I guess what will what's that? So some years ago I watched this movie at Rooftop Films and it was about this guy who defected from the American army during the Korean War. He was just kind of like fed up with being yelled at by his sergeants, so he put his hands up and then just walked across the border. And it was all about how he'd lived the rest of his life in North Korea. Right, you can do that, You can just walk over the border like that, I guess. So.
I mean he's lived there and learned Korean. He smokes a lot of cigarettes and drinks and and he's treated like this elite there. But the thing is he's had to work for that status. And one of the things he's been doing is acting. So he is one of the few white guys in North Korea. I think he's one of four defectors. So he was tasked with playing the villain in every single propaganda movie they've done. Little
tast fifty years or something. But the weirdest thing to me is that Kim Jong ill thought that he could make this guy's kids spies since they're, you know, basically white looking. So he thought they'd lend into American society, But the footage of these kids is so sad, Like, first of all, they're on camera, so everyone knows what they look like. And it's also kind of hard to train as a spy and pick up a perfect English
language when you're studying at North Korean schools. So there's just a lot of unrealistic hope that was pinned to their success. But watching that movie made me wonder, like, what is life really like in North Korea? How did the country get to be so isolated? And has it always kept a distance from the world or is this a new phenomena. So that's what we're discussing today day
their podcast listeners, Welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson and as always I'm joined by my good friend man guest show Ticketer and on the other side of the soundproof glass. Just ativated by this terrible monster movie, I mean it is terrible called Pulga Sorry, he's watching this on his laptop. Tristan pay Ant, engineer, that's our attention and producer Tristan McNeil. And if you've never heard of Pulgasari, it's definitely worth checking out. So the monster is.
It's basically North Korea's answered to Godzilla, right, and it's produced by Kim Jong Ill back in the mid nineteen eighties. Yeah, it's a pretty well story. So when Kim John Iill was in charge of North Korea, he had this nasty habit of, you know, kidnapping people from the surrounding countries
to do his bidding. And in nineteen eight he snatched a famous South Korean film director, this guy named Shin sang ok and his actress ex wife, and Kim was supposedly this big movie buff and he wanted his captives to help him create this North Korean film industry. But thankfully, Shin and his ex were eventually able to escape while
they were attending a film festival in Vienna. But that was actually after eight years of captivity, and during that time, Shin was forced to direct a total of seven films for Kim, and Pulgasari was actually the last of those. So it's a standard Godzilla movie or what I mean. There's a rumor that the director secretly intended the monster to be a metaphor for Kim Jong il, and uh, that's pretty easy to take away when you look at the movies plot, which is all about this oppressed feudal society.
It's eventually liberated thanks to the help of this monster, who the citizen's view is their benign hero. But in the end, the monster betrays the people. He goes on a rampage and the peasants he once protected. Then I have to rise up and destroy him. You kind of just spoil the movie for me, Mega and and for
all of our listeners. You might need to put a warning at the beginning of this Christan But obviously there's a lot of hardship in North Korea, and for years now we've heard these rumblings of what life was like under Kim Jong ill and then under his son, Kim Jong Un. But you know, you think about things from food shortages to power outages, military conscription, slave labor camps.
But despite the severity of these claims, many of us really don't know the first thing about North Korea, and for many of us, including exactly where to find it on a map. And so you can think of today's episode as a bit of a primer on the country. So we'll be looking at why the Korean peninsula split and arrival nations and how the Kim family use that to secure its enduring power. But we'll also take a closer look at everyday life in North Korea, including a
few faint glimmers of hope for the future. But what do you want to start with, Mango, Well, I thought we could start with some of those basics you mentioned, like what and where North Korea is, So for starters, the country is officially known as the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, so d P R K and I think we'll still call it North Korea for the today's episode.
