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This website is for booking tours in North Korea, and it talks about rules and tips for the tourist. I thought it was very interesting and is this site a North Korean made site?

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INSURANCE. We cannot be held responsible for any mishap to yourself or your property and in particular any consequence or effects of flight/train cancellation/delay, robbery, sickness, Government intervention or other such happenings. You are advised to insure yourself against any possible risk that may occur and in particular to ensure that sufficient insurance has been obtained in respect of any dependant relatives.

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Does North Korea deny they have concentration camps?

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Does North Korea deny they have concentration camps?

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In this article they talk about how North Korea doesn't necessarily deny they have concentration camps, but they call them "labor detention centers" and it is for families who have broken the law and there they will improve improve through their mentality and their wrong doings".

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There's some slightly unusual stuff happening in North Korea at the moment. Most obviously, Kim Jong Un, the country's omnipresent supreme leader, has been out of the public eye for a long time, and no one seems to know quite why. Receiving less fanfare (though perhaps just as important) is the news that North Korean officials have made the rare decision to hold high-level talks with the South.

Given that, the news that North Korea seems to have admitted that its notorious labor camp system really does exist would seem to fit into a cluster of potentially hopeful signs. Unfortunately, it may not be so simple.

The Associated Press reported Tuesday that Choe Myong Nam, a North Korean foreign ministry official in charge of U.N. affairs and human rights issues, had recently admitted that the camps existed in a U.N. briefing. "Both in law and practice, we do have reform through labor detention camps - no, detention centers - where people are improved through their mentality and look on their wrongdoings," Choe reportedly said.

In the past, North Korea has completely denied any reports of the existence of a labor camp system. However, there has been growing criticism of the camps from outside sources. In 2003, the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea released a report that examined what it called a "Hidden Gulag" in North Korea: The second edition of that report, released in 2012, estimated that there were 150,000 to 200,000 people in the labor camp system, which it said had operated for decades. The camps have clearly been identified in satellite photos, and accounts from survivors (such as that told in former Post reporter Blaine Harden's book " Escape from Camp 14 ") are numerous.

A year-long investigation by the United Nations Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in North Korea published its results at the start of this year, further shining a light on the camps. While the report's authors noted that numbers in the camps seemed to have decreased, there were still 80,000 to 120,000 people in the camps, imprisoned without trial for crimes as minor as criticizing the Kim dynasty or trying to organize Christian services. Entirely families are often punished for the perceived crimes of one member, the report noted, comparing the scale of the camps to Soviet gulags or Nazi Germany's political prison system.

North Korea's response to the U.N. report has been remarkable - a mixture of anger, insults and whataboutism. But there have also been some signs of introspection: A 53,558-word internal review of North Korean rights presented an improbably rosy view of the situation, but perhaps it was a start. Could the admission that the "labor detention centers" were real be another move forward?

Perhaps not. Adam Cathcart, editor in chief of North Korea-watching Web site Sino-NK, says that North Korea had already alluded to the concentration camps in its own human rights report, with the passage where it describes penalties that include "reform through labor for an indefinite period, reform through labor for a definite period, and disciplining through labor."

Notably, Choe seems to have made a slip of the tongue when mentioning "camps," and corrected himself to refer to "centers." It's an important distinction to North Korea watchers. "He is *not* acknowledging the existence of political prison camps ... that we know about from former inmate/guard testimony and satellite imagery, but which [Pyongyang] has always denied the existence of," Sokeel Park, director of research and strategy at Liberty in North Korea, wrote on Facebook as news of Choe's comments spread, suggesting instead that Choe was talking about "reform through labor detention centers," a different and less-controversial system.

North Korea does appear to be making an attempt at dialogue about its human rights abuses, though it clearly wants to do so on its own terms. The semantics here are important, but perhaps even more important is the real-life action: On Wednesday, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said that despite the apparent reference to the forced labor camps, the U.S. has not seen any action actually taken by North Korea to close the camps.

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Did North Korea really admit to its horrific forced labor camps? Not exactly.

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There's some slightly unusual stuff happening in North Korea at the moment. Most obviously, Kim Jong Un, the country's omnipresent supreme leader, has been out of the public eye for a long time, and no one seems to know quite why.

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Do Party Members in North Korea have a better life?

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Do Party Members in North Korea have a better life?

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This article shows you the part of North Korea hides from the Media and tourist that travel there. It also shows the contrast between the capital and the neighboring cities.

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Most foreign visitors to Pyongyang on the Communist North Korea never witness a pothole or a traffic jam

Journalists saw crumbling apartment blocks and two men in wheelchairs waiting at a bus stop

A wrong turning gave a bus full of western journalists a glimpse of a different side to North Korea today.

Most foreign visitors to Pyongyang on the Communist heartland never witness a pothole, a traffic jam or a piece of litter bigger than a cigarette butt. Those with physical disabilities are hidden from view as is graffiti.

Buses catering for people outside of North Korea only ever take roads which are well-maintained and spotlessly clean which is why photographers couldn't wait to start snapping away when a Government-run tour inadvertently veered from the official path.

Instead of gleaming buildings such as the computer labs at Kim Il Sung University, filled with people whom the authorities insist are representative of the population, reporters saw crumbling apartment blocks and two men in wheelchairs waiting at a bus stop.

Old people trudged along the sidewalk, some with handmade backpacks crafted from canvas bags.

In place of the well-lit high-rise homes, there were shops shrouded in darkness and pavements lined in dirt rather than smooth tarmac.

There were stores with no lights, and side roads so battered they were more dirt than pavement.
'Perhaps this is an incorrect road?' mumbled one of the North Korean minders, well-dressed government officials who restrict reporters to meticulously staged presentations that inevitably center on praise for the three generations of Kim family who have ruled this country since 1948.

The three buses quickly reversed away from the less wealthy area of the city and headed back towards the original intended target, a plush, marbled building called the Hana Music Information Centre where recently deceased leader Kim Jong II made one of his final public appearances before his death in December last year.

CBS news reported that Ri Jinju, who was leading the tour, said: 'I hope that the journalists present here report only the absolute truth.

'The truth about how much our people miss our comrade Kim Jong Il, and how strong the unity is between the people and leadership, who are vigorously carrying out the leaders' instructions to build a great, prosperous and powerful nation.'

So controlling is the regime that police will detain and potentially expel any foreigner who tries to explore further afield than the few hotels that they are permitted to stay in.

