The Sewol ferry carrying 476 passengers including a group of high school students on a field trip to Jeju Island capsized on April 16, 2014, and sank to the bottom of the sea off Korea's southern coast. Most of the crew, including the captain, were rescued by the Korean coast guard. Some of the passengers, who happened to be on the deck or escaped soon after the capsizing, were saved by fishing boats and commercial vessels that came before the ROK Coast Guard or Navy. 304 passengers, however, were trapped inside and drowned.

This paper uses observations collected “on the ground” inside North Korea to argue that everyday life matters when researching North Korea and that one method of carrying out such research is to travel there as a tourist.

Trauma is a site that does not exist. No road leads there. No path leads around it. Trauma is. Inaccessible. Access through words seems to be blocked. How on earth can one speak about something that is impossible to express? What words could one use for a horror that is beyond the possibilities of language? How speak about something that cannot be spoken of-yet “the abundance of real suffering permits no forgetting”?

Close to the lotus-filled expanse of Shinobazu Pond in Tokyo's Ueno Park, a narrow back street leads into a driveway that curves between mossy walls to the top of a small hill. At the summit stands an imposing mansion whose neo-Jacobean facade, fronted by tall palm trees, would look more at home in the streets of a nineteenth century European spa town than in the midst of twenty-first century Tokyo.

At 5.30 pm on 17 September 2014, police and soldiers interrupted a lecture on the topic of “Democracy Classroom #2: The Decline of Dictatorship in Other Countries” at Thammasat University in Bangkok. The officials went up to Professor Nidhi Eoseewong, the noted historian and public intellectual who was speaking, and told him to stop and come with them. Three additional scholars (Prajak Kongkirati, Janjira Sombutpoonsiri, and Chaowarit Chaowsangrat) and three student activists from the League of Liberal Thammasat for Democracy (LLTD), which had organized the event, were also arrested. They were taken to a local police station and interrogated for several hours. At no time were they allowed to speak with lawyers, as the police and military authorities asserted that they were not being charged with any crimes, but were there for the purpose of “creating understanding.” They were released at 9.30 pm that evening. By not charging the seven individuals with the violation of any laws or orders, the authorities can claim that this was not an arrest, but was rather a discussion to “create understanding,” as they have in cases of arbitrary detention following the coup. To be clear: the lack of formal charges does not change the meaning of this incident as a form of intimidation, violation of the rights of the seven individuals to freedom of thought and speech, and part of the ongoing creation and maintenance of a climate of fear in Thailand.