Geographically speaking, North Korea is a relatively small country. The whole thing is roughly the size of Mississippi, and if you bust out your world map, you can look to either the left of Japan or the right of China and you'll spot the Korean Peninsula, which is made up of as you might expect, you know, North Korea on
the top in South Korea on the bottom. And the last thing to know about North Koreas layout is that it's capital, the South, a city of Pyongyang, is the most developed and densely populated region of what is an otherwise largely rural country. So North Korea has about twenty
five million citizens, and three million of them live in Pyongyang. Yeah, I was actually reading where most of the country's government buildings and shopping districts are are located there, and as you might expect, most North Koreans of any kind of wealth or influence tend to live there in the capital. That's particularly in the fancy downtown area that's been nicknamed pyeong Hatton. And of course the residents they're enjoy all kinds of luxuries that the vast majority of citizens never
really get to experience. And I'm not just talking about gourmet restaurants and fancy clothes either. I mean that's definitely part of it, but even something as basic as reliable electricity, I mean that that's really only reserved for the upper class.
In fact, this is pretty interesting to look at. You can find pictures of this, but astronauts aboard the International Space Station have taken images of the Earth at night, and if you look at them, Pyongyang is the only part of North Korea that's really live it up, and
it's it's really eerie to look at. But you see South Korea and China, they're both super bright, and then there's just this dark gap that blends right in with the Yellow Sea and the Sea of Japan, and you really can't even tell where the country's coastlines are, you know. Even that small patch of light that emerges from Pyongyang is it's kind of pitiful when you compare it to
other places. According to NASA, that light emission from North Korea's capital city is really kind of the equivalent to that of small towns in South Korea, So it kind of gives you an idea of how technologically behind North Korea really is. Well, what's strange is that it's not really anything new to the region, right, Like, Korea has been called the Hermit Kingdom going back to as far as the eighties, and that was well before the nation
split into a North and South. So the nation has always had a little interaction with its immediate neighbors like China and Japan, But otherwise Korea has kept to itself for the better part of a thousand years. And that really only started to change towards the end of the nineteenth century in Japan invaded and rudely took control of Korea, which it continued to subjugate and terrorize all the way through World War Two and just to make sure that
we're all clear on our history here. Like, it was only after World War Two that the country split in two, right, I mean it was sort of like what happened with East and West Germany. Yeah, So the Allies had pushed hard for the entire Korean peninsula to go democratic after the war, but the Soviets opposed this because they thought I would reduce their influence in the region. So, just like with Germany, one half of Korea fell under the communist rule, that's the North, and the other half became
a democracy. In South Korea elected its first president, and something different took place in North Korea. So that year, instead of a freely elected president, the former monarchy got its first totalitarian dictator. His name was Kim Il Sung, and he was a Korean Communist. He had strong ties to the Soviet Union, and during the build up to World War two, Kimen worked closely with the Soviets to
wage all this guerilla warfare against the Japanese. And once the war was over, the Soviets knew they needed to install a puppet leader to you know, uphold their interests, and they're old friend Kimmel Sung just seemed like the perfect choice. It made total sense. You know, not only does this guy have communist leanings, but he could be portrayed as this authentic national hero because of his military service. All right, so we obviously lived through some of Kim
Jong il, his son's reign. But but what was his dad like as a leader. He was also a dictator. So I was looking at the timeline here, and the very same year he took power, Kimmel Sung set to work building this ruling political party as well as a standing army with all his old pals from the guerrilla squads that he ran. And it wasn't enough for Kim to just have total control of the political and military might.
He also wanted to control his culture, so he created this thing called the North Korean Federation of Literature and Art, and this was basically his propaganda arm You see this used in other places too, but he used this to put out state control media and art and to build his cult of personality and the propaganda it really portrayed him as this godlike figure throughout he was almost destined to, uh you know, transformed this abused nation into the socialist utopia.
That's how it's depicted. And of course, in reality, Kim was doing just the opposite. But one thing we do know about Kim Il sung is that he invaded South Korea nineteen fifty and this wasn't an attempt to unify these two Koreas. Of course, he wanted to rule them both himself, that's right, and he didn't have the backing of Stalin and the Soviet forces, and that's what actually
spiraled into the Korean War. The US jointed South Korea in the fight, and when the fighting finally ceased in nineteen fifty three, this was about after five million soldiers and civilian lives have been lost, there was no exchange of territory. There was no clear victor. Instead, the two Koreas signed this armistice agreement and they established this demilitarized zone between their borders. And since this basically amounted to a truce, there was no formal peace treaty between the nations.