According to Anthony Brunello, a professor at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Florida, those in charge will go to huge lengths to create a system that will keep the Kim family in power.

"They've managed to create a process of control that works," he said.

At Kim Il Sung University students young people in the swimming pool were seen enjoying the luxurious, well-finished surroundings that feature plastic slides and a jacuzzi.

Journalists normally see only the clean streets outside their bus windows, and the showcase buildings - the Victorious Fatherland Liberation War Museum, the palace commemorating the Kims' 'juche' philosophy of self-reliance, the computer labs at Kim Il Sung University - filled with people that the minders insist are everyday North Koreans.

The students in the classrooms don't glance up as dozens of reporters rumble in, and the professor's lecture continues without pause. The young people in the university pool careen down the plastic slide, in front of TV cameras, as if they are completely alone.

Ri heaps high praise on her former leader. She says: 'The more time passes by the more we miss our Dear Leader Kim Jong II. 'I don't think we can ever find any person so great.'

It's not clear why the regime hides places like the dusty, potholed neighborhood, which is just a mile or so from the centre of town, across the trolley tracks and just off Tongil Street.

It doesn't look like a war zone, or even like a particularly rough New York City neighborhood. Many streets in New Delhi, the capital of one of the world's fastest-growing economies, look far more battered and far poorer.

To most North Koreans, one-quarter of whom depend on international food aid, living in homes without electricity or running water, the neighborhood would look upper-middle-class.

Special permits are required to live in the capital city, and life here is vastly better than it is for most people in the countryside.

There are predictable government jobs here, electricity at least a few hours a day, better-stocked stores, schools that have indoor bathrooms.

But the officials still hide the run-down neighborhoods. There's a certain view of North Korea they want visitors to have.

According to defectors North Koreans have similar stresses to those living in capitalist societies.

They get frustrated by politics in their jobs, they aspire to buy their own cars and look forward to a holiday at the beach. In times of difficulty such as the famine in the 1990s, they dream of having enough food to prevent their children from starving to death.

Yet the more rundown area the journalists were accidentally driven into today would appear plush to many North Koreans who depend on international food aid and live in homes without electricity or running water.

Special permits are required to live in the capital city, and life there is considerably easier than it is for the majority of people living in the countryside.

There are predictable government jobs in Pyongyang, electricity for at least a few hours a day, better-stocked stores and schools that have indoor bathrooms.

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The North Korea they want us to see... and the North Korea we saw when press bus took wrong turn

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Most foreign visitors to Pyongyang on the Communist North Korea never witness a pothole or a traffic jam Journalists saw crumbling apartment blocks and two men in wheelchairs waiting at a bus stop A wrong turning gave a bus full of western journalists a glimpse of a different side to North Korea today.

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This article talks about dating in North Korea, and originally the Leader want you to "love revolutionary comrades" but thats what the Leader couldn't do, is make people stop loving each other. High Schoolers aren't allowed to date, but they do. They do it secretly, and once they are out of high school they can go out in public together.\

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When it comes to relationships, Pyongyang tries to instil "love for revolutionary comrades" over romance, but people reject it.

When I lived in Pyongyang we couldn't travel around the country and didn't have any freedom of speech. But although the government succeeded in getting rid of these basic human rights, it couldn't prevent its people from falling in love.

North Korea was going through a lot of dramatic changes during my 20s. Due to economic difficulties following the famine, the national borders had started to become more porous and western culture was starting to make its way in. In this environment, young people no longer stuck to the ultra-conservative norms of the past when it came to dating, although this was something the government wasn't very happy about.

While the North Korean government wanted people to see their lovers as "fellow revolutionary comrades", the truth was that this feeling never truly existed for many of us. We pretended to have that quality only because we were forced to. In this way, North Korea's traditional and conservative attitude towards love and sex has long been based on completely different foundations to the conservative dating culture you might see in strongly Christian communities. And because they were values we couldn't define or understand, we accepted them only because we were forced to.

But how do you meet a partner in North Korea? A lot depends on the age you start looking.

I still fondly remember my teenage years, which I honestly don't want to ever forget. Although I've become highly individualistic since then, I was once so innocent that I was willing to sacrifice everything and devote myself fully to my first love.

She was a girl who went to the same high school who was a little younger than me. Her parents were good, close friends with mine. She was also friends with my younger sister. But, despite our good relationship, she ended up joining the military and I was left behind.

I met my second girlfriend through a mutual friend and, to my surprise, she asked me out. Looking back on those days I have absolutely no regrets and I loved my second girlfriend dearly.

In my high school days when I was highly sentimental, my fellow students and I would go on dates in the park only when it was completely pitch black outside. High school students weren't allowed to freely date in the open. In this kind of environment, we had no choice but to see each other hidden behind the trees or in basements of apartment blocks late at night - or among others at group events like birthday parties.

But when you graduate from high school, there is less reason to be secretive. At this age, couples go on to spend a lot more time together without having to care about about what other people might think. Dates at theatres, parks and even on the benches at the square right in front of Kim Il-sung were all possible!

When I lived in Pyongyang, the best place to meet girls was at the social club. In North Korea, social clubs were hosted for the masses, and for the young generation on holidays. Big club meetings and dance parties took place at numerous places, including Kim Il-sung square. Guys dressed up to go to the dance parties and they would always be thrilled and excited about the events. And it was here, as you can probably guess, that many young men and women would meet.

When a guy would see a girl he liked, he'd ask her to dance with him. And if all went well he wouldn't forget to ask for her phone number or workplace. If she liked the guy and if she was single, she would give him her phone number.

However, for many men one serious problem relates to North Korea's extremely long period of military service. Most men are unable to date for 10 years following graduation from high school because of this lengthy period of military service. During this period they hardly have any chance to meet women. So, after military service a culture of introductions emerges for many men in their late 20s.

Sometimes, relatives set these guys up with other people they know. And when North Koreans meet someone on blind date, they have to take it seriously. So after military service, many men end up marrying the women their parents set them up with. This can mean that many North Korean husbands tend to be abrupt and not attentive at all.

When you step back and observe the reality of North Korean society, you'll see that people go on about their daily lives just like in the rest of the world. They fall in love, they get married, they have children. They respect their parents and become part of their local community.

The window through which you can look into North Korea is very small and limited. But remember that the lifestyle of North Koreans isn't very different from yours. The only things they don't know about are freedom and human rights.

