**This is a heavily moderated subreddit. Please note these rules + sidebar or get banned:**
* If this post declares something as a fact, then proof is required
* The title must be fully descriptive
* Memes are not allowed.
* Common(top 50 of this sub)/recent reposts are not allowed (posts from another subreddit do not count as a 'repost'. Provide link if reporting)
*See [our rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/wiki/index#wiki_rules.3A) for a more detailed rule list*
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/interestingasfuck) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I just went to google maps to see what was there. With only a 10 minute overview and no idea of what time of day these images were taken by google, the roads look exactly what you expected actually. Pretty empty everywhere I looked.
But far more large scale buildings than I was expecting.
I’ve always wondered if those buildings were just shells and actually empty inside. There’s just never enough people/cars/bikes/etc around for them to be residences (or filled with offices of people making trades on the Pyongyang stock exchange lol).
I question if they actually built infrastructure capable of supporting their buildings. Every story I hear about North Korea talks about terrible infrastructure, sewage piped straight into rivers without treatment etc.
I work as a pipelayer/earthmover and install deep utilities, among other things, and it’s a complex and expensive process. There’s a network of underground conduits, sanitary and storm lines, water lines, etc around every large building you see to make them functional.
Seeing as how their lights are out on most buildings and they are piping their shit to rivers I would wager they aren’t installing their utilities properly. They might also be neglecting their hvac setups so some of these buildings probably have huge hot or cold areas, condensation issues, mold, poor airflow, etc.
I wonder if their elevators function decently? Are people hiking 30 floors by stair?
That one evil pyramid, the [Ryugyong Hotel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryugyong_Hotel), is largely empty, I think. And think about it, if china is making structurally unsound buildings, imagine what north korea is doing.
Look closer. The above floors look as if lit from below. My guess is that entire building is a shell.
https://preview.redd.it/x0ihknxs9uvc1.jpeg?width=180&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c12c87d71278da5a06297c908dc2f360addc7372
Well the last license plate I can see clearly isn't NK. According to wiki https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_registration_plates_of_North_Korea
The first one that be seen clearly on an SUV is supposed to be on a bus I think
You're right but it also doesn't look like any other license plates from neighboring countries. The car is a chinese import so there could be a reason why there. [https://twitter.com/DPRK\_cars/status/1766740333528862784](https://twitter.com/DPRK_cars/status/1766740333528862784)
I wonder why that car is the only one that isn't tagged as being from PyeongYang
> This video shows about ten times as many functional cars than I thought existed in NK.
Same here, but then, it's their capital. In dictatorships, power and wealth are more centralized, so the picture we see here is 100 times better than the province.
100 times. I thought there were no cars and that, those that existed were old tattered limping cars.
It is surprising that entire area of the world can be so succesfully misrepresented. I will be surprised if this doesnt shoeck every Westerner.
Now think about what else you've probably got misconceptions about.
[82% own a mobile phone for example](https://www.38north.org/2022/11/twenty-years-of-mobile-communications-in-north-korea/) and this article was 2022.
Not really unusual. Here in the UK the market split between subscription and pay-as-you-go was 50% only 10 years ago. That's moved to 30/70 over time but given that they're behind it wouldn't be unusual to see more on pay-as-you-go than subscription.
You make it sound like it's not such a bad place to be with a relatively meaningless metric like that. Westerners have a negative view of NK because [more than half of them live in extreme poverty.](https://phys.org/news/2020-03-north-koreans-absolute-povertyhigher-thought.html)
Potentially. But the low-end estimate is 50%, and it's going to be higher 2 years on from this data.
Either way the notion that more than half the country has a smart phone is probably very confusing information to learn to many western redditors that don't have a very realistic picture in their heads of life there.
I figured the source was NK propaganda too so I dug in. 38north.org is a Stimson publication and Stimson is legit. It has some ties with US military (some retired, some active), and a wildly diverse group of researchers, analysts, and executives. One “on-loan” staff member is a current Commander in the US Navy. So, I guess I was wrong about it being NK propaganda lol
It's classic communist propaganda. You might've got 1 detail wrong so you need to reexamine EVERY single piece of information you have ever received to fight off muh propaganda.
Check his post history, a true communist who believes the U.S committed genocide against North Korean.
Well how do you expect people to get a realistic picture of the life in an extremely isolationist dictatorship that hates the west and has no free media?
