Can Stalinism cope with tourism?
Monica Porter peeks behind the last Iron Curtain For those who regret the demise of communism, if only because of the opportunities it afforded to visit places with fascinatingly ghastly regimes, all is not lost. There is one last Cold War holiday destination left: the Korean Peninsula. But connoisseurs of armed-guard tourism should waste no time, because even here, as we saw last week, the ice is beginning to thaw. There have been pacts between South and North Korea in the past, but none with the potential impact of the Pyongyang agreement between President Kim Dae-jung of South Korea and the North’s eccentric autocrat Kim Jong-il. Tomorrow, in front of Seoul’s monolithic War Memorial, the veteran Southern politician will be able to celebrate – if only cautiously – the success of his policy of patient diplomacy at the 50th-anniversary commemoration of the outbreak of the Korean War. As part of the growing rapprochement, the first organised tour from South Korea to North Korea was laun