Got a question? Email it to ask@nknews.org with your name and city. For more from the "Ask a North Korean" column, visit NK News Topics

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Ji-Min Kang for NK News, part of the Guardian North Korea network

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When it comes to relationships, Pyongyang tries to instil "love for revolutionary comrades" over romance, but people reject it. When I lived in Pyongyang we couldn't travel around the country and didn't have any freedom of speech. But although the government succeeded in getting rid of these basic human rights, it couldn't prevent its people from falling in love.

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This article talks about some facts you should know about North Korea . They tell you that Americans can travel to North Korea but it is very dangerous the State Department is strongly againsts Americans traveling there.

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Despite tense relations with the West and despite being a secretive, heavily guarded place, The Democratic People's Republic of North Korea is open to tourists, including citizens of the United States. Annually, an estimated 6000 tourists visit this reclusive country, according to Al Jazeera, and among them, some are Americans. Since January 2010, American tourists have been allowed to visit the country on an official guided tour, reports CNN.

"We take between 500 to 1000 tourists per year and have generally seen an increase in interest over the past several years," Operations Chief John Dantzler-Wolfe of the New Jersey-based Uri Tours told weather.com. Uri Tours is one of the agencies that specializes in North Korea travel.

North Korea has recently launched a PR campaign aimed at boosting tourism, reports The Diplomat, a campaign that includes opening up different parts of the country to tourists and offering different packages of activities like skiing, hiking and fishing. According to the Miami Herald, North Korea has a new luxury ski resort at Masik Pass and it is currently working on several development projects in the port city of Wonsan to attract more visitors.

But before anyone takes a trip to this particular Communist nation, there are a few things you should know:
1. It is Dangerous
While North Korea is open to American tourists to visit legally with a visa (except journalists or professional photographers), the State Department strongly recommends against it. They write in their travel advisory that it "is not routine and U.S. citizen tourists have been subject to arbitrary arrest and long-term detention." Currently, two Americans are detained in North Korea, reports the Wall Street Journal, charged with "antistate" crimes. At present, they are awaiting prosecution.
2. It Must Be a Guided Tour
The only way to legally visit North Korea, according to CNN, is by booking the trip through one of the companies that has been endorsed by the state-run Korea International Travel Company, such as Uri Tours. Dantzler-Wolfe recommends that travelers apply for their visa and tour at least two months in advance.

Once in North Korea, tourists are not allowed to roam the streets alone, according to Al Jazeera; they must be accompanied by their Korean guides at all times. It is customary to tip the guides at the end of each tour, reports Lonely Planet.
3. Photographs Must Be Taken with Permission
Photographs can only be taken with the permission of the Korean guides, according to News.com.au, and must not include photos of soldiers, checkpoints, poverty or close-ups of people without their express permission.
4. Religious Materials or Contraceptives Are Banned
North Korean law prohibits contraceptives and all religious materials, such as the bible and the Qur'an, reports news.com.au. One of the American tourists currently detained in the country, Jeffrey Fowle, was arrested because he left a bilingual English-Korean bible in the North Korean sailor's club, according to Reuters.
5. Tourists Can't Use the Local Currency
Visitors are not allowed to use the local currency, the North Korean 'won,' and must instead use either Euros, US Dollars or the Chinese Yuan, reports Lonely Planet. There are opportunities to purchase souvenirs at the gift shops, like posters, stamps or books by Kim Jong Il, according to the website, but otherwise little opportunities to purchase anything else. Visitors are not allowed in department stores, according to CNN. Some items, like the "Kim pins," are not available to buy, as they are only given to native North Koreans at special occasions, reports news.com.au. You are allowed to keep your cell phone, according to CNN, and you can buy a local SIM card for your phone at a booth at the airport.
6. They Have a Different Calendar
North Korea uses a different calendar from the west, called the Juche calendar. The calendar starts on 15 April 1912 on the day Kim Il-sung was born, reports Aljazeera. This means that it is currently the year 103 in North Korea.
7. It Rains A Lot in the Summer
Summer is hot, humid and rainy. "North Korea has a much starker difference between winter and summer precipitation than any place in the United States," said Nick Wiltgen, meteorologist for Weather.com. "Summers are very wet with an average of 11 inches of rain in July and over eight inches in August in the capital [Pyongyang]." Meanwhile, winters are cold and dry, according to Wiltgen, because of cold, dry Siberian air.
8. There Are Almost No Advertisements
There are only five advertising billboards in Pyongyang, reports CNN, and all of them are owned by the same car dealership.
9. Tourists Must Show Reverence to the Leaders
It is expected of all tourists who visit North Korea to show respect and reverence for the past and present leaders of North Korea. According to news.com.au, this means that tourists must never speak ill of Kim Jong-un or his predecessors and very importantly, must bow in front of all statues of the leaders.
10. There is No American Embassy
Because the United States does not maintain diplomatic relations with North Korea, there is no U.S. embassy in the country. According to the State Department, the Swedish embassy is able to provide basic consular protection services to American travelers in North Korea who are ill, injured and/or arrested.
(MORE: Most Dangerous Borders in the World)

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10 Things to Know About Traveling to North Korea | The Weather Channel

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Despite tense relations with the West and despite being a secretive, heavily guarded place, The Democratic People's Republic of North Korea is open to tourists, including citizens of the United States. Annually, an estimated 6000 tourists visit this reclusive country, according to Al Jazeera, and among them, some are Americans.

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There is minimal tourism in North Korea, but since they opened the boarder for tourism you can now travel to there ONLY with a guide with you at all time. This article also talks about when is the best time to visit.

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(CNN) - Why do people want to visit North Korea? The closed and strictly regulated country is not particularly welcoming to guests. Going in or out is complicated for visitors and impossible for anyone who offends the government. The slightest negative remark about the country's ruling family can be considered treason.

Some Koreans who have left the country want to visit family or see the place where they were born. Some non-Korean travelers want to see a place most people won't ever get to visit.

Merrill Newman of Palo Alto, California, wanted to see the country where he had once fought a war.

The North Korean government certainly doesn't it make it easy for foreigners to visit. If you're American, the rules are even stricter. And then there's the danger of something going wrong, as it did for the 85-year-old Newman.

Newman was on an airplane to depart North Korea for Beijing on October 26 after a government-sanctioned tour when he was removed from the aircraft, his son told CNN on Wednesday. His family hasn't heard from him since.

Four U.S. citizens have been arrested for entering North Korea illegally since January 2009, and two U.S. citizens with valid visas were arrested there on other charges, the State Department warned.