So the two Korea's they're still technically at war with one another even to this day. Oh, I didn't, I didn't realize that. Actually, it's kind of wild to just speaking of weird facts around this, because not only has North Korea held onto the same war, for nearly seventy years. It's actually kept the same president as well. So how do you mean, because Kim Il sung died in four and then uh, Kim John Ill took over, and then
he died in two thousand eleven. And I mean, now there's Kim Jong un in there, but they dress alike and they act like but those are different people. Yeah, I mean, of course that's true. I'm not not getting weird here with all of that. But after Kim Il sung died in the nineteen nineties, the North Korean constitution was amended, and they amended it so that they could
declare him the eternal president. And actually this happened again after Kim Jong ill passed away, So both of them are now considered the eternal leaders of North Korea, you know, and poor Kim Jong un has to settle for just being the first secretary. And there's a term for this kind of setup. It's called a necrocracy, and that that's when a country still operates under the rules of a dead leader. And as you might guess, North Korea is the only one of those in the world. Well, it's
a good term for scrabble, I guess. But you know, it's since you brought up funny titles, I do have to mention some of the really ridiculous ones that Kim Jong ill used to be called. So the state press typically referred to him as dear Leader, as he might have heard, and that's what it also called his father. But these are what some North Korean journalists have also called him, the Guiding Sun Ray, the ever victorious, iron willed commander, and probably my favorite dear Leader, who is
a perfect incarnation of the appearance that a leader should have. Yeah, they really covered all their all their bases with that one. You know, things like that are why so many of
us on the outside holds such contradictory ideas about North Korea. Like, on the one hand, we know it's this highly militaristic nation that absolutely tramples on human rights, but then on the other hand, they are all these examples of really kind of over the top propaganda, these absurdly transparent posturing moves, and it just really makes its leaders seem somewhat cartoonish,
to be honest. And for instance, I was reading about this fake village that North Korea built and the demilitarized zone. This was back in the nineteen fifties and it was just called Peace Village. Now, on the surface it seems pretty legit, but they're a bunch of well cared for buildings. You know, there's a school and a hospital, and according to the North Korean government, some two hundred families called
the village home. But in reality, the whole thing is just this elaborate propaganda displayment to convince outsiders of the country's economic success, and its main purpose is really just to try to lure defectors from South Korea. And so there's actually this interesting right up that was in Slate. I'll just read this piece from it. It It says, viewed from a distance, Peace Village is unremarkable if a little drab.
Look closer, however, and the trickery is revealed. Residential buildings have no glass in their windows, electric lights and unheard of luxury for rural North Koreans, operate on an automatic timer. The only people in sight are maintenance workers occasionally dispatched to sweep the streets in order to give the impression of ongoing activity. It's so crazy that they even bothered to keep up this shrade, right, I mean, North Koreans have to know it's like a prop town and that
nobody actually lives there. Yeah, I mean, I kind of doubt anybody's falling for it, whether they're inside North Korea or outside North Korea. And you know, it's tough to say that with certainty since most North Koreans don't have access to journalists and likely wouldn't feel safe enough to speak freely even if they did. But we do have some estimates from North Korean defectors, and they claim that only around of the current population actually believes what the
regime tells them. Oh, that's pretty wild. So we should definitely talk about what's driving that sea change. But before we do, why don't we spend some time on what it's actually like to live in North Korea? All right, Well, first,
let's take a quick break. If you're listening to Part Time Genius and we're talking about the hidden secrets of life and the Hermit Kingdom, all right, mango, So we just discussed the propaganda village that North Korean officials used to try and pretend that all is well in their country, and now we want to give the flip side and talk about what life there is really like. But full disclosure on this I mean, it's not such an easy
thing to do. The North Korean government goes to a lot of trouble to make sure that visiting journalists and curious tourists only see what it wants them to see. And you know, when you add to that that culture of silence that's been cultivated among North Korean citizens, you know, getting that clear picture of what life is like there, it really starts to look impossible. Yeah, that's definitely true.
