterious republic of the Kim dynasty. The timing of his articles was especially striking when considered from a global political perspective since he went there after Pyongyang had launched a long-range intercontinental ballistic missile on July 28 that experts said had the potential to reach the West Coast - maybe even the East Coast of the U.S. 

However, reading Özbey's coverage of North Korea from Washington at a time when Americans are discussing whether they are on the brink of a world-changing nuclear war was quite disorientating to say the least! He wrote extensively about how splendid and orderly the infrastructure in Pyongyang was as well as how jolly the North Koreans he came across in the streets were. Özbey described Pyongyang's streets as the cleanest among almost 40 countries he has seen so far. 

This is the trouble of having to report from a totalitarian country where you are allowed to stay for a short period of time when you cannot escape your custodians whose mission is to conceal the ugly realities of the regime and spin your perception by showing you a facade of honesty.