The British Foreign & Commonwealth Office isn't warning their citizens against making the trip, but its website does warn against making "insults or jokes about the North Korean political system and its leadership" or taking pictures of Korean officials or guarded buildings. "In 2008 a South Korean tourist who strayed into a restricted military area was shot dead. Take care to remain in permitted areas and move away immediately if asked to do so by North Korean officials."

All tourists must book a guided tour with one of about a dozen companies approved by the state-run Korea International Travel Company. (The tour operators should walk you through the visa and other requirements.) And U.S. citizens face specific restrictions that don't apply to other travelers. They can only enter the country via airplane, unlike other travelers who can enter from China by train.

American travelers often fly into North Korea via China, so the U.S. Department of State recommends getting a multiple-entry visa for China, since a valid Chinese visa is required to re-enter China after leaving North Korea. Once in Beijing, travelers approved by the North Korean government may get North Korean visas at the country's Beijing embassy.

The U.S. Department of State recommends that Americans register with the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, and the Swedish Embassy in North Korea. (The United States doesn't have diplomatic relations with North Korea.)

Americans must remember they aren't in the United States anymore, and U.S. constitutional guarantees of freedom of speech or religion don't apply in North Korea -- or any other foreign country.

Sensitivity to a very different political reality is required. Slipping away from your hotel and government-required guide to explore can get you and your guide in trouble. Talking to North Koreans without permission -- even if they don't speak English -- can also get both of you in trouble.

Even throwing away an official newspaper bearing a photo of a member of the Kim family, which are treated with the deference usually given to religious objects, has gotten travelers in trouble, said one U.S.-based Asia travel expert, who didn't want to be named so he wouldn't be banned from traveling to North Korea.

"If you think you can do whatever you want, you are going to get other people in trouble," said the expert, who has led tours to North Korea. "You really have to be careful about what you say. Be conscious of the fact you're going to get other people in trouble for your actions. Observe, don't proselytize."

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it's complicated if you want to enter north korea - cnn

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It's complicated if you want to enter North Korea | CNN Travel

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(CNN) - Why do people want to visit North Korea? The closed and strictly regulated country is not particularly welcoming to guests. Going in or out is complicated for visitors and impossible for anyone who offends the government. The slightest negative remark about the country's ruling family can be considered treason.

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This article talks about the tourism in North Korea and how weird it is. Very minimal tourism is allowed and if there is the North Korean guides only show you the BEST of North Korea.

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Well that was weird.

I was only in North Korea for five days, but that was more than enough to make it clear that North Korea is every bit as weird as I always thought it was.

If you merged the Soviet Union under Stalin with an ancient Chinese Empire, mixed in The Truman Show and then made the whole thing Holocaust-esque, you have modern day North Korea.

It's a dictatorship of the most extreme kind, a cult of personality beyond anything Stalin or Mao could have imagined, a country as closed off to the world and as secretive as they come, keeping both the outside world and its own people completely in the dark about one another -- a true hermit kingdom.

A question, then, is "Why would an American tourist ever be allowed into the country?"

Allow me to illustrate what I believe is the reasoning behind my being let in:

And so, I was allowed in, along with a small group of other Westerners, accompanied (at all times) by three North Korean guides. And my experience there felt a lot like the route depicted above -- we saw Pyongyang and a couple other regions, and the North Koreans we laid eyes on throughout were likely the people faring the very best in the country.

Before I talk about what I learned, I'd like to quickly say hi to whomever from the North Korean government is reading this. Only the highest-level officials have access to the internet in North Korea, and I learned that the job of one of them is to scour the internet for anything written about North Korea and keep tabs on what the foreign press is saying. So hi, and haha you can't get me cause I'm back home now and I can say all the things I wasn't allowed to say when I was in your country.

Now that I've jinxed myself to certain assassination, let's get started--

20 Things I Learned While I Was in North Korea
1) The leaders are a really big fucking deal there.
That's not even a strong enough statement. They're the only deal. These are the big three:
Kim Il Sung (1912-1994)
He's their George Washington and their Stalin and their Jesus and their Santa Claus combined, all in the form of one pudgy dead Korean man. He's the Eternal President -- eternal because he had the position abolished for all future so that no one can ever be president again. And they've created an almost entirely fabricated story about all of the legendary accomplishments he didn't accomplish.

There are an estimated 34,000 statues of Kim Il Sung in the country, everything possible is named after him (if they were starting the country today, it would be called Kimilsungland), every adult is required to wear a pin on their shirt with his face on it every day, all students dedicate a large portion of their study to memorizing his speeches and learning about his achievements, and his birthday is the nation's biggest holiday. They even changed the year -- it's not 2013 in North Korea, it's Juche 101 (101 years after Kim Il Sung's birth).

As tourists, we were told to only refer to him as President Kim Il Sung.
Kim Jong Il (1941-2011)
Kim Il Sung's son, and the dick we all got to know well in the last decade. It's said in North Korea that he was born on a sacred Korean mountain top (he was actually born in the Soviet Union) and that his birth caused winter to change to spring (it stayed winter). He's a really big deal too but like one third as big a deal as his father. Some outsiders question whether people are actually obsessed with KJI or they're just scared to not act obsessed.

We were told to only refer to him as General Kim Jong Il.
Kim Jong Un (1983 or 1984 - )
Despite being the current Supreme Leader, KJI's son took over well before everyone expected him to with KJI's surprise death in 2011 (unlike KJI, who had been groomed for leadership for a couple decades before he took over), and while the propaganda machines are superb at depicting the legendary accomplishments of the elder two Kims, no one is really sure what the hell KJU has accomplished. Part of the issue is that the population never heard much about KJU until recently -- he has two older brothers who would have presumably taken over had one not been too feminine (i.e., maybe gay) and the other not sneaked into Disneyland on a Dominican passport and gotten caught, ruling both out for potential supreme leadership. My sense being in the country was that there isn't that much genuine hero worship going on for KJU.

That didn't stop them from making us refer to him as Marshall Kim Jong Un.

And everywhere you go in the country -- everywhere -- you see this:

I saw these guys so much it eventually started to seem completely normal, and I began referring to them as "the bros" in my head. Their side-by-side portraits are not only in every public place possible, it's required that they are on the wall in every single home in the country, and there are random spot checks by the government to check on this. Each family is also given a special towel, the only allowed use of which is to shine the portraits clean every morning. Normal country.

