North Korea v. South Korea: A Story in Pictures
Emily Esfahani Smith, Ed. ·
Nov 23, 2010 at 8:23am
Mollie has alerted us to the grave and dark news coming in from the Korean peninsula, and I just received an email on this matter from Peter, who is recording the podcast at this very moment with Rob Long, James Lileks and Amb. John Bolton. Peter tells me they're discussing these satellite images of North Korea and South Korea below. Notice that North Korea is totally dark, while South Korea is all lit up. Can there be a more symbolic representation of the gloomy consequences of Communism?
Stay tuned for the podcast, which should be going up very soon.
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Jul '10
Re: North Korea v. South Korea: A Story in Pictures
".... a thousand words."
Re: North Korea v. South Korea: A Story in Pictures
Truly.
One word in particular comes to mind: horrifying--how horrifying it must be for the people of North Korea.
Sep '10
Re: North Korea v. South Korea: A Story in Pictures
Obviously they just had the wrong group of leaders in the North. This proves nothing.
Jul '10
Re: North Korea v. South Korea: A Story in Pictures
Great point, Fan. Consider the North "organized."
Re: North Korea v. South Korea: A Story in Pictures
yeah, yeah, yeah...
: )
Aug '10
Re: North Korea v. South Korea: A Story in Pictures
They need a new government program, for pity's sake! We'll call it Light Care.
Jul '10
Re: North Korea v. South Korea: A Story in Pictures
I hear the EPA is looking into how the North successfully eliminated "light pollution."
Feb '10
Re: North Korea v. South Korea: A Story in Pictures
If there is any doubt in anyone's mind about the consequences of the form of government a nation has, this is the perfect (and tragic) test case. The differences between north and south are not cultural, nor linguistic, nor due to starting out with different resources or wealth. A single nation, culture and people divided into an experiment and a control group. Anyone care to dispute the obvious conclusion?
May '10
Re: North Korea v. South Korea: A Story in Pictures
Quite ominous, really, to think about what is lurking in that darkness. Like the old maps, we need to label that emptiness, "Here be monsters".
Oct '10
Re: North Korea v. South Korea: A Story in Pictures
What you’re seeing is the successful result of years of the North trying to go “green”. They’ve gone beyond banning incandescent bulbs to the point of not using light bulbs at all. We’re still groping our way to their enlightened (unenlightened?) environmental practices.
Aug '10
Re: North Korea v. South Korea: A Story in Pictures
Exactly right. Well stated.
Oct '10
Re: North Korea v. South Korea: A Story in Pictures
Lisa Ling did a National Geographic documentary on life in North Korea called Inside North Korea, which is still up at YouTube. It is 46mins long, but it gives you an idea about how oppressive life is in that country.
Nov '10
Re: North Korea v. South Korea: A Story in Pictures
After 60 years of Marxist-mandated malnutrition, the average North Korean is now six inches shorter than the average South Korean. Perhaps that little statistic will "prove" something to you.
Sep '10
Re: North Korea v. South Korea: A Story in Pictures
Lady Kurobara
Perhaps that little statistic will "prove" something to you. · Nov 23 at 1:43pm
Rest assured my post was made in jest.
Aug '10
Re: North Korea v. South Korea: A Story in Pictures
As the podcast gang pointed out, Pyongyang has broad boulevards with virtually no traffic. If you're interested, they're visible in Google Earth. Even with six lanes to play with, you'll be lucky to find two vehicles per block. And it's like this in all the imagery from various dates, so it's not as though they just happened to snap the recon photo at 5:00am on a summer Sunday morning.
This isn't really characteristic of Communism: you look at other Communist cities--Havana, Beijing, Hanoi, Moscow--and they're as bustling with activity as any capitalist metropolis, as far as one can see from thousands of feet above. But North Korea is way beyond Communism: it can rightly claim the title of the Most Horrible Place on Earth. At least for human habitation--the cockroaches probably don't notice much difference, and the squirrels can make it across those wide boulevards in relative safety, being more likely to be bagged as wild game than squashed by a bus.
I wonder about the sanity of the ruling class. Even with their servants and opulent living quarters, they still have to live surrounded by this wasteland.
Aug '10
Re: North Korea v. South Korea: A Story in Pictures
We look at those photos and we see a human catastrophe.
Environmentalists look at those photos and see a prescription for saving the planet.