Or you could visit the world’s largest thermometer, float on the LSU lazy river. Go to Kerala and drink some delicious chai, watch the Rockies play a game in the Mile High Stadium. There is a whole world of things that are entirely unlike North Korea

It's seeing aspects of a fundamentally different form of government that's the appeal. If it was just seeing "Korean" culture, I'd have gone to South Korea years ago.

(BTW, a good friend of mine told me he's been skiing in view of the DMZ, and they just laugh at the NK guards watching them ski with binoculars.)

I'd counter that the South is an interesting place in its own right. Skipping it because it's too much like Western countries is to miss out on all the fascinating ways it isn't.

Furthermore, I'd question the value of finding out for yourself what life is like under a famine-stricken, xenophobic, totalitarian, hereditary absolute monarchy. What is it you're hoping to get out of an experience like that?

You're trying to adjudicate why someone thinks something is interesting when you do not by attempting to formulate a rational reason for why their interest is wrong. A difficult challenge.

I don't understand why you're trying to push me to visit a country I have no interest in visiting. (There's plenty of places I'd rather visit before South Korea.)

In the case of North Korea: It's difficult to explain unless you're in a listening mode, but I'll try:

First: I would never go under the current government. Full stop. I won't go somewhere where I don't feel safe.

Second: I don't endorse their government in any way.

For me, the best analogy would be traveling to East Germany in the early 1990s after the fall of communism. IE, visit the Berlin Wall, and maybe listen to some locals tell their story.

So, assuming North Korea's government changes in my lifetime, I'd love to visit and "see it" before it gets torn down.

One of the things I like hearing is how people work around constraints and obstacles. These are the kinds of stories I'm interested in.