On Traveling to North Korea.

[DFW]

110. I was in Cuba and East Germany in the 1980s

In Cuba, things were different, as I was an invited guest of the government. I was watched like a hawk, of course, but still, they knew I was there, and I expected to be watched. One government official encouraged me, on an afternoon when there were no appointments, to take a bus downtown and wander the old town of Havana. I asked if his superiors would have a problem with that, and he said not at all. I did, but got stopped by "passers-by" asking me what time it was, and then complimenting me on my Spanish when I told them. OK, I didn't look like a typical Cuban, but they didn't have to make it THAT obvious that I was being followed with every step. A little creepy, but not really unexpected.

East Germany was downright creepy. Since Westerners were allowed to make day trips to East Berlin, we weren't completely shadowed, but we were watched. Soldiers in their Nazi-style (except for the helmets) uniforms were goose-stepping everywhere, and no one was smiling. In the transit station on the way back to West Berlin, I was stopped, taken into a windowless room where I was the only one without an East German uniform or the right to stand up without permission, and interrogated for over half an hour, made to empty my pockets and explain every move I had made in East Berlin. This had happened to me more than once in East Berlin, the first time being when I was 22, before I was even working.

These were two countries which, while having political stances hostile to ours, had no overt interest in seriously harassing or harming an American who was not harassing or harming them. North Korea has no such inhibitions, and even a perfumed, hand-written personal invitation from Kim Jong-Un would result in my sending my regrets.