There are also a lot of rules regarding the leaders that apply to visitors as well. When you come up to a statue of one of the bros, you must bow. You must also keep your hands by your side and not behind your back. When you take a photo of one of the statues, you must take the photo of the entire body -- it's not permitted to cut off any part of it. If you have a newspaper or any other paper with a leader on it, you're not allowed to fold the paper or throw it away. Normal country.

Surprising no one, North Korea comes in dead last in the world in the Democracy Index.
2) Everyone lies about everything all the time.
The government lies to the outside world. The government lies to the people. The press lies to the people. The people lie to each other. The tour guides lie to tourists. It's intense.

The lies range from big things -- the government hammers away at the message that the U.S. is preparing to attack North Korea, the press depicts South Korea as a suffering and American-occupied country, the leaders' speeches talk about North Korea being the envy of the world with the highest quality of life -- to tiny things -- we met a soldier at one point we were told was a colonel, and after he left, a retired army major on my tour told me that he had studied North Korean army uniforms and that the soldier was in fact a captain.

Facts are not a key part of the equation in North Korea.

And it can really mess with your mind as a visitor. I'd find myself in these perplexing situations trying to figure out if a lie-spouting North Korean was in on it or not. Was she thinking, "I know this is false, you know this is false, but I live here so I gotta play the game"? Or was she fully brainwashed and thought she was telling me the truth? It was impossible to tell. During interactions, I'd find myself thinking, "Are you an actor in The Truman Show and you think I'm Truman? Or are you Truman and I'm one of the actors?" Are those kids on the street just pretending to be playing for my benefit? Is any of this real? Am I real?
3) Most visitors to the country are forced to stay in the same hotel when they're in Pyongyang.
You know why they put all visitors here? Because it's on an island in the middle of the city--

The government's biggest fear with visitors is that they sneak off at some point and take photos of something they're not supposed to see, so this island location (with guards surrounding the hotel) is perfect. We were never let out of our guides' sight during the day and told that we weren't to leave the hotel at night under any circumstance.

And even when the rest of the country and much of Pyongyang is without electricity, heat or air conditioning, the Yanggakdo is always bright and comfortable -- all part of the plan to project a certain image of the country to visitors.
4) Propaganda is absolutely everywhere.
From the suffocating number of billboards and murals to the postcards and pamphlets and newspapers to everything on TV, the North Korean people are forced to live and breathe North Korean pride around the clock. There's even a creepy propaganda band, Moranbong Band, whose members were handpicked by Kim Jong Un. This video of them played in its entirety on both the flight in and out of the country and in nearly every restaurant we went to, and subsequently haunted my sleep. Goebbels couldn't hold a candle to the Kims.

The propaganda I saw fell into four categories: 1) The leaders and their greatness, especially Kim Il Sung, 2) images of the North Korean military and its might, 3) negative depictions of the U.S. and South Korea, and 4) images of North Korean people living joyous and sunshiny lives.

5) The tour guides apparently don't find it awkward to constantly refer to Americans as "American Imperialists" even though I'm standing right there.

The postcard pictured in the last item was just the tip of the iceberg. If one half of the North Korean story is "Kim Il Sung is a great man," the other half is "The American imperialists started the Korean War and lost, and ever since they've been trying to kill and rape us all and take the country over, but our great military won't allow it."

The North Korean government is very into anti-U.S. sentiment -- largely because they've figured out a way to blame basically allof their problems on the U.S. and use fake fear of the US to justify being a poor country the size of Pennsylvania that also has the world's 4th largest army (not to mention spending an unthinkable amount on nuclear weapon technology).

Check out this tour guide translating the soldier's description of what might happen to the U.S. when they make their attack:

And this anti-U.S. video we were shown on deck of the USS Pueblo, a U.S. Naval ship captured by the North Koreans in 1968 (it's also funny how he says "people"):

6) It's not cool to call North Korea "North Korea."

The correct term is, "Korea." All images of the country depict the whole peninsula, what today is North and South Korea combined. In their view, they are proud Koreans, living in Korea, the south half of which is unfortunately currently occupied by the Imperialist Americans.
7) Kim Jong Un's exact year of birth is not a subject you should try to gather information on while in the country.
This is because the exact date is not really known, which apparently upsets them.

8) The same physical place can be fancy and shitty at the same time.

North Korea specializes in the simultaneous fancy shitty place. Simultaneous fancy shittiness happens when a poor country tries to act like things are going fantastically. So there will be a gorgeous museum with huge chandeliers and polished marble floors, but the water won't be running in the bathroom. Or a high-end restaurant with upscale decor that's also sweltering hot because the air conditioning isn't working.

I was told that sometimes visitors are all ready to head into North Korea for their tour when they learn that it's been mysteriously canceled, and the true reason is something like the water not running in the Yanggakdo Hotel that day.

9) North Koreans still talk about the Korean War constantly.

The Korean War is not a part of everyday life in South Korea. The war ended 60 years ago, and today, South Korea has other things to think about, like being a relevant nation with the world's 15th biggest economy.

In North Korea, the war is a constant topic of conversation, and almost everything North Koreans learn about it is flagrantly incorrect. The big lie they're told is that the war was started when the U.S., occupying South Korea at the time, attacked the unsuspecting North to try to take control over the whole country. They're told that Kim Il Sung valiantly staved off the Americans and the Americans shrank back in defeat, then continued to occupy South Korea until this day.

Of course, the real story is that Kim Il Sung (who was nothing more than a puppet leader installed by the Soviets because they knew they could control him) tugged on Stalin's sleeve for years, asking him if he could attack the South with Soviet backing, until finally Stalin said "ugh fuck it fine" and the North attacked. The U.S. was, granted, playing a large role in the South at the time, but they were more focused on other things by that point and were caught off-guard. They responded to the North's attack by heading in with the UN and joining the South in the fight. Whatever your opinion of the United States' role at the time, they certainly did not start the war by attacking the peaceful North.

But facts never stopped the North Korean government before. There are things like this in every newspaper I looked at.

At the Korean War Museum, known there as the Museum of American Atrocities, our tour guide spent the whole time telling us that the Americans started the war -- everyone in the room knew the truth except the tour guide.
10) All kids wear the same uniform all the time, even when they're not in school.
It's not actually all kids -- it's kids from the most well-off families. But those are the families they let visitors come into contact with, so that's what it looked like to me.
11) It's best to just not bring up the huge rocket hotel in the middle of Pyongyang.
The 105-story Ryugyong Hotel, which started to be built in 1987 and still hasn't finished, would seem to be an odd undertaking for a nation whose economy had stagnated, whose infrastructure was rotting, and which looks like this at night.