And I was reading a few accounts from people who have actually visited North Korea, and it was wild to see how controlled the experience is for Western tourists. Like when you first get to the country, you have to temporarily surrender all your personal electronics except for cameras, so cell phones, tablets, laptops, video games, all that gets turned over to border agents and then returned at the end
of your trip. It's not just electronics, like books and magazines are another thing that also got confiscated at the border. I mean, I get that taking all the electronics is a way to prevent visitors from sharing information within the country, but but why would they take away books. I mean, the government isn't just worried about Westerners leaking secrets to
the outside world. They're also worried about tourists sharing information with North Korean's it's in the government's best interest to keep the citizens as clueless as possible when it comes to what they're missing out on, as well as how the rest of the world views their country. I mean,
in that case, I'm surprised they let people keep their cameras. Actually, I mean, the government is also pretty desperate to convince people that North Korea is normal, and I guess coming back from vacation without a single picture kind of undercuts that idea. But photography is still restricted, just like everything else. So tourists are actually a signed state approved tour guides reminders whose job it is to show you, like the authorized sites, they avert your gaze from the stuff you
aren't supposed to see. I had a friend who went to North Korea and was told only to point his camera in certain directions. And these guys really stay on top of you pretty much the whole time, Like they even get their own rooms in whatever hotel you're staying in. I mean, so you basically have a babysitter the whole time you're in the country. There, and are you not
allowed to explore on your own at all? No, your your itinerary has to be completely planned out and improved in advance, and you aren't allowed to deviate from the plan or even leave your hotel without the guide say so. This way, they can be sure that you only see what they want you to see, and there's no chance for you to like wander the countryside, or check out a rural town, or or even investigate how an average
person lives. Instead, you're loaded on these buses and trucked around Pyongyang to all the tourist friendly landmarks and museums and monuments, and and those are the things that the nation's leadership really wants you to see and what they find agreeable. And while you're free to take photos of these attractions once you're on site, you aren't allowed to take pictures during bus rides between locations. And that's just because they don't want any evidence gathering about how poor
and underdeveloped so much of the country is. I'm gonna have to say, this does not sound like a fun vacation. I feel like I'd be stressed out the entire time. I'm curious what kinds of places are allowed on these government approved tours. So one common stuff is called the Grand People's Study House. It's this pagoda style library is at the university in Pyongyang, and it's included on the tour.
Not only is this impressive example of architecture, but also as a way to show how modern North Korean life is. Like there's this massive bank of computer terminals that the guides always point out, but the illusion doesn't always work.
Like I was reading about the one time when all the lights suddenly went out in the library and there was all this panic effort to like kind of say face and get them back on as fast as possible, and for the people visiting, they said it seemed like the electricity was only used when the Westerners were there to see it. It's so creepy and just so strange. And I'm guessing the computers are likely just for show
in that case. But what about the books. I mean, if they confiscate knowledge at the border, I'm guessing the library shelves aren't exactly packed with good stuff. There's supposedly room for about thirty million books, but the actual collection seems to be much smaller than that, and most of us there is propaganda and North Korean literature, But there's also a decent stock of government approved foreign publications, just
nothing too recent. So you can find like a whole shelf of Jane Austin books apparently, but very little from the last fifty years or so of Western literature. Plus you have to get special permission to check out foreign books anyway, Yeah, that's not not surprising. It sounds like a trip to North Korea mostly means a trip to the capital city, But do tours ever get a chance
to visit some of the more rural areas well. It used to be that pyong Young was pretty much the only stop for tourists, but in recent years the guides have been allowed to take visitors to some of the more pleasant parts of the countryside. But even in those cases, you still get the sense that you're part of some elaborate hoax, or that things aren't quite as they appear.
For example, I was reading about this trip on Atlas Obscura and and the author talks about the day when his tour group was bust into one of the rural provinces in the afternoon, and just listen to what happened. Quote, I visited a waterfall one time near case Song, where our group ran into a horde of uniformed school children on a day trip. Nearby, several families sang karaoke and danced beside a barbecue in the woods. It was an idyllic scene until I remember that it was the school holidays.
The families were still there when we left. As we boarded our coach, the only other transportation insight was another bus featuring government issued number plates. It was hard not to conclude that we had been surrounded by actors all afternoon. Yeah, I said, the last thing was creepy, like this gets even creepier and performance art. It's so weird. I mean, it feels like the Twilight Zone episode where everybody has to smile and think happy thoughts or else they'll get
banished to this corn field. But I mean, it really makes me wish we could hear directly from the North Koreans and get a better sense of what they're going through, you know, beyond the tourist perspective here in the meantime that I think we'll have to settle for foreign intelligence
and the word of North Korean defectors. Just as an example of this, I mean, we know that life in Pyongyang and a few other cities is increasingly modern, but the vast majority of North Koreans still lack sick necessities. I mean things like access to heat and clean water, or you know, infrastructure like roads and all of that. I mean, they don't have access to this stuff. Yeah, I mean the roads are especially bad, and according to the CIA, only three percent of North Korea's roads are paved.
