In the comment section of the travelogue, one of the authors of this post wrote the following in response to another's remark saying that what they had done was very risky:<p><pre><code> First of all, I know that our trip was a risky experiment and in some way egoistic.
However, if you have a difficult aim, you just must not think so much about the
risks involved and about failing. A mountain climber also must not think about what
might happen if he makes a wrong step and falls down. He has to concentrate his
thoughts on how he can achieve his aim, otherwise he has already lost before
starting. Adventures don't happen if you're too afraid.
</code></pre>
I think this summarizes what type of person the author is pretty well.
I'm struck by the enormous amount of agriculture. It's easy to forget how, not so long ago, the average human spent most of his time trying to generate food.
I posted this link in a comment:<p><a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2153398" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2153398</a><p>Nice to see it show up on the front page.
Absolutely amazing. It does sound like it would be very difficult to travel in N. Korea if you don't speak Russian, Korean, or surprisingly, German.<p>But, the French speaker was especially surprising, and I would have expected more Chinese influence than there seemed to be (linguistically).
One more from my N Korea bookmarks: <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2158524" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2158524</a>