Ignorance is Bliss?

For no particular reason, my brother pointed out to me an article on North Korea in today's zaobao...

The journalist was invited by the tourism board of North Korea for a tour there. Instead of focusing on the tourism attraction, he wrote quite a fair bit about the life of the people there.

Quiet, slow, simple. That's how he describes North Korea.

But he also wrote about the way information is so highly restricted - which is really disturbing. No world news. No foreign TV programmes. No books from overseas publishers. No Internet. Just imagine that.

Same applies to tourists - upon arrival, all handphones and laptops were handed over to the custom for "safekeeping" til departure.

The people really have no idea what's happening in the world out there.

For those who really really do not know about the world outside, they may just be contented with what they see and what they have. But what about the people who have experienced the world out there? Like the North Korean classmate I had in JC - JG. A really nice and smart guy. He was in sg coz his dad was sent by the government to do some work here for 3 years.

I still remember (amazingly) pretty clearly the day we told me about his return to North Korea.

I was in the library preparing my 1st Econs S essay (rarely do you find me in the library, but Mr Cook wanted us to do this essay before he consider us for his class). Suddenly, JG came and sit down right in front of me (and rarely do you find him in the library too). Apparently the rest were in Chinese class (which both of us were exempted from) so I was among the first to know about it.

And he told me everything in less than 5 sentences.

He had this "I have no choice but I really don't wanna go back" sad look in his eyes which I didn't quite fully understand.

But I think I understand now...