So obviously citizens being able to travel freely isn't this top priority for them? In fact, it's estimated that there's only one car for every thousand people in North Korea. And I heard one expert say that owning your own car is pretty much what a private jet is to the ordinary American. Well, and you know, public transportation is available in the more urban areas as ancient and rundown as those busses and trains maybe, but bicycles are actually
the main mode of transportation for most North Koreans. And this is largely thanks to the emergence of gray market trading over the last decade or two, and that finally made bikes more accessible and more affordable. And you know, before they were really viewed as something as a luxury item.
But you know, nothing is easy in North Korea, and I do have to point out that North Korean women have been banned from riding bicycles since I think it was around nine six or so, and this was supposedly done in response to a senior officials daughter being killed in a bike accident, but there have also been statements made by state media about how women on bicycles are quote contrary to socialist morals. So I mean the band is really just this tool of control rather than any
expression or any true concern for these people. Well, speak of control. You know those computer terminals I've mentioned earlier, It turns out that they really can be used for something. So university students, government officials, and citizens who are wealthy enough to own a smartphone are all allowed to access the country's Internet. Did you say in trunnet or internet Internet? So North Korea's online service isn't actually connected to the
Worldwide Web. Instead, they've gotten Internet, which is this self contained private network that grants access to state control media. So users have access to things like email, electronic national library, but they can actually only visit a handful of North Korean websites. And I really do immune a handful. So back in two thousand and sixteen, a list of the country's registered domain names was mistakenly leaked to the actual Internet, and uh, it turns out that there are less than
thirty websites on their wow. But to be fair, you know, those two dozen sites or so do cover a lot of ground, everything from sports and news to food recipes. There's even some obscure type of social media that they use. But again, all this content is strictly regulated by the government, and there's no world news that makes it on there
before being scrubbed. First. You know, when you look at at the population there, the majority of North Koreans live in extreme poverty and they're surviving on an average annual income of I think it's less than eighteen hundred dollars per person by most estimates. So it's not like that many people own a smartphone or the means to travel to a computer with online access exactly. But you won't ever hear the North Korean government own up to any of that. So listen to this statement that I found
on the country's official website. This is what the leadership there would like you to know about their country. Quote the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is a genuine workers state in which all the people are completely liberated from exploitation and oppression. The workers, peasants, soldiers, and intellectuals are the true masters of the destiny and are in a unique position to defend their interests, which is always super convincing.
When someone tells you out of the blue that they aren't being oppressed or exploiting anyone, You know, this is not suspicious at all. Yeah, not at all. Well, I mean, as grim as things look for North Korea, there has been some evidence of progress in recent years, even if it's just a small amount of evidence. But I do think we should wind down the show by looking at a few of those glimmers of hope and and the forces that seem to be spurring them on. Sounds good
to me. But first, let's take another quick break, all right, Mago, So let's talk about a couple of promising changes that are gaining steam in North Korean society right now. Now. One that I was surprised to find is that capitalism is gaining more of a foothold in the country than ever before. So just looking at the numbers here, as of this year, there are roughly four hundred and forty
officially licensed markets in North Korea. Now that's double the amount the country had back in two thousand and ten. And the result of that growth is that, despite international sanctions, the economy and the overall quality of life in North Korea are actually both on the upswing. So, I mean, that's good news for North Koreans, But I'm kind of
stuck on that number of markets you mentioned. What was it like four forty, Like, if the official population is million people, how on earth can they only have like that few hundred grocery stores, right, Like, I mean, where have they been getting their food all this time? Actually?
