According to The Boston Globe:
North Korea has long been enigmatic - especially to the West. An elaborate cult of personality created around the ruling Kim family permeates both the cultural and political lives of the nation. The world's most militarized nation, it has been developing nuclear weapons and a space program.
In 2002, President George Bush labeled North Korea part of an "axis of evil," primarily due to its aggressive military posture but also because of its abysmal human rights record. North Korea has long maintained close relations with the People's Republic of China and Russia.
In an attempt to ameliorate the loss of investments due to international sanctions over its weapons program, North Korean officials have initiated a tourism push, focused on Chinese visitors. Still, every travel group or individual visitor is constantly accompanied by one or two "guides" who normally speak the mother language of the tourist. While some tourism has increased over the last few years, Western visitors remain scarce. The last several photos in this post are by Associated Press photographer David Guttenfelder, who offers rare glimpses of life in the shuttered country. -- Paula Nelson
Please click here to view 54 fantastic photographs.
4 comments to The Big Picture
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UP41 Remind me of first visits to Beijing, China & Saigon, Vietnam in the late eighties early 90s
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Unknown Thanks, Walla, for sharing that precious nugget of information. It certainly adds more value to the pics!
Take care and have a wonderful week ahead!
Please stay in touch.
Cheers
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Unknown Thanks, UP41, for sharing your input. You are likely to have travelled so widely in the past and to be able to see the differences between then and now!
Any pics to share?
Take care and have a lovely week ahead.
Cheers
walla During the Korean War, the US dropped 200,000 bombs on Pyongyang. The population of Pyongyang was 200,000.
That would explain why the city remains pristine. The US tourist who was there only recently would attest again the place wasn't a setup because he had looked all over for evidence it was made-up just for tourists.
He concluded NKorea was all along tarred by western media. He probably also got the explanation why the SKorean ship could not have been sunk by them - they didn't have the technology to splice the ship in the way the debris had shown. During that critical moment both states were supposed to come together for another round of peace talks and Japan was about to eject US forces - anyway, so was said.
;P