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You do realize that everything in these pictures is thoroughly and carefully pre-selected and even engineered for display purposes, right? (I was born in the S

You do realize that everything in these pictures is thoroughly and carefully pre-selected and even engineered for display purposes, right? (I was born in the Soviet Union. It is mostly unknown for Western people how much propaganda matters in totalitarian countries, and how little it has to do with reality).

mattmanser 11y ago
Slide 2 - FOR THE FEW FOREIGN JOURNALISTS WHO HAVE HAD REPEATED ACCESS TO THE NORTH, THE VIEWS FROM THE WINDOW BECOME VITAL, OFFERING COUNTERPOINTS TO THE CASCADE OF OFFICIALLY ARRANGED SCENES. Sorry for caps, but that seems to be the entire point of this story, it looks at the photos of silly things, like just 5 swimsuits on a rack of clothes in a 'shop'.
EliRivers 11y ago
Having been there on holiday myself, the only way to ensure that everything is pre-selected and engineered would be to effectively shut down the entire city (indeed, every city and town I went to), and create a kind of bubble around each of our buses (and, when we switched to foot, around each pocket of walking tourists); fake cities filled with actors, all standing and doing nothing until someone shouts "The bus is almost visible" at which point they break into action like a pack of extras on a Hollywood set, pretending to be walking somewhere as the bus passes, only to stop as soon as it's out of sight. Everyone's life on permanent hold, just waiting to show the tourists what it looks like when people walk on the pavement. What glory for the Fatherland that is! To say that "everything in these pictures is thoroughly and carefully pre-selected and even engineered" is simply not true.
- drzaiusapelord 11y ago
  >effectively shut down the entire city So.. you guys were carefully corralled in the city? N Korea is mostly rural, with most of its population barely able to get enough calories to eat. Pyongyang is a propagandist show-room and is full of connected party types. Your average N Korean doesn't live that lifestyle. This is all fairly well documented by various sources, mostly via the oral histories of defectors: http://www.amazon.com/Nothing-Envy-Ordinary-Lives-North/dp/0385523912 http://www.amazon.com/Nothing-Envy-Ordinary-Lives-North/dp/0... http://www.amazon.com/Escape-Camp-14-Remarkable-Odyssey/dp/0143122916 http://www.amazon.com/Escape-Camp-14-Remarkable-Odyssey/dp/0... If you care to discredit these works, I will argue with you on a point to point basis. I have read both and other sources that describe the regime and everyday life in North Korea. Perhaps we can also get Dennis Rodman in here too but clearly you both are on the same page. Sadly, I find North Korea cheerleading often to be a biased political position tied to the usual pro-China HN crowd that finds fault with everything the US/EU do, thus anything the US/EU are critical of, must be good and any criticism of these regimes must be "western propaganda."
  - EliRivers 11y ago
    So.. you guys were carefully corralled in the city? No. We travelled through rural regions as well; small towns and so forth. I saw (but did not go into) numerous very small villages. Those were not much more than a collection of buildings, generally with a dirt track leading to it from the road we were on. In the city, whilst walking with our two guides, the distance between the front walker and the rear walker was on the order of a hundred metres at times. When I went there, it was a significant national holiday. Some of the exhibition centres we went to had literally thousands of people flowing through them while we were there. We were in the crowds, mixing in with the people attending. Huge flows of people. At a military parade, we stepped off the bus and stood with the crowd to watch. On the underground, we stepped onto the carriages with the locals who were waiting for the train. A funfair