I wondered that myself and what I found that and this is according to Reuters, roughly sev of all North Korean citizens rely on state controlled food distribution and that's their primary source of food, So not markets or subsistence farming, but actual government handouts. And the existence of such a program really points back to what's always been a major issue for North Korea, and that's the scarcity of food there. Now a lot of that problem can be traced back
to the country's growing conditions. So North Korea has a ton of mountains and honestly, even it's flat terrain is is pretty the rocky and not really well suited for farming. Then you look at the climate there, I mean, the climate is pretty cold, and so it makes the growing season short. And you know, even on a really basic level,
there's a lot working against these North Korean farmers. And so for decades, North Korea has managed to meet its food needs thanks largely to Soviet connections, you know, the ones that the Kim family forged back in the nineteen forties, nineteen fifties. And then you fast forward a bit, the Soviet Union collapses and that just takes down North Korea's
economy and of course their food supply with it. So Russia emerges from the ashes, and it then decides to cut ties with North Korea almost completely, and so they've lost their biggest ally, their biggest trading partner in North Korean's were plunged into the worst famine in the nation's history. Now this was a massive, massive famine. It's estimated to have killed more than two million North Koreans. That's nearly
ten percent of the total population. Now, it was such a disaster that state officials had no choice but to set aside that isolation as stands, and even request international aid for one of the first times in its history. So Ever, since then, food distribution has been handled almost exclusively by the government, and most of what's sold out
is still coming from foreign food aid. But from what I understand, that system doesn't even seem to be working either, right, Like, I read this report that the u N put out last year, and they estimated that around eleven million North Koreans currently suffer from some form of malnutrition. And that's a full fort of the total population and roughly six
of all North Korean children. Yeah, I mean, it's a heartbreaking situation, and the public belief in the government's propaganda campaigns has definitely declined as a direct result of these shortages. When the food went away during the Great Famine in the mid nineties, a lot of the public trust and support went with it and and really just never came back. Yeah.
I mean, it's kind of hard to buy into that glorious utopia you're supposed to be living in when there's nothing to eat, right, But you know, now that you've laid it all out, I can see why those markets you mentioned are such a big deal. I mean, if the country can sustain privately owned markets, that must mean there's enough food to stock them and enough people with money to shop there, right, Like that does sound like
some sort of progress. Yeah, absolutely. I mean there's actually more to celebrate here too, because in addition to those sanctioned markets I mentioned, there are also you know, many more illegal street stalls. And while sanctioned markets have to pay a fee for that right to sell their goods, those pop up stalls allow private citizens to make a
little bit of money without any direct benefit to the government. Now, these stalls are known as grasshopper markets because of how quickly the vendors have to set up and take down
the stalls just to avoid being detected. Really, but the hope is that the ongoing growth of these markets, both legal and illegal, will give rise to a greater feeling of community among North Koreans and kind of a sense that they're individuals that are connected through this shared experience and interest and not just cogs in this authoritarian machine. So I actually found another reason to be hopeful about this budding autonomy that we're starting to see over there.
And you know that gray market network you mentioned, the one that North Koreans are getting their bikes through well. The other big sellers are consumer electronics and personal media,
so we're talking smartphones, tablets, radios, DVDs, USB drives. These are all sold preloaded with content, and more and more of these items are being smuggled in from South Korea and China every single day, and since the North Korean economy is seeing relative growth right now, more people than ever are finding ways to get their hands on this stuff. And so not only is this providing North Koreans with some much needed entertainment, it's also giving them a glimpse
into the world outside their borders. And the more of this information is shared among friends and neighbors, less power are full of the state propaganda becomes yeah, and I feel like that's a good thing for all of us, really, because you know, I don't know if you've heard this or not, Mengo, but North Korea actually has a pretty successful nuclear program going on in there. I feel like it's been in the news a couple of times, but it is easy to forget this, but that nuclear capability
