The Arirang mass games in Pyongyang, North Korea, are the largest and most bombastic exercise of state propaganda in the world. These photos from Jeremy Hunter, a British photojournalist, offer a unique window on the world’s last hereditary Stalinist regime.
Crazy, when I first glanced at this, I thought it was parking lot full of jersey barriers.
(via brooklynmutt)
Kim Jong Il sure built a lot of monuments…
Despite Kim’s appeal to the masses, much of the architecture of Pyongyang, the dictator’s seat of power, is overwhelmingly authoritarian in tone. Large monuments of questionable taste dot the cityscape embodying Kim’s cult of personality, linked by absurdly wide Haussmannian boulevards and colossal public squares devoid of an actual public.
(via The Hidden Architecture of Pyongyang - Design - The Atlantic Cities)
The subject of video seems like a sketch drawn from the audience comments at an improv performance. North Korea + Student Accordion Players + 80’s one-hit wonders… Go!
Early Bird Special: It’s Friday! So here are five young accordion players from the Kum Song School in Pyongyang, North Korea, performing A-ha’s “Take on Me.”
[thanks ben!]
(Source: thedailywhat)
— An excerpt from a poem written by Kim Jong il’s second son Kim Jong Chol in the sixth or seventh grade. The deceased North Korean leader deemed Jong Chol too soft and “feminine” for the job his younger brother just inherited. (via newsweek)
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While there are legitimate reasons to be concerned about Kim Jong Il’s death (potential geopolitical stability and the like), there’s no need to worry about no longer being able to look at the dear leader looking at things, because someone has already set up kimjongunlookingatthings:
looking at industrial equipment
The sun rises, the sun sets, and Kim Jong Il keeps looking at things. (And apparently people, too).
looking at an army cadet
Kim Jong Il just never stops looking at things. (It must be a strange job to work as a photographer for the NK public affairs ministry).
looking at a stereo system
Of all the tumblrs out there, I’ll never get tired of kimjongillookingatthings:
looking at apples
North Korea looks like either:
a) Frozen in the 1960’s
or
b) Part of the Dharma Initiative.
looking at a monitor
Because it’s been a week or two since I last reblogged kimjongillookingatthings:
looking at an architectural model
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