16 ms·
Stopping All Stations – The Pyongyang Metro
- cfontes 11y agoAs always very interesting to learn more about a place so bizarre and closed.
- tempodox 11y agoThis looks like a place of lies, indoctrination and personality cult. Had it been kept shut to outside visitors, I wouldn't have missed much. North Korea seems to be a living nightmare.
- pizza234 11y agoI could mention a few (few?) wars caused by western countries' lies and indoctrination. Personality cult, definitely, although that's the part of the propaganda style.
- JBReefer 11y agoPlease don't use whataboutism, it lowers the standard of conversation, and it assumes all commenters are American.
- pmlnr 11y ago"a place of lies, indoctrination and personality cult" - which leader, country, company is not trying to achieve the same? That is the living nightmare. Of course, there are exceptions. Sometimes. A few.
- emodendroket 11y agoAren't you bringing in your preexisting biases here? While I'm sure there are plenty of "living nightmares" we can find in North Korea I'm not finding one in these photos.
- dblooman 11y agoI wonder if we "took out" the leadership, how long we would leave things as they are to allow people to adjust. How much of shock would it be to tell people they can go and visit any country, call anyone, learn about other cultures without fear of arrest
- venomsnake 11y agoWhen the Berlin wall fell - the economic collapse of Eastern Europe was total for a decade. Leave vacuum at the top - and ordinary North Koreans will be even worse. Look at the paradise that is Iraq. The only semi-successful country that avoided total pain was East Germany - and it was because of the unification.
- maxxxxx 11y agoThe cost of the German reunification was enormous. And that was for a country that was probably one of the best economies of the communist states. I can't imagine what the cost and effort would be to keep North Korea from collapsing.
- avar 11y ago> Look at the paradise that is Iraq. Iraq was held together by a strongman of one of two secterian factions on the country, who when the country collapsed went right back to killing each other. I don't think any such analogous situation exists in North Korea, it would be much more like East Germany, the economy would be horrible for decades, but I doubt it would come to perpetual civil war like Iraq.
- have_faith 11y agoIt's difficult to imagine what your worldview would be like growing up around such a high level of propaganda from a young age. Every piece of visual media you have ever encountered trying to subvert your view of the world. (I guess not too dissimilar to our own lives, on a smaller scale of course).
- nxzero 11y agoThis is true for any "culture" - N.Korea is just not very good at it.
- TazeTSchnitzel 11y agoIt's true of every society to some extent. The West's less overt tactics are arguably more effective than Soviet-style propaganda because they're less obvious.
- sangnoir 11y ago> The West's less overt tactics are arguably more effective than Soviet-style propaganda because they're less obvious. America has pretty overt propaganda, e.g. the Pentagon paying the NFL millions to 'salute the troops'. As a non-American, seeing young children reciting the pledge of allegiance in unison is downright creepy. I'm guessing Americans do not have alternative experiences and hence consider it to be normal. I'm guessing the same applies to Koreans growing up in Korea: it's normal. I'm not suggesting the levels of propaganda are in the same ball-park.
- nommm-nommm 11y agoAs an American I find schoolchildren reciting the pledge of allegiance in the morning very disturbing. Especially ones who are much to young to actually understand what they are saying. And it always happened in every primary school I went to.
- 0xfeba 11y agoTo add to the creepiness, when a child sits for the pledge (legal, AFAIK) and is punished. Add the comments from supposedly rational adults on the local news article about it... and you see some people really take forced patriotism seriously.
- TazeTSchnitzel 11y agoIf the train carriages look familiar to anyone who's seen the German Democratic Republic's carriages, that's because they're the very same ones. The DPRK took some of the GDR's old U-Bahn trains.
- iSnow 11y agoActually, North Korea bought subway train carriages that were in use in western berlin as well. I recognize those in the pictures - during my time in university, I used them all the time - in west berlin.
- TazeTSchnitzel 11y agoYeah, there's both former West and East Berlin trains: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyongyang_Metro#Rolling_stock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyongyang_Metro#Rolling_stock Which makes sense given they would both run on the same kind of track.
- emodendroket 11y agoIt says that in the article.
- arprocter 11y agoIIRC the last time there was something on here about DPRK overland rail it was said the trains were Swiss
- golergka 11y agoThat's so similar to Moscow, it's uncanny.
