(Pyongyang, North Korea) Of capitalism and freedom? Milton Friedman flips in his grave.

She does not ask me questions normally. However, when we visited the International Friendship Exhibition at Myohyangsan, our team became lost among the crowd of people seeing the tributes given to Kim Il Sung, and I found myself with my guide tucked away from the other people on my team. She started asking me a lot of questions on what I studied, on the education in America, and how I financed my education.

I told her I was majoring in International Studies and Economics, and she told me she was interested in Economics too. She would say this, and occasionally look around to check for something just as one would look for cars on a street before crossing (except that we were in the Exhibition Hall). I promised casually to bring economics textbooks back when I returned and she smiled without giving a reply.

We joined our group as we walked back to the van and she clamped up again. I told her that she should study for a Masters in economics and she gave a wistful look, before smiling and staying silent in her usual manner whenever a question she did not want to answer was posed. I understood that free agency was not a communist theme, and felt bad for asking it.


(Pyongyang, North Korea) One ideology puts food on the table. Guess which one?

At the train station, just before I left, my guide closed in on me and we made a turn into a dark tunnel leading to the platform. For a minute, we lost sight of our group and I asked her what gifts she wanted me to bring the next time I came back. She put her hand on mine, and whispered that an economics textbook would be great, in English or Chinese. She said she was learning English too. She will do this over winter. I caught her eyes and we both smiled before bursting out onto the sunlit platform.

I do not blame her. Who would not want to be an economist? They are the bestest people after all…

Conversations with Tim Savage from NKzone: (I ruled out the second possibility for certain reasons, although I do recognize that my guides were definitely from the privileged class)

You’re making two false assumptions; one that your tour guide was an
‘ordinary citizen” and second that she wanted the books for him/herself.
Being a tour guide for foreigners requires a certain degree of political
trustworthiness, so your guide has to be a fairly priveleged person.
Secondly, those people who do deal with foreigners are given instructions by
the higher-ups to score certain goodies. Economics textbooks are in high
demand because they’re trying to figure out how to revive their economy and
need to learn about capitalism if they’re going to be successful in foreign
trade.

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