Infiltrating North Korea Part 11: North Korean Style Advertising

by Neil Woodburn on


Billboards are a ubiquitous presence in most any major city. Depending on local ordnances, they may fill the entire side of a building, dominate cityscapes, or simply appear on the roadside in a variety of shapes and sizes.

The city of Pyongyang is no exception. The only difference is that there is only one product being advertised here: communism.

Propaganda is the evil step cousin of advertising and the North Koreans embrace it as eagerly as an account executive on Madison Avenue pitching for the Coca Cola business.

Although there’s certainly nowhere quite like Times Square in Pyongyang, there is hardly a spot in the capital where one is not exposed to a billboard or mural extolling the virtues of communism, North Korea, or either one of the Kims.

And just in case someone is blind, a fleet of propaganda vans with speakers mounted atop drive around the city pumping out the latest rhetoric.
Naturally, the state controls the mass media as well, jamming incoming foreign transmissions and making it technically impossible to tune into any other broadcast except for the official state one. This, in part, is controlled by producing radios with only a single FM button and absolutely no dial! I had one of these North Korean specialties in my hotel room and sat staring at it for the longest time; it was simply impossible to change the station and it left me feeling completely powerless.
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In addition, there is no such thing as the internet in North Korea or cell phones. Anyone entering the country had to leave their cell phones with customs officials who kept them locked up and inaccessible for the entirety of our stay. And I certainly didn’t get a copy of USA Today under my hotel room door.

Surprisingly, being cut off from the outside world was actually somewhat enjoyable for the five days I spent in North Korea. I quite liked the freedom of not being tied to my cell phone and email and relished in the ignorant bliss of not being exposed to troubling international news. This isolationist cocoon where the state controls everything you hear and see, however, would not have been fun for too long. Living an entire life under such conditions would be hell.


There was one brief glimmer of hope, however. One day when driving around the outskirts of Pyongyang we passed a billboard doing what billboards do throughout the rest of the world: selling a product. Someone has managed to erect North Korea’s first (and only?) billboard, and as you can see, it’s advertising brand new automobiles.

And that, folks, is the slippery slope of capitalism.

Yesterday: The Followers of Kim
Tomorrow: A North Korean History Lesson about the U.S.S. Pueblo

Travel to US declines despite global tourism boom

by Catherine Bodry on

The US Commerce Department reports that the United States is the only major country in the world to which travel has declined, even though there’s a global tourism boom happening. The numbers are depressing: Japanese visits declined from 5 million in 2000 to 3.6 million in 2006, for example. So what’s the deal? With our crappy dollar, the US is becoming a bargain destination. So why aren’t tourists flocking to our shores?

The answer, according to a November 26 Newsweek article titled “America the Unwelcoming,” is, simply put, that it’s a pain in travelers’ rear ends just trying to get here. For example, it takes 69 days in Mumbai simply to process a visa request to the US (perhaps explaining a 10 percent decline in business travel to the US between 2004 and 2005 — while similar travel to Europe increased by 8 percent). Then, bureaucrats are being extra careful about granting visas — as the article stated, “No one wants to be the person who lets in the next terrorist.” Thus, any irregularity is cause to “stop, question, arrest and deport.”

Is it any wonder tourist numbers are declining?

Pico Iyer’s humble Let’s Go beginnings

by Neil Woodburn on

If you’ve ever read Pico Iyer, you’ll know that he is one of those rare, wonderfully eloquent travel writers who can really nail a destination and make you feel as though you were there.

What you probably don’t know about Pico, however, is that he began his career writing for Let’s Go–the ubiquitous publication so often clutched by young Americans backpacking through Europe.

Pico was at Harvard University studying Old English when his calling in life came in the form of a flyer posted on the campus seeking writers for the series (the books are written entirely by Harvard students). He quickly applied and was soon on his way with $1,400 to get him through 70 days of research.

