The Movie “The Interview” reminded me of my own trip to North Korea several years ago.

The day we went to the DMZ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Demilitarized_Zone) I wore a T-shirt with Garfield on it. We had a tour inside one of the conference rooms on the border, and then our translator started asking me about my T-shirt. He pointed to Garfield and asked me what is that, and I told him the cat on my T-shirt named Garfield, from a comic book, he hates Monday and loves lasagna and donuts. Then he asked if Garfield is Chinese, I said, no he’s American but the comics were translated into Chinese a long time ago, I grew up with them, and in short, I love Garfield. He then asked if other Chinese kids also like Garfield, I said I can’t speak for every Chinese kid, but my friends also love Garfield. In the end, he told me he was so surprised that China had became so “Americanized”, where even the children had started reading negatively influential American comics (like Garfield hates Monday and loves food, that’s not good for a society). And I was really sad because now I knew kids grew up in NK didn’t even know about Garfield, they are missing so much fun in their childhood :(

Some of the pictures I took in North Korea: https://shengkaidehua.com/2011/09/19/north-korea/