- LaFolle 11y agoIn metro, no one (if not many) is carrying cell phones! That is (just one of) something our eyes are not used to. (In Singapore, nearly every one in metro is hooked to their phones) This is too much: "North Korea doesn’t use the traditional Gregorian calendar, they use the ‘Juche’ calendar, beginning on the date of Kim Il-Sung’s birth, Juche 1. "
- peferron 11y agoI found the calendar thing funny too. Then I remembered we're all counting from the birth of Jesus.
- AlgorithmicTime 11y agoWell, the supposed birth of Jesus. Guess you've got to choose something. Could go back to Ab Urbe Condita, I suppose. Or start a new calendar from 1776 or some other auspicious year. It's not like AD was used until like the 8th Century.
- mcphage 11y ago> we're all counting from the birth of Jesus At some point people realized they got the year wrong for Jesus's supposed birth. But the reaction was, "eh, fuck it", so our calendar isn't really based even on that anymore.
- emodendroket 11y agoI mean, we still call it "the year of our Lord." FWIW Japan uses, in parallel, the Western system, but also a system where the years are counted from the beginning of the reign of the current emperor.
- nommm-nommm 11y ago>I mean, we still call it "the year of our Lord." BC/AD is deprecated for non-religious uses. The international standard is CE/BCE for common era/before common era.
- yarou 11y agoI'm struck by how hopeless the average person appears to be in these pictures. You can see only sadness and despair in their eyes, it is truly quite tragic.
- grokys 11y agoHave you ever travelled any metro at rush hour?
- pizza234 11y agoThat is false. You wouldn't notice in the metro (and in the streets, same) any especially negative feeling, in any way different from any other part of the world (except that, like somebody else pointed, in the latter place, the eyes are generally on mobile phone screens). I know because I just came back from North Korea. The western media like to portray authoritarian regimes as hell-like places where people is sad and militaries are all over, ready to shoot anybody at the minimum misstep. In reality, within a certain frame, daily life is quite regular; everybody is busy with their own lives, not especially happy or sad. I stress "within a certain frame" - inner perception works within a frame, and of course, people needs to pay attention to the restrictive culture. I'd rather say "tired", as most of the people are hardworking farmers, without access to any transportation mean except the bike.
- seanmcdirmid 11y agoIt actually reminded me a bit of Beijing, which is hardly authoritarian in that way. "Tired" is the right classification, the subway is just a way from here to there, and usually means the beginning or end of a long day.
- emodendroket 11y agoI can't think of a lot of ways in which China's government is not "authoritarian."
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- AlgorithmicTime 11y agoIt looks clean, but shabby and outdated. Also majorly creepy with the worship of the Kim family.
- reuven 11y agoI'm always fascinated to read about North Korea. I feel so incredibly bad for the people who live there, who either know how bad things are (and can't do anything about it) or don't know (and thus don't care). In some ways, the latter group is probably better off. (A great book: Nothing to Envy, by Barbara Demick, about life in North Korea and what it's like to escape to the West.) It's amazing to see what North Korea will do to keep its own citizens in the dark, and to try to make things look amazing to foreigners -- only to fail spectacularly. The attempts to erase traces of the metro cars' German origins reminds me of the department stores I've read about in Pyongyang, in which people enter and exit without buying anything, only to return minutes later, in order to give foreigners the illusion of a great commercial success. All countries engage in propaganda and patriotism to some degree, but North Korea really takes the cake here. I hope that its citizens will one day be able to gain more freedom and financial security, but that somehow seems unlikely in the near future.
- paradite 11y agoTo me your words sound very arrogant and condescending. But then again, it is probably because I have been brainwashed to think that way.
- reuven 11y agoWhat's arrogant and condescending about feeling bad for a country in which people don't have enough to eat, where every house needs to have pictures of the country's founder and his son, and in which punishments for even minor infractions involve entire families going to prison camps?
- abrowne 11y agoThe mosaics give it an oddly (ancient) Roman feel, which led me to wonder what a metro system built by the Romans would look like . . .
- crispyambulance 11y agoAs awful as North Korea is, I am _really_ impressed at the cleanliness of the subway station in the photos. Not a scrap of litter, no graffiti, no sketchy people and probably doesn't even smell like piss. Floors are obviously meticulously scrubbed. Kudos to North Korea! (OK, I know its an oppressive hellhole, but goddamn the subways are clean). Meanwhile, in NYC, we have viral video of a rat dragging Pizza down stairs in a subway.
