This isn’t exactly the kind of content you'd expect from The Prepared. Too many prepper sites are filled with constant doom porn meant to scare you. You know the drill—zombies, pandemics, and the end of the world scenarios. But I’m one of the few preppers with a website who’s not only been inside North Korea but has also seen firsthand how their government and rebellious underground operate.
I have experience working with different governments and helping design reforms and changes in various cultures. That background helps me make sense of what I witnessed there. A few of you have been asking me about comprehending the recent North Korean military escalations.
Let's cut to the chase: yes, North Korea is a real threat. But you shouldn't panic right now. Don't activate your bug-out plans or sit glued to the 24-hour news cycle. Instead, take it seriously—there is a significant possibility of something terrible happening. Make sure to follow our emergency preparedness checklist.
A few hundred Americans are permitted into North Korea annually. I was one of the last non-prisoner Americans in the country before the borders were shut. Now, the US State Department prohibits any citizen from visiting unless it’s for specific humanitarian purposes.
Even Otto Warmbier, the American student who died in captivity in DPRK after stealing a hotel banner, shared the same tour guide as me. His hotel was literally on an island in the river through Pyongyang so they could keep 'imperialist dogs' contained.
There are serious security concerns for myself and others I interacted with in-country, so I apologize for any lack of detail and blurred faces in my account.
North Korea is incredibly complex, and there’s so much to unpack that it’s nearly impossible to cover in one post. Two common questions I get are why I risked going and how insane it was.
Worldwide propaganda makes it hard to assess risks rationally. Take Iran, for instance—I don’t worry much about it despite media hype. I’ve seen firsthand that Iranians, for the most part, are lovely people, just like anywhere else, including the U.S., where we have our own extreme factions.
Given all the North Korea talk, I wanted to see if reality matched the propaganda. Spoiler alert—it did. North Korea is, in no exaggerated terms, a deceptive mess.
To understand the threat, you need to grasp how things work in the DPRK and what motivates their leadership and options.
The Kims are treated as God-King hybrids. Twenty-two million people live in squalor so that a select few can live lavishly and be worshipped. There’s virtually no advertising or imagery—everywhere you go, there are portraits of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il. Every room, building entrance, and subway car features these portraits. It’s everywhere, even at their equivalent of the White House and Vatican combined.
Street corners have monuments showing scenes like Kim saving a child from a fire or leading workers in forging steel. One particularly bizarre monument depicts Kim riding a tiger in medieval armor.
The Kims are portrayed as Chief Everything Officers. Kim Il-sung supposedly invented electricity, medicine, and modern military tactics and single-handedly defeated the Japanese in WWII. Whichever Kim is in power is glorified as the top scientist, doctor, astronomer, musician, athlete, and more.
One ridiculous example I saw involved medicine. Kim decided a breast milk pump could cure breast cancer. If you're elite enough for fancy treatment, they hook you up to the pump to extract tumors. If you’re not cured, they claim it’s because you’re a bad party member.
Kim Jong-un has a standing order requiring all media images to show him as a leader. He also bans photos showing his belly since he’s one of the few overweight individuals in the country.
This "leader" requirement often looks like him pointing at something while generals furiously scribble notes, as if they’re Moses transcribing the Ten Commandments. There’s even a website dedicated to pictures of Kim pointing at things.
For example, Kim Jong-il once decided annual riverbank flooding was bad and ordered a dam built. The UN sent scientists warning him that flooding was beneficial for farming. Accepting that advice would mean calling their god dumb, so they ignored it. In the end, this contributed to the 1990s famine that killed an estimated two million people. To this day, they insist Kim knew what he was doing, and the Americans were to blame.
The regime recognizes that total power is fragile and that there’s a fine line between control and resistance. So they’ll do whatever it takes to maintain their grip.
Other communist regimes fell because people inside knew what life was like elsewhere. Friends of mine in East Berlin during the 1980s could hear rap music and see people wearing blue jeans across the wall. That type of envy led to change in almost every 20th-century example.
The Kim regime isn’t stupid. They’ve learned from the failures of others like the USSR and Maoist China. North Korea has survived by keeping a tighter lid on outside information than its peers. That’s why it’s called the Hermit Kingdom.
Being in North Korea feels like living in the Matrix movies. Our brains normalize what we’re exposed to—even westerners in my tour group started normalizing to the environment after a few days.
North Koreans have almost no information about the outside world. Whatever they do get is carefully controlled by the government. Without outside sources to contradict their propaganda, it becomes increasingly outlandish.
The regime tells their people they’ve been to space, win the Olympics and World Cup annually, and that the outside world suffers from extreme famine where white people eat sewer rats to survive.
When I was in-country, about 150 families were publicly executed for possessing pirated Hollywood movies and South Korean soap operas.
In recent years, they’ve started building their own version of the internet and teaching basic computer skills. They’ve also introduced a cell phone network, but all hardware is monitored, and all information originates from the central government.
At the main library, they explained that their people had all kinds of information freedom. But notice the white-collar government handlers standing behind anyone using the computer. They physically monitor searches in the library’s book index.
North Koreans believe half their country is occupied by a foreign monster. Calling it North Korea implies there are two Koreas. In their eyes, there’s only one. The southern half is considered a Vichy-occupied territory drugged and forced to submit to imperialist invaders.
If you ask a North Korean what they care about most, reunification might be the top answer. The leaders likely don’t care about it, but they use it as a rallying cry.
