The place often seems like a black box from which the occasional horror (like a nuclear bomb) emerges without warning or welcome. North Korea certainly deserves its nickname, the hermit kingdom. Visitors are tightly controlled and only a trickle of Westerners admitted. Yet even North Korea needs dollars, and tries to get them by attracting Chinese tourists, who go for the gambling, and the bizarre allure of a bygone era of fanaticism and privation that China itself once endured. Joining a group of 60 visitors, this is what you find.
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