in Pyongyang; huge, huge queues outside and inside. Enormous numbers of people milling about and again, our group wandered through them. I saw numerous signs of deprivation and malnutrition. I saw extensive evidence of a massive solid fuel shortage in recent years. I saw a lot of things that made it clear that the nation is, in many many ways, truly grotesque. I also saw an upright stuffed alligator on wheels holding a drinks tray that David Koresh of Waco fame had sent as a gift. I would hazard (but of course do not know) that I know more about the subject than you do (both before and after travelling there I read an enormous amount of the available literature and various collections of conference proceedings), and I have the additional evidence of my own eyes. The western media LOVES to spin stories about the DPRK, and the western public LOVES to read them. There is a lot - a LOT - wrong with the DPRK, but the media seem to be able to write pretty much anything they like and people want to believe it. You know what, go there and see it for yourself. Run in the Pyongyang marathon. Do a cycling tour.
    - abandonliberty 11y ago
      I'm curious about your perspective on this article, "North Korea: A nation of racist dwarfs" [0]http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2010/02/a_nation_of_racist_dwarfs.html http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_wor... I've nearly given up on understanding the reality of the situation. Are you Dennis Rodman? ;)
    - drzaiusapelord 11y ago
- billyhoffman 11y ago
  North Korea has a history of doing crazy things to make things seem normal or better than they are. For example they built and have maintained an fake and empty village next to the DMZ for the last 50 years to try and entice the South Koreans to come north. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kijong-dong http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kijong-dong North Korea is not a rational place.
  - crdoconnor 11y ago
    It was built in the 1950s when South Korea was still very, very poor. The idea of encouraging defections back then wasn't quite so crazy. I'm pretty sure that the village is actually inhabited now and has been for many years. Probably as soon as they realized that its propaganda value was limited. There's plenty of shit made up and printed in 'prestigious' media outlets about North Korea. If a story seems too crazy to be true, then there's a good chance that it actually isn't. Like yours, for instance.
    - billyhoffman 11y ago
      As of 2014, North Korea insists it a real village. The lights still come on at night. But anyone with binoculars can see the streets are empty. http://boingboing.net/2014/07/08/north-koreas-creepy-fake-civ.html http://boingboing.net/2014/07/08/north-koreas-creepy-fake-ci... It's not my "story" or "made up". It's 2 cited 3rd party articles. No reason to be a jerk to people contributing to the conversation.
- abandonliberty 11y ago
  And I thought the opening of the Beijing games was some impressive organization! I suspect that a sizable proportion of the population believes the situation you describe to be true; that is our propaganda.
- yequalsx 11y ago
  I have a hard time understanding why someone with a conscience would spend money in a brutal, repressive regime. Do you have any compunction about giving money that supports such a regime? Is there a level of brutality and oppression that would make you not want to directly support that brutality and oppression? EDIT: I seem to have hit a nerve. Is it always OK to vacation in a brutal regime? If so why? I'd love hear why directly giving money to the North Korean regime is an acceptable thing to do.
  - im3w1l 11y ago
    You know how touristy places look more like each other than the genuine thing? Souvenir trash shops, tastes you are used to. People doing traditional stuff, except it's only a show and their souls are not in it. A sell out. I think that would be a good development.

