Sending a letter to North Korea ~ NanoThoughts 1.0

Thursday, May 12, 2005

Sending a letter to North Korea

I was just in the UPS store and a Korean gentleman said he wanted to mail a letter to Korea. The clerk asked him "North or South?". The Korean guy almost laughed, but said "South" and then "You can't mail a letter to North Korea." I wondered aloud about this as well and the clerk said that he had read the regulations and you can actually mail letters to North Korea, but it can't have anything in it about the United States, democracy, etc. So, I decided to look this up online and sure enough, here are the US Postal Service's Country Conditions for Mailing - Korea, Democratic People's Republic of (North Korea). I am pretty sure all mail gets routed there through Hong Kong.

My Korean friends, however, say that no mail is getting in there, so who knows what is really going on. Still, I wonder if 99% of the public realize how screwed up that country really is.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I remember being totally shocked when I found out that everyone has speakers in their homes that have to be on all the time. I mean, I knew the DPRK was nuts, but I thought such a thing was too 1984 to actually happen.

Rog said...

Yeah, those state radios are wacky. Westerners who have visited say that the stories are about how Kim Jong Il went golfing the day before and shot a 49, wait excuse me, a 48! New DPRK record! or how a fisherman caught a white sea anemone and this shows that Kim Jong Il rox our world!

KIM JONG IL, I LOVE YOU, PLEASE PUT THE BOMBS AWAY AND PLAY MORE TWISTER!!!!!

Rog said...

Hi Dian,
Like me, I bet you wish Kim Jong Il would just play a little more Twister, or at the very least some Parcheesi or Scrabble. No Tiddlywinks though. Do you live in Seoul? how do you feel about movign the capital south? Kinda sucks, but I guess it'll be good in the long run. Have you read 1984 (re: your first blog post)? If so, what did you think? Have you seen Juyuso seubgyuksageun (Attack The Gas Station!).
Take care and keep on keepin' on!