To Visit, Not to Stay

Leni Riefenstahl was unavailable for comment.

I was going to comment on the last thread that there’s nothing stopping the socialist idiots in our midst relocating to places more to their liking. Spooky.

Pyongyang is the reserve of the DPRK’s elite – ie party officials, military brass and government workers. It’s the best they can muster, yet it still looks like a particularly rough area of Glasgow.

Traffic doesn’t seem to be an issue. It’s almost like nobody can afford to drive a car! They must be so much smarter than us.

Of course some North Koreans live well.
So did some Soviets. And some Maoists. And some Venezuelans.
All it costs you is your eternal soul.

If the video wasn’t sped up so much of the time we’d realize just how empty most of those public spaces are.

Is this supposed to be a film that celebrates the DPRK, or one that parodies it? I can read parts of it both ways.
The accompanying blurb is rather, um, upbeat.

The accompanying blurb is rather, um, upbeat.
Some of the commentators underneath seem rather enthused by it all as well.

For some reason it reminded me of this.
I should point out I have had a glass of wine.

I wonder what Whitworth and Singh could do with Detroit.
Awhile back someone from New Jersey was telling of driving a friend around . . some major town name that I’m not remembering . . . The friend started counting burned out buildings, and stopped counting at 200.

Judging from the evidence and that underlining not being a link, do you mean The Passage?

I’m most likely dreaming in technicolour, but, . . . . .
Oh My . . .
Consider; Long shot , a main hall , and a hallway . . .
Oh, we’ve seen , a these various bits before . . . .
Renew! Renew! Renew!

I don’t mind the lack of graffiti …..

The people ‘working’ on computers (0.23) just have monitors – no keyboards.
I think that’s a public library, the Grand People’s Study House, not an office. Incidentally, the comments over at Vimeo have livened up somewhat. In fact they’re now quite heated.

Not so long ago, the BBC sent an undercover reporter to North Korea. He reached the rather baffling conclusion that it was a “far right” state.
I imagine that in coming to this conclusion, he performed the same complex mental gymnastics required of Socialist Worker types who flat-out deny that anything bad can come of socialism and attend workshops to learn how the USSR was actually a system of “state capitalism.”

Looking over the city scape on the title page, I’d have to say that being an architect in North Korea is not very challenging. Unimaginative uniformly big blocky buildings seems to be the order of the day. I suspect even the colors are due to lighting rather than by design. Reminds me of the public housing built in Detroit (and other places) in the 60s. Utilitarian but boring. Probably a reflection of the culture of North Korea ….. don’t stand out or you may not be standing long.

All that work to make it look as impressive as possible, and yet they couldn’t show a single shop or restaurant.

Hmm … Skegness …
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ZxSxG-Hb2q0/TmVDFg_u5II/AAAAAAAAA2c/760IU5ThSpQ/s1600/viz.jpg

All that work to make it look as impressive as possible, and yet they couldn’t show a single shop or restaurant.
Yeah, as David noted . . .

It didn’t take long to discover that this was no ordinary department store. It was filled with thousands of people, going up and down the escalators, standing at the corners, going in and out of the front entrance in a constant stream both ways – yet nothing was being bought or sold. I checked this by standing at the entrance for half an hour. The people coming out were carrying no more than the people entering. Their shopping bags contained as much, or as little, when they left as when they entered. In some cases, I recognised people coming out as those who had gone in a few minutes before, only to see them re-entering the store almost immediately. And I watched a hardware counter for fifteen minutes. There were perhaps twenty people standing at it; there were two assistants behind the counter, but they paid no attention to the ‘customers’. The latter and the assistants stared past each other in a straight line, neither moving nor speaking.