But Nate Groth, Portsmouth, N.H., native has been where less than 3,000 other western tourists have ever ventured.
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A North Korean soldier stands in part of a 2½-mile buffer zone separating North and South Korea. The area is filled with mines and what Portsmouth native Nate Groth described as “Indiana Jones-like traps.”
A five-day tour of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea showed him a land where there is no electricity or hot water (except in the capital city), where the streets are so desolate people can play Frisbee on the highway, and where Kim Il Sung still reins, even in death, as the “Eternal President.”
“North Korea is probably the most reclusive and closed society in the world, which is why I wanted to go,” Groth said during a slideshow of his visit shown at the Buoy gallery in Kittery on Thursday night. “Entering their country is like entering their own little world.”
Groth’s stay took him to the capital city of Pyongyang, through the North Korean countryside and to the Demilitarized Zone, which leads to one of the most dangerous borders in the world.
Groth described a country where perception is everything. Even when many North Koreans go hungry, tourists enjoy all-you-can-eat buffets and stay in the same three hotels, complete with a spa, a revolving rooftop restaurant and a micro brewery.
It is mandatory that all tourists attend the Mass Games, North Korea’s response to the Olympics. Groth said the experience was a 90-minute non-stop spectacle, with up to 100,000 North Koreans on display performing daily from August to October.
“North Koreans are very proud of the games,” Groth said. “They have a different attitude. Nationalism is at the heart of it. Everything about the games brings glory to North Korea.”
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It is incredible that North Korea has used perception to fool the world, but its own people as well. Nationalism has been taken to the extreme, as we have seen throughout history by the most bloody regimes, including the USSR and Nazi Germany. But it seems that despite the poverty and starvation, the country can still afford to create a “utopia” where the world’s perception is limited to see.