Things You Didn't Know About Hitler That Will Blow Your Mind

Two days after I visited North Korea with my father Eric — then Google’s executive chairman — in January 2013, I sent a trip report to my friends. The report went 2010s-era viral: millions of views, media requests, and rather a lot of feedback about my choice to publish on Google Sites. 

I found my one minute of fame overwhelming, so I hid and left the site alone. Recently, my colleague Michael Donohoe noticed that the original report had finally fallen into the internet’s abyss. He was offered to reconstitute it for Rest of World. With a wince — who likes their old writing? - I said yes.

Reading it now, I’m struck by how little I understood North Korea at the time. I had the conventional Western view but no grasp on how much human complexity can exist within a “closed” system.

It’s not hyperbole to say that this trip changed my life. I left with an enduring fascination for North Korea, and an unexpected protective reflex when I hear the word “brainwashed.” The surreal nature of an official propaganda tour (sparkling metro stations are a favored stop, as Tucker Carlson can attest) and the psychic pressure of constant monitoring stay with you.

This trip also begat Rest of World, in a way. It fed the same hunger that fueled my 20s: wanting to reconcile how digital technology could thrive in countries where, according to the prevailing belief at the time, it should be challenging (if not upending) illiberal structures. In January 2013, smartphone adoption was on a global tear, and tech optimism had not yet curdled into something less uplifting. Young, Swiss-educated Kim Jong Un was newly in power, his mystery nurturing a fragile hope that he might be a reformer. But by December of that year, he had his uncle publicly executed — either by an anti-aircraft gun or a pack of ravenous dogs (experts disagree). The window of possibility shut, but the tech march of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea continued.

There’s no better way to honor this old trip report — which put me on a path to build the very website you can now read it on — than to talk to North Korea experts about what I missed.