81–90 of 307 posts
There was another diplomat that has videos on YouTube. I can't remember his name but he was able to move freely and use his DSLR around Pyongyang.
Jaka Parker. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDcfiEX__cA
The post never mentions a date, but this must have been around 2000-2004, since that is when the UK embassy was established. [1] Some things have probably changed since then. A fascinating read regardless. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embassy_of_the_United_Kingdom,...
Meanwhile instead of some fancy building, their embassy over here is... Well, a little more domestic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embassy_of_North_Korea,_London
Is that a flagpole in the front garden?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Long history of it, too. The US made special clear coke in nondescript bottles for Marshal of the Soviet Union Zhukov so he could look like he was drinking vodka instead of the illegal Western drink. https://www.businessinsider.com/us-secret-clear-coca-cola-fo... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Coke
So thats where crystal Pepsi came from! Bloody Commie soda!
The post never mentions a date, but this must have been around 2000-2004, since that is when the UK embassy was established. [1] Some things have probably changed since then. A fascinating read regardless. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embassy_of_the_United_Kingdom,...
I wonder who works in those embassies. Are there some British dudes just living there that go to the embassy every day for work? Where do they buy food? What do their residences look like? Do have spouses and children? Where do they work and go to school? Do they enjoy life there?
If you want to arrange something quickly between nations you go through their respective three letter agencies.
I'll preface this by saying that I can't support this with a source, so take it with a grain of salt. An acquaintance of mine knew someone who worked in that German embassy. Apparently, the extreme isolation of North Korea also made it extremely difficult to have any kind of opsec inside the embassy. Since anything could only be brought in through diplomatic pouches it created an attack vector of one. A few days afte…
There's a kajillion ways to extract info via analog hole from a well-known room. Unless this room has counter-measures (that are unlikely to be accepted by an authoritarian government) this ain't surprising really.
I highly suspect that if the government of a host country didn’t let a guest country follow standard construction procedures like the use of high density construction materials, then the guest country would either not continue construction of the diplomatic outpost or at the very least they would not proceed with using their (now) vulnerable storage closet as a scif.
This was fascinating! If I could do it all over again, I'd have gone into the US Foreign Service. Maybe not to places like North Korea (which we don't have a presence in anyways), but I'd have loved to travel the world. Maybe in the next life...
https://www.tema.ru/travel/north-korea-1/ Artemy Lebedev, a known Russian web designer, visited North Korea and posted his notes with pictures (in Russian, should not be an obstacle these days). There are three more sections with the selector below.
> in Russian, should not be an obstacle these days It blows my mind a tiny bit every time I translate something with GPT-4. It’s flawless! Fascinating article, it explained a few things I didn’t get before. E.g.: the locals collect grass in bags to feed to rabbits.