Wow, streets are so clean, not a single piece of trash. I wish we had this here in Brooklyn.
Street View, North Korea
51–60 of 85 posts
Re: Street View, North Korea
#52The infrastructure is much better than India, Vietnam which happen to be massive suck ups to USA.
Ten lane roads are not infrastructure unless you have something to ride on that roads. India and Vietnam provide citizens with all kinds of bikes, tuktuks and motorollers. NK not so much. Having said that, no electricity during most of the day also not very infrastructure-ish. (If you wanted real totalitarian infrastructure, try Myanmar) Also, Vietnam fighted for their vision of freedom, won, and now is free to do wh…
> Having said that, no electricity during most of the day also not very infrastructure-ish.
Who told you that? Have you lived in NK?
Re: Street View, North Korea
#53On the same note, here is a surreal 22 min drive through Pyongyang. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4hLctBvojE It pairs well with a few Aphex Twin songs: Heliosphan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Z4cLmbw6q0 Flim : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhHkUg-QCwk Ageispolis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOf6ICP3WAg It is surreal because it almost makes it possible to forget how may people that regime has starving, w…
What struck me was the lack of life on the streets. Anywhere else I'd expect to see street vendors, buskers, flashy billboards and storefronts, people laughing, but there's none of that. The streets seem purely functional. But they're not bleak either - the landscaping is quite nice, actually.
Might just be confirmation bias on my part.
Re: Street View, North Korea
#54South Korean and United States foreign policy is now reunification with North Korea, a switch from decades of "Sunshine Policy" under which relationships with NK did improve. This is contextualized by a number of current events including the rise of China and revisionism of Russia, the fight over the Arctic, America's huge losses in cyberwarfare, the US's push for an Asian NATO, and Japan's reinterpretation of their…
> We can expect to see a great deal more about North Korea, and need to hope that, as larger powers attempt to conquer NK and strip its government, that this can be done as peacefully as possible and without triggering all of the Cold War tripwires breeding in the world today. I immediately thought on reading this line of how NK is the last stranglehold where U.S. Commerce has not infiltrated. In fact, much of the ta…
"I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents." -- Major General Smedley Butler, USMC, 1935.
Re: Street View, North Korea
#55On the same note, here is a surreal 22 min drive through Pyongyang. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4hLctBvojE It pairs well with a few Aphex Twin songs: Heliosphan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Z4cLmbw6q0 Flim : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhHkUg-QCwk Ageispolis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOf6ICP3WAg It is surreal because it almost makes it possible to forget how may people that regime has starving, w…
Thanks for posting, this was eerie. I cannot imagine what it would be like to be brought up, from a small child, to unconditionally love one man and to unconditionally love everything about your country, even if you're starving. After watching the drive, I watched this as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xs--To414I . It gives a more in-depth look, and has interviews with officials and citizens. Some of them you…
While there is no defending NK, blind nationalism and extremism exists in segments of the population in every country. Empirically unworkable self destructive implementation won't change an extremist's view in any society.
And while the path to such states of mind is different than NK, a household or self reinforcing group, a narrow choice of information sources, the unquestioned belief in a single writer can be just as effective in producing it as Kim Jong-un tragicomic techniques.
Re: Street View, North Korea
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ten lane roads are not infrastructure unless you have something to ride on that roads. India and Vietnam provide citizens with all kinds of bikes, tuktuks and motorollers. NK not so much. Having said that, no electricity during most of the day also not very infrastructure-ish. (If you wanted real totalitarian infrastructure, try Myanmar) Also, Vietnam fighted for their vision of freedom, won, and now is free to do wh…
>Ten lane roads are not infrastructure unless you have something to ride on that roads. India and Vietnam provide citizens with all kinds of bikes, tuktuks and motorollers. NK not so much. The embargo makes oil very expensive in NK. Hence the costs of running a vehicle are prohibitive. >Having said that, no electricity during most of the day They get pretty frequent seconds-long brownouts, but they do have electricit…
Maybe the capital gets electricity all day, but I have read from specialists that provincial towns get a few hours of power per day. Same with e.g. water.
Re: Street View, North Korea
#57Notice that there is no ad in the streets !
There are no ads in the streets of São Paulo either:
http://www.amusingplanet.com/2013/07/sao-paulo-city-with-no-...
Re: Street View, North Korea
#58Notice that there is no ad in the streets !
That's pretty much the only thing I miss about the life in the USSR: no ads. I wonder if we could ever claim back our visual field and have more control over what's allowed in the streets.
Re: Street View, North Korea
#59I can't help but notice great the condition of the roads are (probably due to the very few cars there). This road in particular looks well looked after. For a country that has a lot of starving citizens, it is quite surprising. Take a drive through most streets in Los Angeles and you will experience what a poorly maintained road feels like in a supposedly first-world country. Same goes for some roads in my city here in Australia, poorly constructed to the point where heavy rain is enough to put massive potholes into a main road.
Re: Street View, North Korea
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
> We can expect to see a great deal more about North Korea, and need to hope that, as larger powers attempt to conquer NK and strip its government, that this can be done as peacefully as possible and without triggering all of the Cold War tripwires breeding in the world today. I immediately thought on reading this line of how NK is the last stranglehold where U.S. Commerce has not infiltrated. In fact, much of the ta…
> And yet so many of our soldiers have died for this very pretense. "America is not at war. The Marine Corps is at war; America is at the mall." https://i.imgur.com/HsDHUWU.jpg
What struck me was the handwriting.