But we're in North Korea, so why the fuck not.

It's hard to understand from pictures how weird it is that this building is sitting there in the middle of Pyongyang, a city whose other buildings are all small, shabby concrete blocks from the Soviet Era. The picture below shows a typical Pyongyang building in front of the Ryugyong --
12) North Koreans seem to be lacking a sense of humor about the mausoleum that holds the bodies of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il.
Here's what our old buddy Kim Jong Il is up to these days --

This is the one picture in this post that I did not take -- cameras were strictly forbidden in the mausoleum, otherwise known as the Kumsusan Palace of the Sun, which experts say cost somewhere between $100 and $900 million to build.

On a visit with many tense moments, the time I spent in here was the tensest. We had to walk single file in and out and bow three times to each of the two bros.

13) North Korea even manages to have dictator-esque traffic ladies.

Kind of mesmerizing to watch.

14) The Mass Games are both breathtaking and disturbing.

Let's start with breathtaking. Attending the Mass Games was like attending the opening ceremony of the Olympics. It involves 100,000 (!) performers, many of them young children, depicting the glorious history and thriving modernity of North Korea. The backdrop is a stunning tapestry made of 20,000 kids holding up large colored cards (they have a book of cards and can quickly flip from color to color). I don't throw the word magnificent around very often, and it was magnificent. The Mass Games takes place four days a week for three months every summer.

For the disturbing part, just say the sentence, "North Korea is one of the world's poorest countries, a place where millions of people are starving, hospitals no longer function, and there is almost no electricity," and then read the above paragraph again.

In any case the Mass Games is the perfect North Korean event -- centered on propaganda, stresses the collective over the individual, and it makes no sense as a priority given the state of things.

You can see pictures here and here's a video I took which shows a sampling of the show:

15) No North Korean people have access to the Internet because the government is concerned that people would see things that would make them feel unfairly critical toward the West, and the government would like to protect the West's reputation by preventing the people from going on the Internet.

Yup. That is the story I was told when I asked our North Korean guide why no one can go on the internet. One of the most absurd explanations for anything -- apparently the government isn't even trying to lie credibly anymore.

What the (most privileged) people do have access to is the North Korean intRAnet, a network limited to government-approved North Korean websites.

Naturally, North Korea performs badly in the Press Freedom Index, coming in second-to-last, beating only Eritrea (nice job, Eritrea).

16) Kim Jong Il used a MacBook Pro.

I saw it myself. After seeing his dead body hanging out in the mausoleum, they took us downstairs to a Kim Jong Il museum, which contained awards and honors he had been given throughout his life, a huge animated map showing every route he traveled in his life, and the train he used hundreds of times during this travel (he was scared of flying).

They showed us the inside of the cart, including the room he (supposedly) died in. In it, there was a change of his favorite outfit and on the desk, a MacBook Pro.

Weird to picture Kim Jong Il putting things in his dock, minimizing windows, and opening his Finder, but that's what happened.

17) Most of the time people walked together, I swear they were walking in step.

Like come on--

18) North Korea is the one place where the museum of ancient times sounds like the good old days.

Normally, going to a museum of any country's ancient times makes you think, "Thank god I don't live then." Whether it's hearts getting cut out in Mexico, public executions and the Black Plague in Europe, or brutal totalitarian Empires in Asia, it tends to be a lot better to live "now" than "then."

But in North Korea, as I was hearing the guide tell story after story of ancient dynasties ruling the peninsula, my thought continued to be, "Eh still sounds better than living here now."

19) Apparently the tears in this video are actually real.

Okay I'm not sure if they're all real, or if some people are crying because if they don't they'll be sent to a labor camp for the rest of their lives. But I had assumed they were basically all faking that level of emotion, an assumption that was debunked when I heard this story:

A New Zealander who worked for the tour company that arranged my tour told me that he was meeting with an employee of the North Korean government's tourism agency outside North Korea (one of the rare times you'll ever see a North Korean outside the country), when the news of Kim Jong Il's death came in. He said the man, at the time, was trying to sign something with a pen, and that his hand was shaking so violently that he couldn't do it. The man then tore away to the other room, and emerged a couple hours later, face swollen and eyes red. This was a man outside of North Korea with no reason to fake emotion.

A brutal, heartless totalitarian dictator has to play quite the mind tricks on his people to be truly beloved -- the Kims are good at what they do.

20) It turns out that there's a place in the world that will make you enter China and think, "Thank god for this land of boundless freedom!"

North Korea. A place unlike any other.

-------------------------

Pictures from the trip are here.

And below are some videos from my visit to the Mangyongdae Schoolchildren's Palace in Pyongyang, a school for children with elite artistic ability. Of course, only children from the highest ranking families even have a chance to attend this school. (And yes, I am now aware that vertical videos are a bad thing, not a good thing.)

First we had a chance to see the kids practicing:

Little girls practicing dance.
Little girls sounding great practicing some weird instrument.
Little kids practicing the accordion.
A very focused little girl practicing embroidery.

Then we saw an amazing performance (excuse the terrible video quality):

The Opening Number.
A delightful dance by four little girls in red boots.
A little girl who KILLS it on the xylophone and drums.
A little boy who KILLS it on the ukulele.
A graceful dance by an animated little girl.
A little boy who blew me away with his lassos.
A group of girls dance with fans.

As I walked out, I waved to the kids in the audience and this is them waving back.

Visiting the kids was the saddest part of the trip. They're just as deserving as any other kids of a good life and it's pretty heartbreaking that they're stuck in such a shitty place. The whole population deserves so much better -- hopefully something changes there soon.

View all videos here.
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20 Things I Learned While I Was in North Korea

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Well that was weird. I was only in North Korea for five days, but that was more than enough to make it clear that North Korea is every bit as weird as I always thought it was.

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Do Party Members in North Korea have a better life?

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Do Party Members in North Korea have a better life?

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This article explains the casting system in North Korea and how it works. This system is called Songbun and it splits the population in three unequal parts. The 3 cast are loyals being the highest you can go, wavering and hostile. It also talks about how Loyals have better access to food, better jobs, education and housing.

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A U.S.-based human rights group has released a report detailing how North Korea ranks its citizens based on their family's loyalty to the Kim dynasty in what it says amounts to an oppressive political caste system.

