North Korea vs South Korea (vanity)

www.freerepublic.com ^ | 1 March 2024 | impimp

[daniel1212]

Before you immigrate, you may want to read north Korean defector stories, as https://news.sky.com/story/north-korea-defector-tells-of-escape-and-reveals-what-life-is-really-like-in-secretive-state-12851920

Then you have the tourist:

The whole trip was a complete shock and surprise.’ Russian travel blogger describes first guided tour to North Korea in 4 years. By Jamin Anderson for RFA Korean 2024.02.19

Voskresensky: I decided to go on a trip as soon as I heard that North Korea was opening and there would be a tour for Russian citizens there, and I like making films about my travels for my YouTube channel. ... Of course, I had concerns because I read a lot of stories, watched films about the DPRK...But we did it anyway. There were still concerns. I went there with a friend of mine. He's my cameraman, and the two of us were there together....

Voskresensky: The whole trip was a complete shock and surprise. The fact that in Pyongyang, a large city where 3 million people live, there are very few people on the streets and there are practically no cars at peak hours – not at 17:30 in the evening nor at 7:30 in the morning. You go through the streets, and they are empty and it’s shocking.

It’s also shocking how the cult of personality has simply surpassed all levels. When you open a publication, like the flight magazine on the airplane, the first 13 pages had only the face of one person [Kim Jong Un] and this is also shocking.

Voskresensky: We encountered restrictions literally immediately on the plane. I took my camera to film how I entered the plane and I was immediately told off.

When we took our seats a man was there sitting with us. He was just sitting doing something on his phone, taking pictures of the porthole. We hadn’t even left Russia yet. A member of the cabin crew came up, it was a North Korean airline, so the flight attendant just came, took the man’s phone and started looking through his photos. He looked and deleted what he didn’t like. This was the first impression we got, and we hadn’t even left the country. We were still in Russia, but sitting in a DPRK airplane...

They only allowed us to shoot picturesque, beautiful scenes...There was a ban on walking around the city on your own, meaning you couldn’t leave the hotel and go for a walk around the city...

We did not have the opportunity to communicate with ordinary people in North Korea. We only communicated with our guides and had some little exchanges with the hotel staff such as the waitresses....but sometimes you do see people and, astonishingly, they all looked the same. - https://www.rfa.org/english/news/korea/voskresensky-02162024154100.html

[impimp]

I do believe that NK birth rate is exaggerated. I believe it is dropping and I believe it bring their Dear Leader to tears(literally, I saw the video footage).