- jhbadger 11y agoThis was also true in the not quite as oppressive (but still oppressive by Western standards) Eastern European dictatorships pre-1989. It's from a combination of reasons -- fear that graffiti/litter would get you in trouble and the fact that in order to approach full employment, many more people were involved in cleaning than under capitalism.
- emodendroket 11y agoHigher employment achieved by keeping public services at a higher standard doesn't sound like such a horrible idea to borrow from those regimes.
- jonknee 11y agoIt's not affordable unless you're an oppressive totalitarian regime.
- emodendroket 11y ago[Citation needed]
- jonknee 11y agoWe're already running huge deficits... No citation is needed to understand that hiring a massive number of people to pick up litter is unaffordable.
- maxaf 11y agoPyongyang's metro would make a great setting for that hypothetical "Koreans invade Moscow" movie that no one seems to be filming.
- icebraining 11y agoKim Jong-il might have: http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-31628415 http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-31628415
- komaromy 11y ago> due to a major accident that occurred attempting to extend the Metro under the Taedong River in 1971 killing at least one hundred workers This sounds like a horrifying way to go.
- MelmanGI 11y agoThere's also this article of the same series on playing golf on North Korea's single golf course which I found even more interesting: http://www.earthnutshell.com/out-of-bounds-in-north-korea-pyongyang-golf-course/ http://www.earthnutshell.com/out-of-bounds-in-north-korea-py...
- tobbyb 11y agoSurreal and intriguing. There is a palpable sense of fear and unease on people's faces, not a smile to be seen. A gloomy insight into a whole other world. And questions assumptions about human behavior. Its frightening to think how easy it is to suppress a whole population for years and decades on end. The romantic image of courage, revolution and human freedom comes to naught here. Status quo, acceptance and survival seems to be the more natural human state. There is the natural reluctance to put one's head above. And for good reason, anyone foolish or brave enough to put their head above in this all knowing state will be put down swiftly, and perhaps brutally to be made an example of. How does change happen here? Organizing anything in this state of pervasive surveillance is nearly impossible and should be a wake up call for those sleepwalking into one. The only way we know from history is implosion of the prevailing power center or outside support motivated more by massive self interests than human freedom or kindness, compromising the road ahead. Surveillance, secret courts and dubious processes are meekly accepted but change can become very difficult once these infrastructures are put in place, operational and at the complete discretion of whoever happens to be in power. A warning for all of us.
- Leszek 11y agoI don't disagree with the general message of your comment, however: > There is a palpable sense of fear and unease on people's faces, not a smile to be seen. I'm not sure that if you took a picture on the London Tube or the NY Metro you'd see any smiles either.
- tobbyb 11y agoIsn't that more practiced indifference? There is no nervousness about it. It's hard to zero in on it but in this case there is an air of helplessness and despondency, with all that iconic imagery and hubris typical of totalitarian regimes. It all looks a bit too dire trivializing the people and magnifying their helplessness. It could just be our or my own prejudice and perspective knowing what we know about North Korea and reading more into these rather unique and powerful set of images, you just want people to be free and happy if possible. I don't know, bribe China, bribe North Korea, surely there must be a way to get those holding the strings to let go and to do it not because of nuclear weapons, strategic interests or business but to set the people free. What a moment it will be. Humanity would have truly prevailed.
- k-mcgrady 11y agoWeird. I submitted the same post yesterday (links are identical). How was it able to get submitted again? NB: I'm glad it did because mine didn't get any upvotes and I was sure people here would enjoy it.
- Overtonwindow 11y agoThis is absolutely incredible. From my reading in other travel diaries to North Korea, I sense that all of this is staged.
- hugozap 11y agoWhat if every time a tourist group visits N.K thousands of people are alerted and they play their assigned roles (like Truman show). And when the tourists left, they go back to their reality. /removes tin foil hat
- icebraining 11y agoConsidering the misspelling, I thought I could find the source of the photo on the internet. I came up with no results. Google gets us closer, though despite the watermark, I'm not sure the People's Daily have a photojournalist in the US: http://images.blogchina.com/artpic_upload/n/m/g/nmghongjing/3131416969935.jpg http://images.blogchina.com/artpic_upload/n/m/g/nmghongjing/...
- kafkaesq 11y agoIt's kind of refreshing to see all these metro stations free of (commercial) advertisements, actually.