The study released Wednesday by the U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea says all of the country's citizens are divided into three heredity-based classes: loyal, wavering, or hostile.

The report argues that "inequality is assigned at birth," and that citizens have little control during the course of their lifetime over their socio-political classification, known as "songbun" in Korean.

Greg Scarlatoiu, executive director of group, said the so-called wavering and hostile classes total about 72 percent of the population of more than 24.5 million North Koreans.

He says loyalists enjoy perks such as being able to live in the comparatively modern capital city of Pyongyang, and preferences in access to food, housing, medical treatment, education and employment.

However, those in the hostile class are forced to live in the most impoverished northeastern provinces, and are often assigned to hard labor positions at mines and farms.

Scarlatoiu says the classification of hostile can follow a family for up to three generations. He says under the system a person can be confined to these lower rungs for offenses such as being on the losing side of an argument within the Korean Workers Party, failing to take adequate care of a picture of a North Korean leader or supporting ideas, religious or otherwise, that do not conform to official ideology.

The report was based on interviews with 75 North Korean defectors. the report says the government keeps a file on each North Korean from the age of 17 that is updated every two years.

It says the "Songbun" system has largely escaped the notice of the Western world, who have instead focused on North Korea's vast camps of political prisoners, public executions, extreme information controls, and nuclear weapons program.
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VOA's Amanda Scott talks with Greg Scarlatoiu, the group's executive director of the group, for more information on this political caste system.

This week your organization released a report detailing North Korea's Social Classification System also known as "Songbun" can you summarize this report?

At birth each North Korean is assigned a social classification status, a Songbun status, by the government based on the perceived political loyalty of one's family to the regime. North Korea is a U.N. member state and it should abide by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which asserts that all human beings are born free and equal in dignity rights. However, all North Koreans are classified as loyal, wavering or hostile and face discrimination on the basis of this classification in terms of food distribution, housing, residential location, employment, education and all aspects of a person's life.

In North Korea the so-called wavering and hostile classes are estimated to total about 72 percent of the population or more than 60 million North Koreans. Basically only the small politically loyal class is entitled to live in Pyongyang and benefit from extensive privileges.

Can you tell us a little more about the privileges afforded to those in the loyal class compared to those living in hostile class?

Being part of the loyal class the core loyal class means first and foremost better access to food, better access to housing, better access to residential location and most of those living in Pyongyang, the capital city of North Korea actually belong to the core loyal caste. So basically this involves better access to employment, the best jobs available in North Korea are made available to those of higher songbun, belonging to the loyal class. Also access to education is also based on the social classification system. So pretty much songbun governs all aspects of life in North Korea.

Is it possible for a person to move within caste, either being downgraded or upgraded to a higher caste?

It would be nearly impossible to move up for one who has been classified as a member of the hostile caste, by the way, in instances where members of the hostile class have been confined to political prisoner camps in remote areas of North Korea, guilt by association is applied up to three generations.

In the case of those belonging to the wavering class, under exceptional circumstances it may be possible to be promoted to the loyal or core class if one is perceived as having done deeds that prove extraordinary loyalty to the regime. If one did extraordinary things that tremendously helped the Kim regime.

How in particular do your actions affect the classification of your family members?

What we hear from North Korean defectors who once were political prisoner camps detainees is that one of the questions often asked by many of the political prisoner camp detainees is that many of them don't know why they are there.

These are all perceived associations, so basically one might end up in a political prisoner camp for wrong doing, wrong thinking, wrong knowledge, wrong association or wrong class background. This is a feudal practice going back to the days of the Joseon dynasty which preceded the 40 years of Japanese occupation that in turn preceded Kim Il-sung's regime in North Korea.

Are there any signs that this system will change now that Kim Jong-un has taken over as North Korea's leader?

Kim Jong-un's story is a very interesting story. His mother was a Japanese Korean. She was a dancer , a member of a dance troop who Kim Jong-il fell in love with. And certainly descendants of Japanese who returned to Korea where classified as lower Songbun in North Korea's classification system. So Kim Jong-un himself is the son of the former leader of North Korea and the grandson of a former leader of North Korea and his mother comes from what would strictly perceived from a North Korea viewpoint as a person of lower songbun.

Does this mean he would take greater interest in dismantling the songbun system?

Probably not and on the contrary he might feel tempted to hide and restrict access to information about his mother and her background.

He is very unlikely to shake things up so soon in the process even if he wanted to. Let us remember the reason why he was selected to be his father's successor was not that he was seen as a potential reformer, but that he was seen as the one of the three sons who was most likely to follow in his father's footsteps.

The North Korean regime rely so much on the songbun social classification system that it would be difficult to change things overnight. That being said, it is imperative that North Korea, the North Korean regime take immediate steps toward the full counting of those who are being held at the political prison camps it is of the essence that North Korean begin considering the dismantlement of these political prison camps.

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голос америки

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A U.S.-based human rights group has released a report detailing how North Korea ranks its citizens based on their family's loyalty to the Kim dynasty in what it says amounts to an oppressive political caste system. The study released Wednesday by the U.S.

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Do Party Members in North Korea have a better life?

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Do Party Members in North Korea have a better life?

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This article talks about that there is still consequences to Party Members in North Korea, they don't get special treatment if you disobey law, you will get a punishment. For even doing the most miniscule thing.

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As many as 50 senior members of the North Korean government and military have been publicly executed so far this year, according to South Korea's intelligence agency.

The victims of the purges - which the National Intelligence Service believes are continuing - include 10 members of the ruling Workers' Party who were executed by firing squad for watching South Korean soap operas, bribery or womanising.

Many of the officials singled out by Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, were reportedly close to Jang Song-thaek, Mr Kim's uncle, who was arrested in December 2013 and executed for a series of crimes against the state.

The ongoing elimination of Jang's allies indicates that Mr Kim is getting rid of potential sources of opposition and building his own power base, although executing a member of the party for watching a South Korean television show hints at a trumped-up charge.

Defectors from North Korea have told The Telegraph that pirated versions of South Korean and Chinese television programmes are widely available in North Korea and are frequently traded on the black market.

And despite the North Korean government's efforts to stop its citizens learning about life outside their borders, the proliferation of mobile phones and electronic media that are easy to carry and conceal has made it impossible to keep all foreign influences at bay.

