Rare pictures of North Korea
mrlevek.com
mrlevek.com
A lot of what they show resembles Artemii Lebedev's experience.
The author describe 3 month of life there.
Most of the footage was shot with a pin hole camera in regions no press is allowed to go.
British documentary from 2004 following two young gymnasts (sisters, if I recall correctly) and their family as they prepare for the Mass Games
% curl -I http://static.whalesalad.com/north_korea/
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Server: nginx/0.6.32
Date: Fri, 28 Jan 2011 23:44:45 GMT
...
Content-Type: text/html
X-Fueled-By: Plankton
X-Special-Sauce: Django
Accept-Ranges: bytesX-The-Number: 09-F9-11-02-9D-74-E3-5B-D8-41-56-C5-63-56-88-C0
My trip is documented here in the radio show Off The Wall: (link to mp3) http://www.2600.com/offthewall/mp3files/2007/off_the_wall__2... and http://www.2600.com/offthewall/mp3files/2007/off_the_wall__2...
In a truly free country, you would, for example, have the freedom to eat whatever you want (so long as it doesn't impinge on other people's freedoms). You would be able to have sex with whoever you wanted (so long as both parties are 'mature enough' to agree). This too, is not the case in the states. You would be able to marry whoever you wanted. You would be able to do to your body whatever you wanted. In a truly free country, you would have the freedom to do things that in today's non-free country we consider taboo, punishable offenses. Etc.
My personal definition of freedom is the ability to do anything within the realm reasonable laws. I feel a vast majority of US laws are reasonable. Maybe you don't agree, maybe you do. I'm happy & patriotic US citizen and that's all that matters!
Ok I'll bite. What laws are there in the US that restrict who you can have sex with? Laws against minors don't count as there needs to be some legal definition of "mature enough", unless you want a subjective judgment of maturity on a case by case basis.
Other than that it's concrete, steel and time. In the former eastblock there are also plenty of highrises, very few of those would meet your expectations in terms of construction quality.
Also, highrises are actually more efficient material wise compared to building individual homes, after all each dwelling shares 4 surfaces with those around it (except for the edges).
That said, if re-unification, happens I imagine the progress in the North will be rapid, and the country as a whole will become an even stronger regional power.
For the most part, what I'm imagining is mass migration from the North to the South.
South Korea is a prosperous country that has developed in a relatively short amount of time but North Koreans don't have the education or skill to compete in a South Korean economy.
In a sense it's being tested right now in the Kaesong industrial area on the border. It gives the benefits of cheap labor, without having to use the Chinese.
North Korea has no industry and the population has no education. The unification will be between a high-tech 21st century developed country and the middle ages. The first thing they will have to do is take over the schools so that the next generation in 15 years has a chance to build this country.
GDP 1990 West Germany in 1990 $24,485 East Germany in 1990 $10,430 (I'm not so sure about these figures but the direction is right)
I don't need the world to be busy & full of visual & auditory noise, but these pictures are conspicuously vacant.
> In January 2010, North Korea lifted the restrictions on American citizens who are now free to visit at anytime of the year.
Review of the most recent one: http://www.slate.com/id/2262159/
Better use one of the mirrors in this thread.
"Fuel constraints and the near absence of private automobiles have relegated road transportation to a secondary role. The road network was estimated to be around 31,200km in 1999 up from between 23,000 and 30,000km in 1990, of which only 1,717 kilometers—7.5 percent—are paved; the rest are of dirt, crushed stone, or gravel, and are poorly maintained."