Clarification: This article omitted to report that a Christian non-governmental organization in South Korea, LNKM, invited Mr. Cole to join a trip it had organized. Mr. Cole did not receive any funding from the North Korean government and did not communicate with the government about the trip. Mr. Cole agreed with LNKM to keep his footage positive to avoid jeopardizing the work of LNKM in North Korea.
A popular British YouTube star volunteered to travel to North Korea and documented his “positive” experience.
Louis Cole, a 33 year travel vlogger with nearly 2 million subscribers, recently uploaded seven videos from his trip to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. Trips to water parks and fun with “North Korean surfer chicks” replace talk of gulags and human rights violations within the police state.
“I’m trying to focus on positive things in the country and combat the purely negative image we see in the Media. I advise you to do your own research on the DPRK. These videos are from one perspective of what we are being shown and experience whilst here,” Mr. Louis wrote Tuesday on his YouTube page.
“Bro, we’re here! we’re here,” the filmmaker announced upon his flight landing in the country.
Not mentioned in the vlogger’s reviewers are the conditions once endured by gulag survivors like Kang Chol-Hwan, who authored “The Aquariums of Pyongyang” in 2000.
“The sweatbox is one of the harshest punishments imaginable, and since it could be used as retribution for the most trifling of offenses — offenses that would seem downright ridiculous on the outside — it was perpetually dangling over our heads,” the author wrote of his experience. “The box is shrouded in total darkness and its occupant is given so little to eat that he will devour anything that comes within arm’s reach, which is most often a wayward cockroach or centipede.”
Mr. Kang met with then-President George W. Bush on June 13, 2005, to discuss his harrowing experience and those of the hundreds-of-thousands of political prisoners still trapped inside.
Media outlets like Vanity Fair and Forbes were quick to note that Mr. Louis, perhaps unwittingly, was being used as a tool for North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
“The more you watch Cole’s videos from North Korea, the more you wonder if he’s plainly ignorant to the plight of many people in the country, or if he’s willingly doing an alarmingly thorough job of carrying water for Kim Jong-un’s regime — not really caring what the implications are, because, hey, cool trip,” wrote Vanity Fair’s Richard Lawson.
Forbes’ Shelby Carpenter noted that at least 14 American citizens have been detained by the police state in the last decade.
“If Cole had traveled and videoed nonstop without the blessing of the North Korean government, he’d probably be sitting in a jail cell right now,” Ms. Carpenter wrote. “In the meantime, if you’re thinking about traveling to North Korea, you’ll be pleased to hear that they have great water slides.”
• Douglas Ernst can be reached at dernst@washingtontimes.com.
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