One monument shows the two halves of Korea coming together. The northern imagery depicts citizens with guns and food, while the southern side looks hungry with their hands open.
Imagine thinking a few American states were occupied by Russians. You’d probably want to fight.
North Koreans are taught from birth that Americans are trying to murder them. If you think Western media and political fear mongering is bad, North Korea takes it to another level.
Every day, citizens are told by their trusted God-Kings that they’re on the brink of destruction and that America is actively trying to steal their treasure and kill their children.
Even though it’s mostly lies, without alternative information and execution for trying to find it, people deeply internalize this fear.
It’s become so ingrained that whenever something goes wrong structurally, they blame it on Americans.
North Korea has very little infrastructure. Even in the capital, Pyongyang, electricity is scarce. Most power goes to government buildings and monuments depicting the Kims.
During my stay, we had sudden blackouts at least half a dozen times. Afterward, a government handler would say, “Sorry, the Americans stole our electricity again.â€
They took us to the USS Pueblo, an American Navy ship captured in the 60s now part of their Victorious War Museum. The captured sailors were forced to play evil monsters in propaganda movies and news clips for decades.
The cultural fear of Americans runs so deep that I wasn’t allowed to use certain bathrooms. During a road trip, we stopped at a hotel for a bathroom break. The public toilet was in an area reserved for women. The main government handler announced, “Everyone get off and use the toilet, except for John.â€
I was later told that, being the only American, I wasn’t allowed in the women’s area because they feared I would rape someone.
The culture and identity of North Korea revolve around the idea of fighting to protect the Kims and their ideals. This dates back to the 1930s-40s when North Korea was occupied by the Japanese. Kim Il-sung, the first leader, began as a revolutionary against the Japanese.
Since then, they’ve been in a constant state of “fighting to defend ourselves against the foreign hordes at our door.†This cultural foundation is crucial for understanding their actions.
North Korea has one of the largest standing armies in the world. Estimates suggest it’s the largest standing military globally. Around two million people are currently on active duty. The U.S. government believes that as soon as Kim calls them to war, another 7.5 million experienced and fanatical troops are ready-reserve. That’s 30 percent of the population, trained, hungry, and waiting.
Military checkpoints are frequent, and armed soldiers are everywhere. We were constantly reminded that anything related to the military and their readiness is highly sensitive—if we even touched an electronic device or raised our hands above our hips, we were headed to labor camp.
The exception was standing at the DMZ line between North and South, which is under constant surveillance anyway. In this picture, we’re looking toward the South side. Notice all the cameras on top of the South/U.S. building.
Despite their military not being technologically advanced, think of them like the North Vietnamese or WWII-era Japanese—they’re tough, dedicated, genuinely think they’ll be annihilated, and know their land well.
Stone-age traps are everywhere. As we approached the DMZ, we had to be cautious of landmines (all three million of them) and deadfall spike pits.
I managed to sneak this photo—one of the most sensitive I took. In chokepoints like this road, you’d see massive stone pillars with explosives in the base. If the U.S. invades, they blow the explosives to tip over the pillars, creating tank barriers.
Another favorite of mine were pillars with giant five-foot-diameter stones sitting on top. The pillars were spaced about ten feet apart, typically in groups of ten to twenty. The stones on top were connected by chains. Pushing one stone off would create a domino effect, impeding battles.
Saving face, or maintaining reputation and image, is crucial in northern Asia. Think about the picture this post paints:
- A young, erratic God-King with almost unlimited powers and worship;
- Who maintains control through mass executions, lies, and limited information;
- Who is genetically predisposed to fighting against perceived enemies;
- With a country of people conditioned to believe America is about to destroy them;
- Who unilaterally controls one of the largest armies in the world;
- Who has painted himself into a corner where the only options are to win or die.
This creates a situation with no good options. If Kim backs down, he loses face with his people, and he knows that could be his “Gorbachev moment.â€
There has always been some wiggle room, especially since they control all information. But this tactic won’t work indefinitely.
In August 2017, when Trump made his “fire and fury†comments that caught Kim off guard, he backed down from attacking Guam without losing face by saying, “meh, this isn’t worth it, I’ll just wait and see what that idiot does while he’s stuck at a golf course.â€
The number of outs Kim still has in his hand is shrinking fast.
Hope: There is an underground, it’s working, and it’s growing.
I can’t go into much detail, but while I was in North Korea—after much hand-wringing and trust-building—I had the fortune of meeting members of the resistance.
Outside, I’ve worked with some of the main human rights groups sending balloons with USB drives and pamphlets over the border. They’re even working on inventing a flat TV antenna that can be smuggled in and fitted against exterior walls without detection. Close enough to South Korea, with this stealth antenna, they can get unrestricted TV access.
I estimated that 75% of people in the country are fully brainwashed. Another 15% know something’s off but try to keep their heads down. The remaining 10% are “woke†and languishing in that prison of a country.
The rebels don’t fight—they traffic information. The best way to fight against the Kim regime is to show the people the truth.
One rebel I met loved the movie Gladiator, which he saw via a smuggled USB drive, because it showed a man rising up against the Emperor.
I had the awesome responsibility to share the first non-Korean music a particular rebel had ever heard. What do you choose to represent an entire world of music?!? In the end, the first “free†song he listened to was “Happy†by Pharrell.
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