I certainly didn't. But in the wake of the Dear Leader's recent ascent to his glorious spot in dictator heaven (where your medals are always shiny!), I was poking around online and found out that there is, in fact, tourism in North Korea.
What a trip that would be! Like stepping into another world. The website rather pointedly does not mention exactly how much it costs, but they concede it is not cheap. Still, if one had the extra cash, it might be worth it. The cocktail party value alone would be worth it. "North Korea? Yes, I've been there."
But despite all the well-choreographed hype surrounding the "Great Successor," Kim Jong Un, I cannot escape the feeling the chubby twentysomething will be the last of his dynasty. The best they can hope for is try to turn the nation into China. But while that nation did manage to go from the horrors of the Cultural Revolution to economic preeminence in just a few decades, North Korea has been essentially frozen in an ongoing Cultural Revolution for sixty years. It will not be easy to come out of it. And, as this past year's events in the Arab world have shown, such changes in management are not always kind to the old boss.
Still, I don't expect a Pyongyang Spring. Instead I suspect the Democratic People's Republic of Korea will go the way of their similarly clunkily-named brethren in Eastern Europe did two decades ago: With an almost anticlimactic whimper. Kim the Third's fate may be more akin to Erich Honecker's than Muammar Qaddafi's. If he played his cards right, and with a little luck, he might even manage Mikhail Gorbachev.
I find myself fascinated with this hermit kingdom and its strange royal family. But thenI find secretive, hierarchical organizations generally compelling. Usually they're religious or semi-religious groups: The Roman Catholic Church, the Mormon Church, the Scientologists. But North Korea is perhaps the most fascinating because the control a whole country, and we know so little about it. So jealous of their privacy that they threaten to shoot even their own Chinese allies if they wander too close to the border with cameras. With friends like that, who needs psychopaths?
The Dear(ly departed) Leader had several children with three wives, all of whom have moved in and out of favor at various times as a political chess game for favor was played out. Evidently Kim Jong Il's last wife -- the mother of Kim Jong Un -- was particularly good at this game, and ensured that it would be her children who would inherit the legacy. There was an older brother but evidently the elder Kim judged him too "effeminate" to take over, which is particular ironic since Kim himself looked like an old lesbian. But anyway, apparently Jong-Un was the favorite, doted on by his parents. That he is the spitting image of his grandfather, North Korean founder Kim Il Sung, didn't hurt, either. Now the widely-held consensus is that he sits at the top as titular ruler, while his aunt (Kim Jong Il's sister) and her husband, a senior general, rule as de facto regents. And of course, as you'd expect in such a system, there are a gaggle of generals and bureaucrats who wield great authority.
It reminds me of nothing so much as a Medieval kingdom, complete with ruling family intrigues, a recalcitrant nobility, and a lot of very poor peasants caught in between.
One wonders, though, how much the North Korean people really believe the nonsense thrown at them by their government about the Kim family's divine powers. Do they really think Kim Jong Il invented rainbows? Are the nationwide outbreaks of anguished mourning over his death genuine? I don't know. But I'm inclined to think that people are not that stupid. Even in North Korea, the outside cannot be kept out entirely. Enough people know there is some kind of world out there, profoundly different but probably better than their own, to make them want something better. Sooner or later they're going to get it. If the regime is wise, they will recognize this and try to profit by it, following the Chinese example. The alternative is far too bloody to contemplate.