Inside North Korea
http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2011/08/inside-north-korea/100119/

News stories of the past 2-3 years had led me (and others) to believe that NK is a severely impoverished country where people are seriously depressed, are dying of hunger and some are desperately trying to survive by eating rats and insects.

The photo essay shows another story. Some of the buildings and infrastructure look great.

Check out the

Grand People's Study House lobby
Concert hall
Kim Il Sung University pool with water slides!
Subway station
Elementary school biology display
Grand People's Study House music library
Kim Il Sung University computer lab

And the people generally seem to be happy out and about in public.

I don't know what the overall reality is, or how the people there really feel, but those 37 varied pictures make it seem so far from what the last few years' news reports made it seem like - a depressed destitute country, on par with many African countries.

Either way, great pictures, and worth sharing, regardless of what country they show.

Enjoy!

P.S. I might as well post this other super awesome photo essay here:

Where in the World? A Google Earth Puzzle
http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2011/08/where-in-the-world-a-google-earth-puzzle/100120/

8/10/2011 2:42:59 AM

All these pictures are of Pyongyang



I'll give you three guesses which one is Pyongyang.

North Korea is in rough ship with famine, poor, no stable infrastructure, etc

8/10/2011 4:29:59 AM

damn that pic is scary sad... just one small dot, in the whole country?!

either way, as i said, still interesting pics.

8/10/2011 4:33:10 AM

They are, pictures inside of DPRK that aren't in Pyongyang or Kaesong (an area in the North that South Korean workers are allowed to go into) are very hard to find. Every trip by journalists is super coordinated by the DPRK gov't. Every photograph must be approved by the officials giving the tour.

8/10/2011 4:43:17 AM

Congratulations 0EPII1, you just fell for North Korean propaganda.

8/10/2011 4:55:48 AM

come on dude, those water slides inside the university are sweeeet!

8/10/2011 4:56:46 AM

Google North Korean Famine if you ever get a chance

8/10/2011 5:14:16 AM

i already did after your previous posts...

and duh i am not that stupid... i remember the famine in the news a couple of years ago or so... i was just surprised to see those images. but then you explained that those are from the capital only so now it makes sense. thanks.

8/10/2011 5:16:23 AM

Didn't mean to imply that you were.

Those pictures are really interesting and I'm glad you posted them. It's always such a stark contrast between the released propaganda and the news that escapes in bits and pieces. Like the massive gulags that were found by Google Earth, the famines, etc

8/10/2011 5:27:44 AM

BORN AND RAISED IN A CONCENTRATION CAMP
http://youtu.be/Ms4NIB6xroc

Enjoy.

Also, I checked out the photos and....

Most of those photos showed dilapidated buildings. The "impressive" ones aren't really blowing me away either.

[Edited on August 10, 2011 at 7:49 AM. Reason : asfsadf]

8/10/2011 7:40:47 AM

8/10/2011 8:09:19 AM

Almost every one of those pictures makes NK look like a ghost town... er... country? ghost country? does that work?

I really liked the one of the traffic official in the middle of the street that had NO VEHICLES on it at all.

8/10/2011 8:42:48 AM

Amazing book if you want a good read on NK:
http://www.amazon.com/Nothing-Envy-Ordinary-Lives-North/dp/0385523912/

8/10/2011 9:17:44 AM

I didn't realize people actually fell for NK propaganda photos

A couple years ago I was really tempted to go on the North Korean tour you can take. It's supposed to be incredibly surreal. But then I decided instead of wasting thousands of dollars on a crazy regime I'd live it up in Thailand instead

8/10/2011 9:30:54 AM

Mildly depressing:


Rare Visions of Rural North Korea
http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1994557,00.html?cnn=yes&hpt=C2

8/10/2011 9:42:57 AM

Quote :

"Amazing book if you want a good read on NK: http://www.amazon.com/Nothing-Envy-Ordinary-Lives-North/dp/0385523912/"

Read this a few months ago. Heartbreaking and eye-opening. A+++

8/10/2011 9:49:50 AM

If you have Netflix, watch the Vice Guide to Travel - North Korea

8/10/2011 3:48:35 PM

^ That's free online as well.

8/10/2011 3:55:33 PM

^^that is a good one

8/10/2011 4:39:19 PM

Quote :

"If you have Netflix, watch the Vice Guide to Travel - North Korea Kimjongilia"

8/10/2011 5:49:39 PM

First the thread about "believable e-mail scams", now this thread???

Is there nothing of which OEPII1 can't be convinced?

8/11/2011 9:58:28 AM

you can't convince me that you aren't a liar... cause i never said "believable e-mail scams".

8/11/2011 10:54:11 AM

yeah, OP, that was propaganda.

[Edited on August 11, 2011 at 11:29 AM. Reason : shit, forgot this was the lounge. changed comment.]

8/11/2011 11:28:12 AM

Quotations used to show my disbelief for the existence of such things: e-mail scams legitimate in appearance.

Reference to gullibility: message_topic.aspx?topic=616667

[Edited on August 11, 2011 at 1:11 PM. Reason : .]

8/11/2011 1:10:16 PM

ok so they exploit the hell out of their people in the early infrastructure building days and now wtf has happened to....everyone?? it was like a ghost town, where are the people?

