What Is An “Exciter”?
02.28.2008 - 9:53 AMOn entering North Korea, the Washington Post reported yesterday, members of the New York Philharmonic “were required to fill out what may well be the world’s strangest customs declaration form. It asks whether a traveler is carrying a “killing device,” an “exciter,” “artistic works” or “publishing of all kinds.”
Is an “exciter” what is known euphemistically here as a “personal stimulation device,” or in a plain word, a vibrator?
If so, why would North Korea want to keep these devices out? I can’t readily answer that question except to say that almost all Communist countries have embraced highly traditional attitudes toward sex, and North Korea is no exception.
Or is it?
Next month, a remarkable book will be published, The Reluctant Communist: My Desertion, Court-Martial, and Forty-Year Imprisonment in North Korea, by Charles Robert Jenkins. Jenkins was a young American soldier stationed in South Korea who deserted to North Korea in 1965 with the foolish idea that he would soon be repatriated to the United States. He was to spend the next 40 years in captivity in Pyongyang until allowed to leave to Japan in 2002.
Jenkins’s memoir contains some remarkable passages about the sexual attitudes of his omnipresent “minders” who shadowed his every move. Prudish Communist countries may be, but there is another side of the story. In a nearly perfect totalitarian world like contemporary North Korea, the authority of the state reaches deeply into private lives and dehumanizes everything it touches, very much including sex. Jenkins’ book is not yet out, so I won’t provide the details, except to say that his is one of the most fascinating and heart-wrenching accounts of life in a Communist country to appear in many years.
| »Back to Connecting the Dots | »Back to Commentary |
February 28th, 2008 at 12:25 PM
Well, you have me on what the North Koreans were prohibiting a few days ago. But the first thing that comes to mind is that we used to call the DeSoto patrols off Vietnam (early ’60s) “exciter missions.” They were intended to “excite” the North Vietnamese to use their radars and voice communications so we could collect the signals. (Typical McNamara: combine provocation with strategic uselessness and call it “robust engagement.”) USS Maddox and USS Turner Joy, you may recall, were close to the North Vietnamese coast on such a patrol in the summer of 1964, in what developed into the Gulf of Tonkin incident.
The mental associations here are probably best not pursued. At least not to the point of “getting visuals.”
February 28th, 2008 at 12:45 PM
So-called communism a la Soviet Union and Pyonyang is horrible in itself, but when it induces insanity into the leader via cult of personality it becomes atrocious.
Romania was and Korea is different beasts than the rest of the communist bloc and very few people in the West have the slightest clue what it means to “live” in such places. In the case of Korea, which has fanaticism in its culture, only god can save you, and I am a militant atheist.
fp
http://fallofknowledgeandreason.blogspot.com/
February 28th, 2008 at 3:08 PM
I’m sure vibrators do not exist in North Korea, just as homosexuals do not exist in Iran. So the term “exciter” probably refers to something else. But it is intriguing that it’s mentioned next to “killing device.” Mr.Bond?
In fairness, Queen Victoria disbelieved in lesbians.
February 28th, 2008 at 4:52 PM
Aargh! It’s stimulants, as in amphetamines, the scourge of Kansas and also, along with fake U.S. C-notes, one of the main export products of the flourishing economy of the DPRK.
February 28th, 2008 at 11:28 PM
Vibrators are illegal in Alabama too. Just sayin.
February 29th, 2008 at 4:00 AM
Ritt,
is that how you chipped your teeth?
March 5th, 2008 at 1:12 PM
Amazon says the book is published and in stock. You can get it delivered tomorrow if you are so inclined.