Weekend at Kim Jong Un’s as tour-guide says N Korea is fab
An Aussie travel guide wants all y’all to come on down to North Korea. The Australian, yesterday:
An Australian travel guide who was on the same tour of North Korea as the late US student Otto Warmbier believes Australian tourists have nothing to fear from the totalitarian dictatorship.
Don’t. DFAT’s Smart Traveller website, updated April 29:
We advise you to reconsider your need to travel to the DPRK ...
Really, please, don’t do that at all. The Australian online, yesterday:
Donald Trump has tweeted his outrage at North Korea’s latest ballistic missile test ...
Aussie travel guide Ben Johnson tells us all to calm down in The Australian, yesterday:
Over the past two years of going to North Korea, the main thing that stands out is how normal the people are.
Yeah, they’re having a great time. UN North Korean human rights abuses inquiry chairman Michael Kirby in The Australian, June 24:
Nothing in my previous 35 years as a judge in Australia had prepared me for the systematic, widespread and gross human rights violations ...
Johnson in The Australian, yesterday:
The media tends to demonise everything about North Korea and forget that they are still people.
We’re not demonising them. Our hearts are breaking for them. The Australian, June 24:
Family members are required to join those sent to detention camps “so as to rid society of their contagion”. The ordinary prisons of North Korea, Kirby concluded after two years of receiving evidence, are places of “extermination and murder, torture, rape and other grave sexual violence … conditions similar to enslavement … shocking shortages of food and hygiene … where crimes against humanity are a feature of daily life”.
Like our hearts broke for Otto. The Wall Street Journal, June 19:
Otto Warmbier, the American college student imprisoned in North Korea for more than a year before returning home with a severe brain injury last week, died Monday ...
But that was totally a one-off and will never happen again? Johnson in The Australian, yesterday:
We can’t accept any chance that it may happen again to another American citizen ... However, for other citizens we do not see the same risks ...
Don’t go to North Korea, please. DFAT’s Smart Traveller website, continued:
Travel by Australians to the DPRK is uncommon and foreign visitors have been subject to arbitrary arrest and long-term detention. Foreigners may be arrested, detained or expelled for activities that would not be considered crimes in Australia ...
And The New York Times makes an equally dangerous trip to Byron Bay. June 30:
BYRON BAY, Australia — I wandered into a gift shop in this picturesque Gold Coast town …
It’s not a Gold Coast town, it’s in NSW ... Byron Bay’s official website:
Cape Byron is Australia’s most easterly point, 153° 39´ east, located on the north coast of New South Wales ...
The Gold Coast is in a different state. Lonely Planet website:
The Gold Coast is Queensland’s iconic seaside city ...
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