This is not what life in North Korea is like. In light of the human rights violations that go on there, why does Louis Cole think it’s ok to portray it as such?
A few months ago, I read about North Korea’s plan to open up its coastline to the traveling surfer. I was intrigued, just as nearly everyone else on earth who surfs probably was. Months before, we’d published a story called Breaking Boundaries in North Korea, written by Julie Nelson, Surf Department Director of a group called Surfing the Nations. While it was a feel-good story about finding waves and making friends in one of the most mysterious nations on earth, it completely ignored the impossible-to-ignore: the human rights violations we so often hear about from the DPRK.
I fired off a quick email to the tourism company that offered surf trips to see about organizing one. Here’s the response.
Dear Alex,
Thank you for writing us and for your interest in our surf tours. Unfortunately, the DPRK has a general policy of denial for journalists and professional photographers, which makes it very difficult for us to accommodate on-trip media requests.
We would love to have you guys join us, and will note your request. But for now, we’ll need to put you on the list and get back to you when an opportunity arises.
Although that’s pretty much the response I expected, I was disappointed. By now, most of us have probably seen the VICE Guide to North Korea, which, as much as I dislike listening to Shane Smith, was good. In short, it outlines the difference between what is actually happening in North Korea and what the outside world is allowed to see. I’m not that interested in surfing in North Korea–I’m more interested in seeing exactly what is going on there. Surfing is far less important than the atrocities that, if we’re to believe what we’re told, apparently happen every day there. To merely comment on the waves or the countryside is akin to looking down the barrel of a gun and saying that the way the light shines off the cocked hammer is pretty. There’s something far more dangerous underneath that glimmer. But that’s what one Youtuber is doing–and whether or not he’s being paid by North Korea is a question on many lips.
Louis Cole is a video blogger from the U.K. He’s got just shy of 2 million subscribers, and does good work–his videos are professionally done, generally informative, and nearly always engaging. But there’s something odd about his videos from North Korea. He claims that his aim “is to show the beautiful people that live here and help strengthen the fragile bridge of peace and diplomacy through surfing.” In a series of four videos, Louis Cole makes North Korea look like a great place to live–which it is not. Free speech isn’t a thing there. Television, radio broadcasts, and newspapers are run by the government. Somewhere around 100,000 people are in political forced labor camps for crimes they may or may not have committed; many are crimes that wouldn’t be crimes anywhere else in the world. The prison camps have been compared to Nazi Germany’s during the holocaust. In short, if you live there, you want to leave. But Louis, after taking a tour full of smiling people, delicious meals, and lavish hotels (organized by the government), decided that he would show only the pretty jewel of light dancing on the cocked hammer of the loaded gun.
As one might imagine, Cole’s videos had a lot of people upset. So many, in fact, that he felt the need to explain himself. “I am not a [sic] investigative journalist,” he wrote. “I don’t really do political commentary. And there are other places on the internet you can go to find those kind of things. So this trip to North Korea, as many of my trips, I went on as a tourist. And we went on an organized tour. . . As much as we can be skeptical about how much was real and how much was staged, that is what I experienced, and I can only share with you guys what I experienced.”
Cole vehemently denies being paid by North Korea, despite the fact that his videos come off like a tourism commercial. Featuring a music video called Surfin’ in the DPRK, which is so incredibly bad I don’t even know where to start:
Wild growing weed:
A whole bunch of very happy people playing in the ocean:
And a disgustingly upbeat goodbye episode:
The entire series of videos is just a little too neat to be real life. That neatness, of course, is the intention of the government-run tourism board. Without actually going there and experiencing it for myself, however–because of the “general policy of denial for journalists and professional photographers”–I, along with most of the rest of the world, will only have to trust that the reports coming from North Korea are real. And for Louis Cole to produce a series of videos with the intent of showing “the beautiful people that live here and help strengthen the fragile bridge of peace and diplomacy through surfing,” the real issues, the ones that are far more important than surfing, are swept beneath a very, very dirty rug. In sharing his government-sanctioned experiences, even if his intentions truly are good, he’s helping them continue running the most oppressive regime on earth, and that is a terrible thing to do.