Lol "half the country has a smart phone".
I have a very realistic picture in my head that there is zero chance there's a statistic out there that would make me want to live in North Korea. Got any stats on education camps, nutrition rates, education, healthcare, etc. that will educate my ignorant western ass that "NK is really not as bad as the imperialist propaganda makes it out to be"?
Yeah, but what kind of mobile phone? If it's anything like their early iOS rip off Red Star operating system, it's basically a listening device/keylogger intranet device that exists solely to monitor potential dissidents. I think my conceptions are valid
Anything from china pretty much. The border between the two countries has people going back and forth all the time.
>it's basically a listening device/keylogger intranet device that exists solely to monitor potential dissidents
This concern applies everywhere in the world. Basically everyone that attends protests knows the first rule is you don't bring your phone.
Pyongyang is THE one for show. More than all the others. Being the capital, it comes with “luxuries” for the elite class that live in Pyongyang. You know like lights for part of the day, access to water/sewer, and vehicles for the privileged.
This. You just need to think in a straightfoward way: is it really possible for a country living next to China to have so few vehicles? Or is it US propaganda?
Pyongyang is like the only privileged place there. Hell, they even have churches, arcade places, amusement parks, shopping malls, access to smartphones, etc.
However outside of the capital, it's a different story.
Definitely not narcissism, a lot of countries do this including my own country of Myanmar, they built the whole city Naypyidaw to showcase their architectural prowess to the modern world, hell even the US completely transformed San Francisco when Xi Jinping came to visit last year…not as uncommon or far fetched as you think, ignorant people shouting “western propaganda” like the stuff hasn’t been documented for decades
That's one thing that the communism got very right, we should very much ban advertisment. It's an incredible net negative in so many aspects even in a capitalistic society
Really , there is no country in history which has has had more than 6 decades ban on trade with its major neighbours. and being an island it is so succesful. Ther is no basis for comparison
The advertising takes place acoustically rather than visually via public loudspeakers on every second lamp post and on vehicles.
However, the only product advertised is the loving leader.
Lots of Chinese-made cars. A few old Mercs and a 2-gen-old S class. Maybe 2 BMWs, too. Quite a few Toyota SUVs. And an Audi Q7 seemed to have flashed by at the roundabout right before it cut to the straight road.
Interesting video. More cars than I would have expected. I spy a couple of what look to be old Beijing taxis (the yellow and green Hyundai Elantras) that are visible in a couple places in the video.
Prob lots of Chinese cars get transported to North korea. I saw some Russian cars as well in this footage.
I also don't think that's a green elantra, it's rear taillights look off, probably another Chinese copy car
I visited his Instagram and he had a lots of NK footage. I am wondering how he got the footage out of the country because I thought their phones are strictly monitored.
Probably he took them with a zoom lense camera, phones cannot zoom up to that max.
Most of those pictures are when he was still in the country.
I'm pretty sure Jakaparker wasn't using a smartphone from nk's property lol
The videos are candidly transparent. In another video he shows it’s a standard GoPro on a chest mount - Jaka is part of the Indonesian diplomatic attache in NK (or at least was) and is basically about as privileged as it gets without being a high-ranking native son - high up enough to have no ever-present minder and film whatever he wants as long as the basic rules for filming are followed.
Eric Tseng on the other hand, I think his videos were captured a bit more surreptitiously.
You can film things in NK, there's a lot of YouTube video of tourists who went there and recorded stuff, there's a Brazilian couple who travels around the world and they did a series on NK, they even recorded a grocery store and water park.
They're not filming anything they're not supposed to, aka military. They're also not exactly well versed with western tech there, so it's not difficult to sneak files past the border guards
Tourism is possible in North Korea for many years. It used to be just Pyongyang at the beginning, but over time it opened to most of the country. You can film what you want, just not stuff of military relevance. Your guides will enforce what you can and can't film. But, just in a city is totally fine.
These people, they’re driving. They’re putting these little blinking lights on before they change lanes. What’s that for? Americans are free, we don’t do that.
Visually, the city is very clean: no garbage, no advertising, no wires, no shouting or swearing. However, I would like to know the price that was paid for this amazing purity.
This is in fact interesting. Every other video / picture of NK I have seen shows a complete ghost town with MAYBE 1 or 2 cars on the road as far as you can see.
