Extreme Destination Travel: Does the Upside Outweigh the Risk?
Reflections on Visiting North Korea and Iran
I am an unabashed travel nerd. Since childhood, I’ve had a wanderlust that has drawn me to visiting new places all around the world. By the time I reached adulthood, I set out on a personal mission to hit all 50 US states and more than 100 countries. A few things in life allowed me to pursue these goals:
Understanding how to travel comfortably but within my means
Working for a period for a US airline, where I received unlimited standby flight privileges
Living in Europe for nine years cumulatively
Prioritizing visiting new destinations over a) returning often to the same places, b) using precious vacation time for time-consuming hobbies such as skiing or golf
Having jobs that allowed me to travel to interesting destinations, where I could sometimes tack on side trips on my personal time
Flexibility in traveling alone and with varying levels of comfort
An interest in exploring diverse cultures, activities, and cuisines
Remaining childless until I reached age 40
I have long considered travel (especially internationally) to be one of the most eye-opening experiences one can have, especially if one is willing to interact with real people and not stay purely on a well-trod tourist path. I believe there is social good in connection and understanding. It’s not to say that a short visit can completely fulfill this desire, but it can still do far more than staying at home.
If I were offered to have one superpower (aside from supernatural abilities like teleportation or time travel…), I would choose to be a polyglot. Having grown up as a monolingual American with only moderate conversational skills in one foreign language (Spanish), I admire and envy those who are able to instantly switch from one tongue to another. That is one way to form a much deeper connection while traveling that I wish had the capacity for. PSA: If you plan to have kids, get them started on a foreign language from infancy (with a nanny, bilingual daycare, or whatever option you might have, if neither parent speaks a second language). Little kids are sponges. My 5 and 3 year old daughters are already able to effortlessly converse in both English and Russian, the primary language of my Ukrainian-born wife.
Language aside, I have always absorbed much knowledge and gained fulfillment from having visited new countries. I’m now at over 140, based on the country definition list of the Traveler’s Century Club (certain country definitions can be somewhat subjective). Nearly all of the countries I’ve been to have been considered quite safe for visitors.
In 2016, however, I decided to take things up a notch. It is then when I decided to visit North Korea, known as the “Hermit Kingdom” and the most isolated country on earth in virtually every respect. Of course, there were plenty more “safe” and “normal” countries to visit that I had not yet been to. However, North Korea became a burning idea in my head. For one, I had visited Seoul in South Korea a number of years earlier. While on that trip, I took an organized tour of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), where visitors were given the opportunity to step into North Korea for a few brief minutes and even take pictures besides North Korean soldiers. This was a profound tour that had me yearning to learn more about what’s on the northern side of the border and the people who lived there. Secondly, I am a geek for commercial aviation. It was no accident that I spent several years working in the airline industry. On a work trip to Beijing at one point, I noticed at the airport an Air Koryo (North Korean national airline) Ilyushin IL-62 aircraft with four rear engines. Although merely parked at the gate, it had the loudest engines I had ever heard roaring from a commercial aircraft. I was enthralled. I wanted to fly as a passenger on this plane as I had never flown on any Soviet-manufactured aircraft before.
To my surprise, I discovered through an aviation magazine that I picked up one day, that there was such a thing as an organized tour to North Korea specifically for commercial aviation enthusiasts. As I did my research, I learned that on this tour, one had the opportunity to fly aboard charter flights on a whole variety of extremely rare (and mostly decades old) aircraft types from the Air Koryo fleet. Ilyushins, Antonovs, Tupolevs, oh my…
Throwing caution to the wind, I decided to sign up for the next tour that I could find, and I managed to rope in two of my adventurous, aviation enthusiast friends to join me. And so off we went. My five days in North Korea were divided roughly in half between time spent at the Pyongyang airport and taking charter domestic flights (for the voyage itself more than the destinations) and visiting both the city of Pyongyang and some surroundings that included a mountainous resort area.
Travel in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is surreal to say the least. Foreigners are escorted by guides at all times and must strictly adhere to protocols around bowing to statues of the Great and Dear Leaders, as well as only taking photographs in authorized locations. Absorbing propaganda was part of the show, as to be expected. The closest we came to interacting with “real” people (excluding government tour guides and airline and hotel personnel) was while riding on the subway in the capital city. Although in truth, there weren’t really many spontaneous conversations to be had. So while I view international travel as an opportunity to connect with people from different cultural backgrounds and learn new perspectives, one really cannot do that in the DPRK in any kind of open and transparent way.