Details on the executions were provided by the intelligence service in a report to the South Korean parliament on Tuesday, Yonhap News reported, while a further 200 officers in the artillery arm of the North Korean military have been demoted due to the poor accuracy of their units in training exercises.

The NIS report also said the North has expanded the capacity of its political prison camps and that hackers in North Korea attempted to access thousands of smartphones in South Korea this year, using programmes disguised within mobile gaming apps.

The report added that while Mr Kim has reappeared in public after undergoing successful surgery to remove cysts from his ankles, his weight many mean that the complaint will return in the future.

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North Korea executes members of Workers' Party for watching South Korean soap operas

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As many as 50 senior members of the North Korean government and military have been publicly executed so far this year, according to South Korea's intelligence agency. The victims of the purges - which the National Intelligence Service believes are continuing - include 10 members of the ruling Workers' Party who were executed by firing squad for watching South Korean soap operas, bribery or womanising.

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In North Korea there is a famine happening, people all over the country, even in the capital still go hungry, their country doesn't make enough food and they don't make enough money to pay for the food. Without imports, and better jobs they can't survive.

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North Korean rockets blasting across the sky. Soldiers marching in high-step unison in Pyongyang parades. Broadcasts praising leader Kim Jong Un while putting down the United States as the country's mortal enemy. These images of North Korea from state media portray a proud, strong and self-reliant country.

But behind the propaganda and beyond the capital of Pyongyang is the harsher reality of poverty, hunger and desperation, defectors say.

"My family had decided to commit suicide because for three days we didn't have anything to eat," said one North Korean female defector to ITN in Seoul. "We decided to starve to death. We said let's die. But then I wanted to survive. I sold the house for 30 kilos of rice."

She escaped North Korea shortly after leader Kim Jong Un came to power last year -- her identity kept secret because she left family behind.

"To survive, I had to eat grass. People pick grass and leaves and use them to make soup," said the defector who now lives in South Korea. Reports out of North Korea suggest food prices have tripled in the past year.

More than 25% of North Korean children under the age of five suffered from chronic malnutrition in 2012, according to the National Nutrition Survey of North Korea, a report backed by UNICEF, the World Food Program and the World Health Organization. The report also found nearly one in three women suffered from anemia.

As many as 3.5 million people are estimated to have died during North Korea's severe famine of the 1990s, according to South Korean NGO Good Friends Center for Peace, Human Rights, and Refugees. Official North Korean numbers estimate 220,000 people died.

"One thing that struck me is just how empty this land looks. I'm told that only about 20% of North Korea is arable," said CNN's Stan Grant on a reporting trip to North Korea in April 2012. "And the people move so slowly out here. Sometimes you see someone ambling across a field carrying a hoe or holding a shovel. Other times you see children wandering by the side of the road. And sometimes even people just standing in an empty space looking out aimlessly."

Outside the capital, the poverty of the nation becomes palpable, says a tour operator who regularly leads groups into North Korea. "The further you go from Pyongyang, people's clothes get more simple. The people themselves are smaller," said Simon Cockerell of Beijing-based Koryo Tours.

"Like for any developing country, the capital city is the best place to be. Wages are higher and people tend to be better off," he said. "But then we go out to second-tier cities -- Chongjin and Hamhung, North Korea's second and third biggest cities -- and it's clearly much drabber than Pyongyang."

Cockerell, who has been leading tour groups across North Korea for the past 11 years, also puts down the idea that everyone they meet is an actor.

"The frequency of the general public to say hello is increasing but still there isn't that much interaction. Communication does happen with younger people who have English fluency, older people or people who have been drinking," he added. "Quite often when you go to a park, people might come over and say hello. The degree of welcome is remarkable and it's the sort of thing that people don't expect. These people are humans too."

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North Korean rockets blasting across the sky. Soldiers marching in high-step unison in Pyongyang parades. Broadcasts praising leader Kim Jong Un while putting down the United States as the country's mortal enemy. These images of North Korea from state media portray a proud, strong and self-reliant country.

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This article talks about the imports Kim Jong Il like to purchase, that includes McDonalds cheese burgers, for himself, designer brands, and expensive booze. Even though his country is starving, and has a poor food supplies Kim Jong Il has no problem spending money and living the luxurious life, while his people die worshiping him.

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North Koreans starve to death; Kim Jong-Il imports McDonald's burgers

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North Korean officials also importing Marlboros, Rolex watches and Gucci bags

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This article talks about what the Leader of the independent country likes to purchase, that includes foreign imports. Even though he wants his country to independently make their food, clothes and other necessities. Kim Jong un has managed to spend more money than his father did while in office.

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North Korea may be reliant on overseas countries to feed its people, but that isn't keeping leader Kim Jong-un from partaking of numerous luxury shopping trips.

A report to South Korea's parliament shows its northern neighbor has sharply increased its imports of luxury products, from the estimated $300 million in 2011 under the late Kim Jong-Il, Mr. Kim's father and predecessor, to the 2012 figure of $645.8 million, the Telegraph reported.

Among the imports: Pets and pet food, sauna systems, specialty maternity products, musical instruments, cosmetics, luxury handbags and other leather products, top-of-the-line watches, and cars stamped as "made in Japan" and "made in China." Also among the purchases were high-end alcohol, to the tune of $30 million in 2012, and electronic items, about $37 million worth. The regime imported $8.2 million in luxury watches alone, the Telegraph said.

Seoul officials find the purchases curious at a time when half of North Korea is starving and the other half - outside of the elite ruling class, that is - struggling to make ends meet.

"The products were given as gifts to key figures in North Korean society to ensure their loyalty to the regime," Yoon Sang-hyun, with the ruling South Korean Saenuri Party, told Seoul parliamentarians.

The North Korean dictator had several additional splurges, including a military-constructed "world class" ski resort at Masik Pass Skiing Ground, and touring aboard a $7 million yacht within the past few months, Mr. Yoon said.

A few weeks ago, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization reported that about 2.8 million of North Korean residents are considered "vulnerable" for starvation, and needed outside food donations to live until harvest season.

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Kim Jong-un buys up luxury imports as N. Korea starves and struggles

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North Korea may be reliant on overseas countries to feed its people, but that isn't keeping leader Kim Jong-un from partaking of numerous luxury shopping trips. A report to South Korea's parliament shows its northern neighbor has sharply increased its imports of luxury products, from the estimated $300 million in 2011 under the late Kim Jong-Il, Mr. Kim's father and predecessor, to the 2012 figure of $645.8 million, the Telegraph reported.