Travelling to North Korea isn't just adventurous, it's high risk

Travelling to North Korea isn't quirky, it's foolish. Photo/AP

The desire to have an eccentric, authentic and off-the-beaten-path travel experience might seem edgy and cool but it's time we faced the sobering reality of adventure travel, according to an expert.

Professor John Blaxland, director of Australian National University's (ANU) Southeast Asia Institute and head of the university's Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, said "adventure tourism" has produced a morbid fascination with travelling to places that could land us in a serious amount of trouble.

"In this day and age where it is very easy to tick the boxes of Europe and North America — destinations that used to be very exotic but are now reasonably accessible — the ultra, ultimate adventure traveller wants to go where they are really putting their life on the line. Where no-one else has been," Prof Blaxland told news.com.au.

"Of course, a classic place for that is North Korea."

This week, the devastating consequences of travelling to North Korea were seen when 22-year-old student Otto Warmbier died on his return to the US, after 17 months of captivity in the totalitarian country.

Warmbier travelled to the small, reclusive country in late 2015 as a tourist when he was detained for trying to take a propaganda banner.

In an emotional "confession" in front North Korean media, which was broadcast worldwide, Warmbier described himself as an "adventurous young man" who took the chance to visit the "mysterious" nation on his way to study abroad at a university in Hong Kong.

"Growing up in the United States, I was taught that the DPR Korea is a mysterious, isolated, communist nation from education and mass media," he said.

While Warmbier's "confession" may have been coerced, that particular statement rings true.

Fred Warmbier, Otto's father, described his son as "a young, thrillseeking, great kid who was going to be in that part of the world for a college experience".

And a British member of the Young Pioneer tour group — the China-based travel company that organised the tour that took Warmbier to North Korea — who was also Warmbier's Pyongyang hotel roommate, told The Washington Post that the Otto he knew was "just a young lad who wanted a bit of adventure".

It's this yearning for adventure by some travellers that Prof Blaxland believes is driving the fascination for the reclusive Hermit Kingdom.

In 2016, two Brisbane friends decided to see if they could pull one over on the world's most secretive state by bluffing their way into a North Korean golf tournament. They did so, tricking officials into believing they were two of Australia's top athletes.

Luckily, the pair didn't get caught, but the stunt was pulled in the same year that Warmbier was sentenced to 15 years of hard labour for taking a propaganda poster in a hotel.

And earlier this year, two Sydney University students fascinated by some of the outlandish stories to come out of the notorious nation, travelled there to question how much of the "media-spectre" surrounding the regime we can believe.

Centred around the viral news stories that claimed North Korea had imposed strict hair cut laws on its citizens, forcing men to have their hair cut in the same style as leader Kim Jong-un, one of the students booked himself into a Pyongyang salon recommended by their tour guide to see if he could get a "hipster hairstyle with stylish beard".

The hairdresser did it, but with official advice from our Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) warning that North Korea is known to arbitrarily arrest foreigners for "unwarranted interaction with local nationals" or anything that could be perceived as "political in nature", if the duo were caught filming their haircut adventure — which they did for a 20-minute self-made doco, titled The Haircut (2017) - A North Korean Adventure — it also could have ended badly.

American student Otto Warmbier cries while speaking to reporters in Pyongyang, North Korea. Photo/AP

In an interview on ABC's Lateline, former High Court Judge Michael Kirby called North Korea "a pitiless place" where any "suggested affront or challenge to the authority of the regime is a very, very risky thing to do".

Prof Blaxland said it isn't impossible or "completely unreasonable" to visit the dictatorship, but tourists need to take the official travel advice very seriously.

"Travel advisory [to North Korea] is a very measured and considered one. It is very appropriate," he said.

The DFAT travel advice for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea urges Australians to "reconsider their need to travel" to the country.

Foreign visitors have been subject to "arbitrary arrest and long-term detention" it cautions.

"Foreigners may be arrested, detained or expelled for activities that would not be considered crimes in Australia, including unsanctioned religious and political activities, unauthorised travel, or unwarranted interaction with local nationals."

Prof Blaxland added that foreign tourists need to expect "everything you say or do to be monitored" — as well as actually understanding why they do that and why we need to take that monitoring very seriously.

"[North Korea] tightly controls who gets to go into the country and tightly controls where they can go. They devote considerable resources — technological and human — to monitor you. It is really quite an Orwellian surveillance state where there are a lot of priorities placed on monitoring foreigners," he told news.com.au.

"It is because of a deep-set conspiratorial mindset that is very much an echo of their experience in the Korean War, and earlier wars, where they were pummelled and where they suffered really severe hardship.

"That rhetoric is maintained because it is convenient for the North Korean regime. To hold that regime together, you need to instil and maintain that instillation of fear — [fear] of the outside and of the unknown.

"You want to seriously think about why you're going and what you want to do," Prof Blaxland told news.com.au.

- News.com.au