My trip to North Korea came just a few months after American college student Otto Warmbier had been arrested for allegedly attempting to steal a national propaganda poster from his hotel. The poor kid ended up getting convicted, sentenced to years of hard labor, and couldn’t be rescued and returned to the US until he was already comatose and on the verge of death some years later. At the time, I chalked it up to getting himself into trouble by doing something foolish in such an authoritarian nation. In hindsight, the evidence appears quite dubious that Warmbier ever committed this “crime” at all. It may well have been a setup from the start to turn him into a political pawn. Regardless, the punishment most certainly did not fit the crime.
In hindsight, was the personal risk that I took in visiting North Korea worth it? While I don’t regret the personal experience and memories that I took from the trip, I cannot say that I forged any cultural bonds or improved America’s understanding of North Korea, or vice versa. The risk I took by traveling to North Korea could have led to very serious problems given the unpredictable nature of the regime and the lack of diplomatic ties with my own country. While North Korea let me in with my US passport and the US did not forbid Americans from traveling to such a pariah nation, I really wonder if it is a good idea to even be allowing such travel under these perilous circumstances.
Only a few months after my DPRK adventure, I confidently decided to join another aviation geek tour in yet another country that had always seemed completely out of reach for an American (and especially for myself as a Jewish) traveler - Iran. Iran had been the “enemy” for as long as I could remember and had been labeled part of the “axis of evil.” Yet toward the end of the Obama administration, a crack opened up where it became viable for American tourists to receive a visa to enter Iran for tourism purposes. I knew this and decided to take advantage of it by joining a group of like-minded travelers who could experience the country while also flying aboard an aging fleet of both Western and Soviet aircraft to get around the country.
Very much unlike North Korea, we did have the freedom to move around unencumbered by minders. We were able to interact with locals, a surprising number of whom not only conversed well in English, but were eager to strike up a conversation with obvious visitors. Having arrived very shortly after the November 2016 US presidential election, I was repeatedly stopped by locals who very politely and curiously asked me what I thought about Donald Trump. It took no more than an eyeroll for them to get the message and sympathetically respond, “You know… he’s just like our last president. Have you heard of Ahmadinejad?” Haha, instant connections!
Iran is truly an example of a country where one must separate the beliefs of the people from the actions of their government. I was greeted warmly by locals throughout my visit, and even joined another Jewish couple on my tour to visit a synagogue in the city of Esfahan. Without delving into the history of Middle East politics, suffice it to say that it is a complicated situation and there are many reasons why Iran and the US (and the West in general) have unsettled differences. While it is unlikely that I would have gotten into any sort of real “trouble” in Iran by merely minding my business while out and about seeing the sites, there was nevertheless the risk that had I experienced any issues, my government may not have been able to easily come to my rescue. Cultural bonds and understanding formed? Perhaps, but at what level of risk?
It is not lost on me just what authoritarian countries, particularly those whose governments are hostile toward the United States, are capable of doing. Russia and North Korea have very clearly shown a willingness to detain American citizens unjustly and unlawfully. Such unlucky individuals can become negotiating tools for these countries to secure the release of their own citizens who have been convicted of crimes in the US and other democratic nations. Among the most recent examples from Russia is the case of basketball star Brittney Griner (whose recent book “Coming Home,” which recounts her detention, I am currently reading). In more recent events as well was the multilateral prisoner exchange that saw the return to the US of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and former marine Paul Whelan, who was merely visiting Russia to attend a wedding six years ago when he was detained on obviously trumped up espionage charges.
In securing their release, the US and European allies were forced to turn over no less than convicted murderers and terrorists. As much as I personally have a desire to visit new and off-the-beaten path places, and still believe in the power of cultural cross-border connections, especially with perceived “enemies,” this type of risk is now sufficiently documented that to me it seems that it is just not worth it. In light of the current geopolitical situation, I believe the US and other allied democracies should issue a blanket ban on its citizens visiting such countries. The penalty for a violation should simply be that if something happens to the traveler while venturing across the border, that they are on their own if things go south. The vast majority of the planet is safe and welcoming for visitors. Who needs to take a chance on getting sent to the gulag and getting wrapped up in an international diplomatic tug-of-war?