was really a product of North Korea's isolation. So the country was completely shaken by events in the nineteen nineties, you had the Soviet collapse, the Great Famine, all these imposed sanctions, lots of trading partners, I mean, the list goes on and on. But as North Korea began to look more and more like a failed state, foreign intervention
started to seem inevitable. And so the North Korean leadership was terrified that the United States or whoever else was going to swoop in at any moment and just topple the regime and take over. And that really is what led the country to make what's called the nuclear choice. And so they dusted off the nuclear program that had been started under Soviet supervision back in the nineteen fifties, and they really doubled down on the one thing that
was guaranteed to make potential invaders thing twice. Now, that decision for North Korea to go its own way is what allows the country's people to be ruled with such a tight grip. So it is pretty exciting to hear that. You know, there's a growing number of North Koreans that are finding ways to look outward again. And of course nothing is guarantee, they're no quick fixes for our country's problems, but pulling away from that central government and really connecting
more on an individual level. It does seem like a good place to start for, you know, some form of revolution. Well here's hoping. And you know, since we've been talking about how access to food and new technologies have shaken up things in North Korea, I did want to quickly tell you about a story I found that combines both of those things. So for starters, did you know that North Korea got his first ever pizza place back in
two thousand nine? Didn't? Apparently Kim Jong Ill had this lifelong dream of opening a pizzeria in North Korea, and even at a team of Italian chefs slown in back in the Es, they taught some local chefs their pizza making secrets, you know where they were asking these very specific questions like how many olives do you put on a slice? And eventually this led to the opening of
the first North Korean pizza parlor. And you know, being the ever victorious, iron willed commander that he was, Kim Jong Ill came up with the perfect name for this new jewel crown of his restaurant empire. He called it Pizza Restaurant. That is truly inspired. I mean I tell you his creativity knew no about. Yeah, I mean, that's
why he's president for eternity. But anyway, the thing about pizza restaurant is that almost nobody can afford to eat there, Like even a decade later, and with multiple other pizza rios on the scene, the average cost of pies, you know, between five and ten dollars. And while that doesn't sound like much to us, you have to remember that North Koreans make less than two grand a years, so ten bucks is like a serious investment for most people. Yeah, I mean, it really speaks to what a mess their
leaders have made there. I mean, if pizza, of all things, can be a luxury delicacy there. But I mean, now that we're all up to speed on the state of North Korean pizza, well, what's the story you wanted to tell about food and tech? So there's this South Korean artist, his name is Juan Kim, and earlier this year he was in the news for smuggling contraband into North Korea. Al Right, well, let me guess he was somehow smuggling
pizzas across the border or what. No, I mean, that would be great, like across the border, but when he was actually smuggling where five DVDs of a home cooking show he had produced called Pizzas for the People, And it was kind of an act of resistance, meant to make citizens questioned the status quo, because you know, in the middle of all these cooking tips and at home
pizza hacks, you know. Kim also raised the question of why only certain citizens in North Korea can afford to eat pizza, and Atlas Obscura actually explained some of this. They're right quote. Pizzas for the People is a cooking show slash fake documentary series that follows several South Korean actors. The film is intended to be a highly stylized satire of North Korea, where you need to be part of the political elite to eat pizza. But his films also
asked the audience to imagine the unthinkable. What if Northkorea became democratic? What mechanisms will be at play in this transformation, and what will North Koreans do with their new found freedom. That's a pretty cool idea. And is there any word on how the message is being received or is that kind of feedback impossible to know given the state of things there. Yeah, I mean, it's tough to judge the impact long term, but the project is pretty new at
this point. Kim has said that smugglers eventually brought him back some fan mail from North Koreans who would watched the video, and the best part is that many of these fans included photos of themselves posing along with their homemade pizzas. So if nothing else, Kim's videos are giving some people their very first taste of pizza and and that's a win in itself. I think, yeah, and progress is progress, and it feels like you've got to start somewhere.