8/11/2011 7:33:33 PM

a lot travel to south korea to work and then just travel back to live in north korea.

but their military is imploding because of horrible leadership

8/11/2011 8:06:32 PM

^^ They had a decent amount of money before the Soviet Union collapsed. When the wall came down Russia stopped selling them food at friendship prices so they had a huge famine during much of the 90s.

The best example is the Ryugyong Hotel, which was started in 1987 and basically abandoned in 1992, despite being the tallest building in Pyongyang.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryugyong_Hotel

Wow. It actually has a completed facade as of last month. News to me.

8/11/2011 8:33:20 PM

Quote :

"Almost every one of those pictures makes NK look like a ghost town... er... country? ghost country? does that work? I really liked the one of the traffic official in the middle of the street that had NO VEHICLES on it at all."

Thought the same thing...the buildings, while they look older, don't look that terrible. But I think I saw 1 car (and a bus) in all of those pictures.

8/11/2011 10:18:35 PM

Quote :

"The building stood topped out but without windows or interior fittings for the next sixteen years. Construction resumed in April 2008 under the supervision of the Orascom Group of Egypt, which has invested heavily in the North Korean mobile telephony and construction industries.[1] The company completed exterior work on the building in 2011, and interior work on the building's 360,000 square metres (3,900,000 sq ft) of floor space will continue until 2012 or later. Orascom has stated that the building will contain restaurants, hotel accommodation, apartments, and business facilities."

This news makes me happy. If I were a billionaire, I'd do something such as this.

8/11/2011 10:24:48 PM

^ help to prop up a dictatorship?

8/11/2011 10:31:26 PM

Give something nice to the people repressed by a dictatorship for their entire lives.

8/11/2011 10:39:08 PM

What will the people possibly get out of that?

8/11/2011 10:40:18 PM

Same emotion people get when looking out the window to a sunrise instead of looking out the window to a cement wall.

When you're that impoverished, something as small as change of scenery can inspire hope.

8/11/2011 10:51:56 PM

I don't know what's more puzzling, that North Korea would allow these pictures of their concrete ghost town out in order to pretend that their country isn't a hellhole or that oep11 seems to be buying it.

8/12/2011 12:40:28 AM

GeniuSxBoy, I'm not sure about what you understand about dictator regimes, but if you were a billionaire and you invested in that? The Dictator would assure you that the people appreciate it... if they could pay the prices, which they can't... And if they could, they go straight to a concentration camp for not giving EVERYTHING they can to the great leader.

It's a catch 22, if you have something, you won't have it for long and if you don't have anything, then you're not getting a room because you don't have anything to buy it with.

Your hotel is going to be a ghost town like every other building in North Korea.

8/12/2011 2:20:02 AM

We really have no idea what's going on over there.





Looks like a terrible life.

8/12/2011 3:05:47 AM

south korea knows how it's done

8/12/2011 6:49:37 AM

I can't tell if GeniuSxBoY is trolling or not

8/12/2011 7:25:29 AM

MINESWEEPER!

8/12/2011 8:14:16 AM

"I can't tell if GeniuSxBoY is trolling or not"

He must be. You have to be a special kind of idiot to think North Korea is anything other than what 99.9999% of the educated population knows it to be.

Watch the 'Friends of Kim' documetary on youtube. You'll see the special kind of idiots that think North Korea is a great place.

[Edited on August 12, 2011 at 12:40 PM. Reason : .]

8/12/2011 12:39:37 PM

Obama must have us invest in water slide infrastructure. We must not allow a water slide gap.

8/12/2011 2:00:02 PM

Quote :

"Watch the 'Friends of Kim' documetary on youtube. users respond in this thread. You'll see the special kind of idiots that think North Korea is a great place."

8/12/2011 2:07:32 PM

Vice has one of the best recent documentaries of North Korea. There are three parts.

http://www.vbs.tv/watch/the-vice-guide-to-travel/vice-guide-to-north-korea-1-of-3

[Edited on August 13, 2011 at 12:15 AM. Reason : .]

8/13/2011 12:11:18 AM

Quote :

"He must be. You have to be a special kind of idiot to think North Korea is anything other than what 99.9999% of the educated population knows it to be. "

Define educated? Is someone who can't disprove religion on his own considered educated?

8/13/2011 12:29:28 AM

what's up with pic #34? is there a translucent block between the seated woman and the computer monitor?

8/13/2011 1:38:43 AM

Quote :

"Vice has one of the best recent documentaries of North Korea. There are three parts. http://www.vbs.tv/watch/the-vice-guide-to-travel/vice-guide-to-north-korea-1-of-3"

Came here to post that but you beat me to it.

Very, very interesting documentary.

8/14/2011 4:58:26 PM

^^Yeah, I wanna know too. Somebody tell us!

8/14/2011 8:33:03 PM

Ya done goofed!

8/14/2011 8:55:38 PM

Most ironically-named place EVAR.

The Demilitarized Zone.

I went there February-March of '10. If there is one word I would use to describe North Korea, it would have to be pathetic, in a sad sort of way.

8/16/2011 9:24:35 PM

That vice documentary was awesome, thanks for posting

8/16/2011 9:35:35 PM