juche do it

By Aziz P. -
Tim Johnson, who writes for the China Rises blog at McClatchy, is blogging while on a visit to North Korea. It promises to be a surreal experience, and valuable as a peek behind the concrete curtain. For example, the airline infrastructure is something out of a 50's novel:

On landing in Pyongyang, I was amazed at the vehicle that brought the stairs to the plane. You can see it in the photo. Obviously, it was some contraption made in the Soviet era as well, and passed on to the fraternal North Koreans. It looks like a stretch El Camino mixed with some sort of old Cadillac. Anyway, it was those touches that made me think I had entered into some other-worldly theme park that ought to have a huge admission price.


He also notes that DPRK is environmentally pristine, which is unsurprising given that North Korea is utterly dark from space.

Johnson wonders if maybe DPRK will become the "Bhutan of East Asia." This strikes me as wildly optimistic.

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