To get to the other side? Haha. ^^Curiosity. I was curious as to what the other side lived like, so while I was in Europe back in the ‘80s I used to go to the East bloc. We were technically at war with the Soviets at the time. I had no problem getting a visa, but therer were no State Dept. warnings that I remember.
I got arrested while bicycling down the road between villages in East Germany. The charges were never explained to me. When they saw my American passport they put me, my bike, the West German who had come with me, and his bike, in the back of an army truck and shipped us 100 miles or so back to Checkpoint Alpha. They fed us sausages and potatoes before we left. Didn’t say much.
I had more trouble than that in Greece, a NATO ally, when my girlfriend got pissed off at me in the airport at Mykonos and got on a plane to Athens with my passport and luggage back in the early ‘80s. I had a hell of a time explaining to these hick police that, although I was a resident of Sweden, I was an American citizen. Without a passport, they didn’t buy it at all. They thought I was a Yugoslav spy or something. I had to stay two nights in the police station (they let me out in the daytime) until my girlfriend came to her senses and returned with my passport. OK. I’ve had enough coffee.
I don’t think that I could ever be so curious and naive to go to a country like N. Korea, though. I was never that stupid. I hope.