According to a great article Pico recently penned for Condé Nast Traveler, writing for the budget publication, “was the best vocational training I ever had, a crash course in all kinds of lessons learned on the fly, and a perfect illustration of the ancient Calvinist truth that life and a free lunch are rarely well acquainted.”

The hardest lesson learned by a 20-something Harvard student studying Old English, however, was “that what a reader of any guidebook wants is not a wise guy’s 20-page treatise on Art versus Nature in the Cotswolds but the dirt on whether that grimy curry house is less poisonous than the grease-stained burger stand down the street.”

And that’s why we love Let’s Go when we’re students, and Pico’s subsequent books when we’re adults.

Infiltrating North Korea Part 10: The Followers of Kim

by Neil Woodburn on


Every messiah has a birthplace to which the faithful must make a pilgrimage and pay their respects. North Korea’s Bethlehem is Mangyongdae, a suburban park just outside Pyongyang’s city center where the Great Leader, Kim Il Sung, was raised in a small, thatched hut.

Today, the Kim family home is nicely preserved along with, according to my copy of Pyongyang Review, “priceless relics associated with the immortal revolutionary exploits of the beloved leader Comrade Kim Il Sung and the brilliant feats performed by his revolutionary family.” This includes a misshapen water jug the Kim family purchased at a discounted rate since they were too poor to afford a proper one–a fact proudly pointed out by our guide whose sole job, it seemed, was to ensure that we all understood the austere, humble beginning of the Great Leader.

Frankly, the hut and personal trinkets contained within were all rather mundane. What made this stop truly fascinating, however, was the mass of pilgrims lined up to pay a visit. This wasn’t a special holiday or even a weekend for that matter. This was just an ordinary day in which thousands of faithful Kim fanatics showed up in their very best clothes and stood in a very long line to pay their respects.
Was this just another production staged to impress the foreigners? Surely so many people wouldn’t be visiting this historic spot if tourists weren’t in town. But I simply didn’t know–one never knows in North Korea. Nonetheless, it provided us with a rare opportunity; the visit was one of the few times we were able to get close to actual Pyongyang locals. We had been kept away from them for so long that I felt as though I had stepped out of the car at Wild Animal Safari and was finally able to stand amongst the exotic creatures.

And so, I was able to come face to face with the rare North Korean native and photograph them in the their natural habitat, donning traditional garb and bearing the ubiquitous lapel pin of the Great Leader. They seemed friendly enough, but it was tough to gauge their disposition. They’d smile and nod their head if we said hello, but otherwise they simply gazed upon us with stoic faces.

North Koreans rarely see foreigners and I can’t imagine what must have been going through their propaganda-stuffed heads as they gazed upon us. We were the enemy, the capitalists from abroad about whom they’d been brainwashed since birth. And that’s when I suddenly realized that we were the exotic creatures being stared at, not the other way around.

Yesterday: Worshiping at the Altar of Kim
Tomorrow: North Korean Style Advertising

Holiday readiness: A lesson in sparkling wine from around the globe and calamari

by Jamie Rhein on

I was on the quest for a Christmas present for my dad when I came across this wonderful lesson on sparkling wines and cooking calamari from the Culinary Institute of America. Located in the Hudson Valley in Hyde Park, just outside of Poughkeepsie, New York, this is one of the best cooking schools in the world. I’ve eaten at the American Bounty Restaurant there a couple of times. Bliss.

This video starts out with an in depth, but breezy run through of sparkling wines from around the world that are affordable and popular–perfect to search out for holiday cheer. The range is from Italy to Albuquerque, New Mexico. There’s also a demonstration on how to safely open sparkling wine without putting someone’s eye out or losing all the bubbles. After that, John Fisher, an associate professor at the institute shows the best way to pan fry calamari to go with the sparkling wine. Oh, even more bliss. Here is the recipe for the calamari from the Culinary’s Web site. It doesn’t look that hard to make, and it tastes so good.