How the Chinese view North Korea
Ethan Epstein, a talented young writer, has a series of pieces this week at Slate concerning how the Chinese look at North Korea, in an odd sort of voyeurism:
North Korea fascinates even Chinese people living under nominally Communist rule. All the tourists on the boat clutching binoculars and pointing out sights on the North Korean side of the river are Chinese. The tourists at the Dandong International Hotel peering out into Sinuiju over breakfast were also Chinese.Chenyin Jin, a Chinese academic, speculates that "Chinese people like to see North Korea because it reminds them of what life was like under Mao. There's an almost nostalgic appeal." Given how much China has changed in the last 30 years, looking at North Korea is like looking back in time for a lot of Chinese people. It is hardly surprising that the great majority of the 16,000 or so tourists who visit North Korea annually on stage-managed propaganda tours are Chinese. (Only a little more than 1,000 hail from Western countries.)
But there's something ghoulish about all this. Like "ghetto bus tours" of Compton or Harlem church tours, it can be argued that all this staring at North Korea amounts to little more than rubbernecking on a grand scale. Sure, North Korea is a country closed to the outside world, so it's easy to understand why people would be curious about how life is lived there. Yet as our boat slows down and we look through our binoculars at the skinny and woefully abused people on the riverbanks, I can't help but feel that this whole "industry" is a little disgusting.
I'll be curious to read his entries, and hope you will too.