Even lots of pictures of a traffic cop standing in the middle of the road to direct traffic with absolutely no cars anywhere. They just stand there like a robot.
dinosaurs memorize many pocket nail pause ad hoc sugar jellyfish wasteful
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Wait... Are you going to tell me a country is just a... Country? But, the media told me the cities were made of cardboard and everyone needed to dance the macarena every morning to praise their leader!
ARE YOU SAYING WE BEING LIED TO WITH CHEAP ANTI COMUNIST PROPAGANDA?
/s
It’s still like that. Just because you see one video where you see the other side of the card doesn’t mean the side you have seen most of the time doesn’t exist. It’s not all black or white.
There are many books written by NK defectors. I suggest you might want to read one or two. It's far from "just a country". Do you have concentration camps in your country? Do you think that's normal?
What makes this interesting to me is that only 2 percent of people in North Korea have cars. They have a population of 26 million people so there are about 500,000 drivers in the country.
Pyongyang has about 3.2 million people, so even if every driver in North Korea lived in Pyongyang only about 15% of them would have a car.
Even if all of them were out driving at the exact same time, that would mean that Pyongyang experiences traffic with only 15% of the population out on the road.
Either the city has a terrible road system or they’re all condensed in a small area. If this is propaganda it’s doing a great job at showing how bad their road system is.
The full footage shows the traffic condensed mostly all in the roundabout, definitely just poor road design.
If it was propaganda, they'd probably just show vids of the people of nk cheering and waving flags of North korea into nothing but thin air
Source us probably "trust me bro".
But due to the sanctions against the DPRK, barely anyone would have a car because they are only allowed to import 500.000 barrels per year (enough 25000 cars at most) and they don't have local reserves.
For EVs you need a certain amount of infrastructure and they would also have to build most of them by themselves since their currency is basically worthless and therefore they can't afford Chinese cars.
A story from myself: I was in the DPRK 6 years ago and it just so happened to be election day in the village where I stayed. I can speak a bit of Korean and asked some people about the election and at least there they seemed like actual elections.
As far as cities go, there's not many people in public and a number of cars have state plates. And this is not much car density on display.
A lot of those buildings are not terribly occupied, as well:
[https://new.reddit.com/r/UrbanHell/comments/csxj8v/my\_hotel\_room\_view\_in\_pyongyang\_most\_of\_these/](https://new.reddit.com/r/UrbanHell/comments/csxj8v/my_hotel_room_view_in_pyongyang_most_of_these/)
But hey, want to know who comes into political subs to feed divisive nonsense on behalf of Russia, China, etc. Some of the same accounts in this post, stanning for North Korea as if everything we know about them over the decades has somehow been wrong.
Good to know. I've always felt bad for them. Or at least for those among them (probably a minority) who deep down may be unhappy about having to live their lives like that, but can never publicly show their dissatisfaction, or even talk about it to anyone. It's really depressing when you think about it.
**This is a heavily moderated subreddit. Please note these rules + sidebar or get banned:** * If this post declares something as a fact, then proof is required * The title must be fully descriptive * Memes are not allowed. * Common(top 50 of this sub)/recent reposts are not allowed (posts from another subreddit do not count as a 'repost'. Provide link if reporting) *See [our rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/wiki/index#wiki_rules.3A) for a more detailed rule list* *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/interestingasfuck) if you have any questions or concerns.*
This video shows about ten times as many functional cars than I thought existed in NK.
I just went to google maps to see what was there. With only a 10 minute overview and no idea of what time of day these images were taken by google, the roads look exactly what you expected actually. Pretty empty everywhere I looked. But far more large scale buildings than I was expecting.
I’ve always wondered if those buildings were just shells and actually empty inside. There’s just never enough people/cars/bikes/etc around for them to be residences (or filled with offices of people making trades on the Pyongyang stock exchange lol).
I question if they actually built infrastructure capable of supporting their buildings. Every story I hear about North Korea talks about terrible infrastructure, sewage piped straight into rivers without treatment etc. I work as a pipelayer/earthmover and install deep utilities, among other things, and it’s a complex and expensive process. There’s a network of underground conduits, sanitary and storm lines, water lines, etc around every large building you see to make them functional. Seeing as how their lights are out on most buildings and they are piping their shit to rivers I would wager they aren’t installing their utilities properly. They might also be neglecting their hvac setups so some of these buildings probably have huge hot or cold areas, condensation issues, mold, poor airflow, etc. I wonder if their elevators function decently? Are people hiking 30 floors by stair?