But well, in our case, I think we should probably in there for today sort of on a positive note and and move into the fact off sounds great. H So. One of the stranger exhibits in North Korea is the International Friendship Exhibition Hall, which houses this massive collection of gifts given to Kim Il sung and Kim John Yelle
by various communists and despotic regimes. And the hall has over a hundred thousand gifts, according to Alice Obscura, including railway cars from Mao and Stalin, a full size bronze tank from the USSR, this jewel encrusted sword, from Ara Fat there's a giant bare head. It's mountain on a pillow. But perhaps the most surprising gift in these halls is
the one that Madeline Albright gave. It's a basketball signed by Michael Jordan's and, as one of the hall guards told a reporter quote, when the general plays with that ball, it proves that he controls the whole world in his hand, just like Jordan's. Yeah, just like alright. Well, one of North Korea's biggest exports is actually giant statues, and this of course makes sense when you consider how invested in
propaganda North Korea is. So the statues, murals, and reliefs in North Korea are all produced by one group known as the Man Sude Art Studio. Now that's been serving Kim's propaganda needs since like nineteen fifty nine, I think, and actually as a staff of over four thousand people. But they also take commissions from dictators and regimes around
the world. That looks like they've produced statues for governments in Benine Chad, Democratic Republic of Congo, I think there were two giant Robert Mugabe is waiting to commemorate his death, and apparently the studio has earned tens of millions of dollars for North Korea through this art. That's fascinating. So one of the more bizarre things to me is how
many tunnels North Korea has had in waiting. There are four quote tunnels of aggression, and they're meant to move thirty thousand soldiers per hour through them to flood into South Korea in the case of war. And these are just the ones that have been discovered, but they lead
right into the country. So for years North Korea had denied they existed entirely, and then once they were forced to admit they've built all these tunnels, they started claiming they were just coal mines and they start rubbing all this black coal dust on the walls masket. Of course, no one was buying it. But what's funny is that nowadays the South has totally taken advantage of these tunnels.
Visitors can actually go on tours from the South Korean side and even visit gift shops along the way before hitting a concrete barrier that they've put up to separate the two countries. Wow. Well, just because they're not totally invested in electricity doesn't mean North Korea doesn't have a bunch of scientists hard at work on doing unbiased research.
So according to a two thousand eleven government study, North Korean scientists discovered that quote China is the happiest nation in the world, followed by North Korea, so their second on the list. Now, weirdly America came in dead last. And how science works that way, I guess once we handed over that Jordan side ball, you know, I guess things are the trigger I think about that. So here's one of the strangest stories I've heard, and it's from courts.
But apparently in two thousand and fourteen, Alessandro Ford was the first foreigner allowed to do a study abroad in North Korea. His dad is a European diplomat and he helped coordinated this whole thing. But Ford's experience was pretty interesting. So according to him, the facilities were totally bare. They had squat toilets and no showers. Everyone bathed communally like Romans. He said. Uh. The dorm also ran out of hot water for two weeks during the winter when it was
frigid cold, so that that was difficult. But he said the students had a lot of interesting insights. Apparently they hate the American government, but they're okay with American people. They just feel like they're merely misled. Um. Most of them think prison camps are just re education camps. And as he put it and made it sound like they'd missed doing their math homework so they have to make
up with some extra classes afterwards. And they're particularly fascinated to learn that some countries don't have compulsory military service. To them, that's totally mind blowing and just completely baffles them. They also have questions on how does home ownership work, because again that's all handed to you by the government. They can't even imagine this. But one thing that's fun to look through is the slogans that North Korean's came up with for the seventieth anniversary of the country back
in two thousand and fifteen. I think they rolled out like three hundred new ones. And here are some of my favorites. As reported by the BBC, let us turn the whole country into a socialist fairyland by the joint operation of the army and the people. That seems like
a great slogan. Let this socialist country resound with the song of Big fish hall and be permeated with fragrant smell of fish and other seasons and then my absolute favorite as good as those where we are the happiest in the world, which of course the government's own study showed was wrong because North Korea is the second in the world. That's a good point. And I think you in this round since you found the one error in their propaganda, and you know it's the only one. Congrat
Thank you so much. And that's it for today's Part Time Genius. Of course, there's so many more great facts about North Korea. We would love to hear those from you guys, and of course if any of our listeners have ever been to North Korea and want to share some of those experiences, you can always reach us part Time Genius at how stuff Works dot com or us up on Facebook or Twitter, or from Gabe, Tristan Mango and me. Thanks so much for listening, Thanks again for listening.
Part Time Genius is a production of How Stuff Works and wouldn't be possible without several brilliant people who do the important things. We couldn't even begin to understand. Christa McNeil does the editing thing. Noel Brown made the theme song and does the mixy mixy sound thing. Jerry Rowland does the exact producer thing. Gabe Bluesier is our lead researcher, with support from the Research Army including Austin Thompson, Nolan Brown and Lucas Adams and Eve. Jeff Cook gets the
show to your ears. Good job, Eves. If you like what you heard, we hope you'll subscribe, And if you really really like what you've heard, maybe you could leave a good review for us. Do we do? We forget Jason? Jason who