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This is a video about skiing.
Now, you see, I, Sam, the narrator, love skiing.
But my writer Adam, who wrote this script, hates skiing, and guess what folks, writers
have all the power.
Just watch: I, Sam, believe that skiing is dumb.
The only reason I do it is because I’m insecure about how cool Adam’s hobbies are.
Also, I will give Adam a raise.
This is a legally binding promise that is valid in court.
Now that that’s out of the way…
here’s a picture of Kim Jong Un riding the chairlift at North Korea’s Masikryong ski
resort.
Now this picture is odd for two reasons: first, because by riding the lift, Kim the Tool Man
Taylor is actually doing a thing, instead of looking at a thing—which historically
is his favorite activity—and second, because it’s really weird that North Korea has a
ski resort in the first place.
I mean, ski resorts are a luxury usually reserved for wealthy enclaves of America and Western
Europe—plus Japan, for some reason.
Skiing just isn't a budget-friendly sport, so why did a country that can barely afford
a skee ball build a ski resort?
Well, there are three kind-of reasons, and one big-boy reason.
The first kind-of reason is that despite what you might suppose from his size or body shape
or whole general vibe, Kim Jong Un loves skiing, which he learned to do while being educated
in Switzerland.
Seeing as Kimothée Chalamet famously loves bringing stuff to North Korea that’s usually
reserved for rich Western Countries—cars, nuclear weapons, Dennis Rodman, etc—it was
only a matter of time before he brought in the old overpriced slip n’ slide.
The second kind-of reason, and the one the government always says publicly, is that it
supposedly gives average North Koreans an opportunity to enjoy one of the finer things
in life.
But considering most North Koreans aren’t even able to enjoy the regular things in life,
and many aren’t allowed to be alive at all, call me crazy but I think the North Korean
government may be fudging the truth with this one.
The third kind-of reason is the same reason that every four years the world has to pretend
they care about bobsledding: the Winter Olympics.
You see, when South Korea hosted the Winter Olympics in 2018, North Korea went all annoying
younger brother and tried to copy them, hoping they could hold an Olympic event in North
Korea.
That didn’t happen, but they did field a joint North-South Korea women’s hockey team,
proving that when the Koreas come together, they can do anything, including being outscored
28-2 across five games.
But the final reason—the big boy one—is as a sanctions work around.
You see, North Korea has been in international timeout since 2006, when they began test-driving
nuclear flying boom sticks, leading the UN Security Council to ban North Korea from basically
all forms of trade with other countries—except, that is, for tourism.
So, while North Korean people can’t afford to ski, rich Chinese tourists, and the smattering
of brave and rich European and American tourists who aren’t afraid of being Otto Warmbiered,
can—and that’s who primarily uses the resort.
This foreign tourism is especially useful because North Korea is desperate for foreign
currency: their own currency, the North Korean won, is about as valuable as NeoPets’ NeoPoints,
so if they can get their hands on US dollars, or Chinese Yen, or European whatever they’re
calleds, they want them.
But, you ask, shouldn’t those same sanctions stop them from being able to build a ski resort
in the first place?
And it turns out that you, the hypothetical question-asking viewer we invented for transition
purposes, would be right—in fact, the UN has explicitly banned North Korea from importing
luxury goods.
Nevertheless, Kim persisted—which was made possible by a glaring loophole: the global
big brains neglected to define what actually counted as a luxury item, and in lieu of having
a list, just decided that each nation would figure it out for themselves, opening the
door for Kimpossible to simply claim that ski gear wasn’t a luxury.
Now, while most countries just responded to such claims with an “uhh yeah it is,”
the government of North Korea’s closest ally, West North Korea, had their back.
The backbone of North Korea’s ski resort—the chairlift that Kim’s straddling in this
photo—came from China.
It’s actually an Austrian ski lift, but Austria didn’t sell it to North Korea—instead,
they sold it to China, who then sold it to North Korea.
It’s the type of genius workaround the UN never could have seen coming, and when the
rest of the world says “hey why are you letting North Korea have nice things” like
they did in the 2015 UN Security Council Panel, China just says “well those weren’t fancy
things for fancy people, but normal things for normal people.
Also, we’re China, so like…
literally come at us.”
Now, this may shock you, but it seems that the idea of a profitable winter tourist destination
in the world’s most unwelcoming country isn’t panning out the way North Korea hoped.
The DPRK has stated that the resort hosts seventy thousand visitors a year, which is
actually pretty impressive, except for the part where that’s definitely a lie.
If we take the going rate of North Korean overestimation—about 10x higher than reality—then
the area would see about seven thousand visitors a year, an estimate that would line up with
visitors’ accounts of a nearly empty mountain that offers $40 lift tickets in a country
where the per capita income is less than $2,000 a year.
So in sum, North Korea has a ski resort that’s built for its people except that it’s not,
it’s a big success except that it’s a failure, it isn’t legal except that it sort
of is, and most importantly, the Unified Korean women’s hockey team has a long way to go.
While skis are bad, you know what’s good: skills.
See what I did there?
Skis, skills, they sound the same.
You don’t like it?
Well maybe I’d have the time to write better lines if I got more productive by taking my
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