This is just wrong. There are tour guides who encourage all sorts of questions, and I've talked to people who said it's entirely possible to talk to random citizens in the street occasionally. Just that you need to be mindful that these people could be busy and may not want to talk to random foreigners at the moment. I'm sure it also depends on your particular tour guide. Some are probably less patient with that kind of thing than others.
about how you run the risk of being detained and tortured for random reasons and shit like that.
Complete nonsense. You could be imprisoned for doing stupid shit like breaking into employee only areas of the hotel you're staying in and attempting to steal things there, but even if that happened you wouldn't be tortured lol
Is there a way to actually visit North Korea without immediately getting on The List
Depends what list you're talking about I guess, but no. No western country is just gonna let you go visit the DPRK without taking note.
and also not as part of one of these tour groups that’s likely grifting the fuck out of things?
This is theoretically possible, but it's work. Since the tour groups do all the communication with the government, you'd have to do that part yourself. So you'd need to know the right way to approach a foreign government and ask them permission to come visit.
This is just wrong. There are tour guides who encourage all sorts of questions, and I've talked to people who said it's entirely possible to talk to random citizens in the street occasionally. Just that you need to be mindful that these people could be busy and may not want to talk to random foreigners at the moment. I'm sure it also depends on your particular tour guide. Some are probably less patient with that kind of thing than others.
Complete nonsense. You could be imprisoned for doing stupid shit like breaking into employee only areas of the hotel you're staying in and attempting to steal things there, but even if that happened you wouldn't be tortured lol
Depends what list you're talking about I guess, but no. No western country is just gonna let you go visit the DPRK without taking note.
This is theoretically possible, but it's work. Since the tour groups do all the communication with the government, you'd have to do that part yourself. So you'd need to know the right way to approach a foreign government and ask them permission to come visit.