mattmanser 11y ago

Slide 2 - FOR THE FEW FOREIGN JOURNALISTS WHO HAVE HAD REPEATED ACCESS TO THE NORTH, THE VIEWS FROM THE WINDOW BECOME VITAL, OFFERING COUNTERPOINTS TO THE CASCADE OF OFFICIALLY ARRANGED SCENES. Sorry for caps, but that seems to be the entire point of this story, it looks at the photos of silly things, like just 5 swimsuits on a rack of clothes in a 'shop'.

EliRivers 11y ago

Having been there on holiday myself, the only way to ensure that everything is pre-selected and engineered would be to effectively shut down the entire city (indeed, every city and town I went to), and create a kind of bubble around each of our buses (and, when we switched to foot, around each pocket of walking tourists); fake cities filled with actors, all standing and doing nothing until someone shouts "The bus is almost visible" at which point they break into action like a pack of extras on a Hollywood set, pretending to be walking somewhere as the bus passes, only to stop as soon as it's out of sight. Everyone's life on permanent hold, just waiting to show the tourists what it looks like when people walk on the pavement. What glory for the Fatherland that is! To say that "everything in these pictures is thoroughly and carefully pre-selected and even engineered" is simply not true.

drzaiusapelord 11y ago
>effectively shut down the entire city So.. you guys were carefully corralled in the city? N Korea is mostly rural, with most of its population barely able to get enough calories to eat. Pyongyang is a propagandist show-room and is full of connected party types. Your average N Korean doesn't live that lifestyle. This is all fairly well documented by various sources, mostly via the oral histories of defectors: http://www.amazon.com/Nothing-Envy-Ordinary-Lives-North/dp/0385523912 http://www.amazon.com/Nothing-Envy-Ordinary-Lives-North/dp/0... http://www.amazon.com/Escape-Camp-14-Remarkable-Odyssey/dp/0143122916 http://www.amazon.com/Escape-Camp-14-Remarkable-Odyssey/dp/0... If you care to discredit these works, I will argue with you on a point to point basis. I have read both and other sources that describe the regime and everyday life in North Korea. Perhaps we can also get Dennis Rodman in here too but clearly you both are on the same page. Sadly, I find North Korea cheerleading often to be a biased political position tied to the usual pro-China HN crowd that finds fault with everything the US/EU do, thus anything the US/EU are critical of, must be good and any criticism of these regimes must be "western propaganda."
- EliRivers 11y ago
  So.. you guys were carefully corralled in the city? No. We travelled through rural regions as well; small towns and so forth. I saw (but did not go into) numerous very small villages. Those were not much more than a collection of buildings, generally with a dirt track leading to it from the road we were on. In the city, whilst walking with our two guides, the distance between the front walker and the rear walker was on the order of a hundred metres at times. When I went there, it was a significant national holiday. Some of the exhibition centres we went to had literally thousands of people flowing through them while we were there. We were in the crowds, mixing in with the people attending. Huge flows of people. At a military parade, we stepped off the bus and stood with the crowd to watch. On the underground, we stepped onto the carriages with the locals who were waiting for the train. A funfair in Pyongyang; huge, huge queues outside and inside. Enormous numbers of people milling about and again, our group wandered through them. I saw numerous signs of deprivation and malnutrition. I saw extensive evidence of a massive solid fuel shortage in recent years. I saw a lot of things that made it clear that the nation is, in many many ways, truly grotesque. I also saw an upright stuffed alligator on wheels holding a drinks tray that David Koresh of Waco fame had sent as a gift. I would hazard (but of course do not know) that I know more about the subject than you do (both before and after travelling there I read an enormous amount of the available literature and various collections of conference proceedings), and I have the additional evidence of my own eyes. The western media LOVES to spin stories about the DPRK, and the western public LOVES to read them. There is a lot - a LOT - wrong with the DPRK, but the media seem to be able to write pretty much anything they like and people want to believe it. You know what, go there and see it for yourself. Run in the Pyongyang marathon. Do a cycling tour.
  - abandonliberty 11y ago
    I'm curious about your perspective on this article, "North Korea: A nation of racist dwarfs" [0]http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2010/02/a_nation_of_racist_dwarfs.html http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_wor... I've nearly given up on understanding the reality of the situation. Are you Dennis Rodman? ;)
  - drzaiusapelord 11y ago
billyhoffman 11y ago
North Korea has a history of doing crazy things to make things seem normal or better than they are. For example they built and have maintained an fake and empty village next to the DMZ for the last 50 years to try and entice the South Koreans to come north. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kijong-dong http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kijong-dong North Korea is not a rational place.
- crdoconnor 11y ago
  It was built in the 1950s when South Korea was still very, very poor. The idea of encouraging defections back then wasn't quite so crazy. I'm pretty sure that the village is actually inhabited now and has been for many years. Probably as soon as they realized that its propaganda value was limited. There's plenty of shit made up and printed in 'prestigious' media outlets about North Korea. If a story seems too crazy to be true, then there's a good chance that it actually isn't. Like yours, for instance.
  - billyhoffman 11y ago
    As of 2014, North Korea insists it a real village. The lights still come on at night. But anyone with binoculars can see the streets are empty. http://boingboing.net/2014/07/08/north-koreas-creepy-fake-civ.html http://boingboing.net/2014/07/08/north-koreas-creepy-fake-ci... It's not my "story" or "made up". It's 2 cited 3rd party articles. No reason to be a jerk to people contributing to the conversation.
abandonliberty 11y ago
And I thought the opening of the Beijing games was some impressive organization! I suspect that a sizable proportion of the population believes the situation you describe to be true; that is our propaganda.
yequalsx 11y ago
I have a hard time understanding why someone with a conscience would spend money in a brutal, repressive regime. Do you have any compunction about giving money that supports such a regime? Is there a level of brutality and oppression that would make you not want to directly support that brutality and oppression? EDIT: I seem to have hit a nerve. Is it always OK to vacation in a brutal regime? If so why? I'd love hear why directly giving money to the North Korean regime is an acceptable thing to do.
- im3w1l 11y ago
  You know how touristy places look more like each other than the genuine thing? Souvenir trash shops, tastes you are used to. People doing traditional stuff, except it's only a show and their souls are not in it. A sell out. I think that would be a good development.