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Comment by Cyph0n | Hacker News Reader

> 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

I don't get it. Foreigners see success in people who don't buy anything?

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No, the story that I read indicated that the North Koreans brought Western visitors to a department store, to demonstrate how great North Korea's economy was.

This Western visitor noticed that after people exited the store, they immediately entered again, to give an illusion of a busy store -- when in fact, nothing was actually being purchased.

(I can't remember if the shoppers were using money or taking things out of the store, but I have to assume that they were. I wish that I could find this story, which was quite fascinating.)

My point is that the North Korean government was so inept at propaganda that their attempts to demonstrate economic stability and power were laughably transparent.

I understand, that makes sense. What a clearly stupid decision on the government's part. It would have been much better if the stores were simply empty. Thanks for clarifying.

In a similar vein, there's pictures online of a "computer lab" in North Korea shown to visitors. There's people typing away at computers, which is seemingly normal, until you realize none of the computer have electricity.

Just like their attempts to pass off two stations as a real Metro.

This might be what you're looking for, or at least point you in the right direction:

http://www.skepticaldoctor.com/2010/01/15/classic-dalrymple-...

I think the point is that they're attempting to make the shops look busy, but it's a ham-fisted/incompetent failure (they recirculate the same "shoppers", nobody buys anything)

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