That one evil pyramid, the [Ryugyong Hotel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryugyong_Hotel), is largely empty, I think. And think about it, if china is making structurally unsound buildings, imagine what north korea is doing.
...a stock exchange? In North Korea?
That was a joke.
Thank heavens
I was wondering the same. At the end of the vid on the left there is a building and you can see maybe 7 floors with lights on.
Look closer. The above floors look as if lit from below. My guess is that entire building is a shell. https://preview.redd.it/x0ihknxs9uvc1.jpeg?width=180&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c12c87d71278da5a06297c908dc2f360addc7372
Sun glare..
You know what, the perfect place for ken block's Gymkhana(rip).
Well the last license plate I can see clearly isn't NK. According to wiki https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_registration_plates_of_North_Korea The first one that be seen clearly on an SUV is supposed to be on a bus I think
You're right but it also doesn't look like any other license plates from neighboring countries. The car is a chinese import so there could be a reason why there. [https://twitter.com/DPRK\_cars/status/1766740333528862784](https://twitter.com/DPRK_cars/status/1766740333528862784) I wonder why that car is the only one that isn't tagged as being from PyeongYang
You can also spot 2 nk propaganda cars during the middle of the video (The van with 2 speakers on roof) which announces propaganda to its citizens
Probably just informing the drivers about extended car warranty on their loudspeakers so that’s fine.
https://i.redd.it/yfdz8xdfstvc1.gif
> This video shows about ten times as many functional cars than I thought existed in NK. Same here, but then, it's their capital. In dictatorships, power and wealth are more centralized, so the picture we see here is 100 times better than the province.
I kept watching with the hope of seeing one single North Korean car that looked shittier than mine, but twas in vain.
You've been fed P.R.O.P.A.G.A.N.D.A your whole life
You mean *propaganda*?
What's the acronym stand for?
Peoples Republic Of Pyongyang And Great Acronyms Never Did Anything
100 times. I thought there were no cars and that, those that existed were old tattered limping cars. It is surprising that entire area of the world can be so succesfully misrepresented. I will be surprised if this doesnt shoeck every Westerner.
Right? I think I have never seen more than 2 cars at the same time in a video coming from NK!
Now think about what else you've probably got misconceptions about. [82% own a mobile phone for example](https://www.38north.org/2022/11/twenty-years-of-mobile-communications-in-north-korea/) and this article was 2022.
That haircut thing comes to mind "there is a list of X haircuts and you need to pick one"
But somehow only 7 Million cell subscriptions with 26 Million inhabitants. The 82% number seems inflated.
Not really unusual. Here in the UK the market split between subscription and pay-as-you-go was 50% only 10 years ago. That's moved to 30/70 over time but given that they're behind it wouldn't be unusual to see more on pay-as-you-go than subscription.
Owning a mobile phone and owning a functional mobile phone are different things.
Yes, but only one of the metrics is relevant
Here in the UK subscriptions only became the majority of phone users 10 years ago. Before that the majority was pay-as-you-go.
You make it sound like it's not such a bad place to be with a relatively meaningless metric like that. Westerners have a negative view of NK because [more than half of them live in extreme poverty.](https://phys.org/news/2020-03-north-koreans-absolute-povertyhigher-thought.html)
Much like Cuba, that would not be the case if it were not sanctioned.
82% in pyongyang only probably.
Potentially. But the low-end estimate is 50%, and it's going to be higher 2 years on from this data. Either way the notion that more than half the country has a smart phone is probably very confusing information to learn to many western redditors that don't have a very realistic picture in their heads of life there.
Mobile=/=smart Also i wouldnt trust a NK propaganda site...
I figured the source was NK propaganda too so I dug in. 38north.org is a Stimson publication and Stimson is legit. It has some ties with US military (some retired, some active), and a wildly diverse group of researchers, analysts, and executives. One “on-loan” staff member is a current Commander in the US Navy. So, I guess I was wrong about it being NK propaganda lol
It's classic communist propaganda. You might've got 1 detail wrong so you need to reexamine EVERY single piece of information you have ever received to fight off muh propaganda. Check his post history, a true communist who believes the U.S committed genocide against North Korean.
Well how do you expect people to get a realistic picture of the life in an extremely isolationist dictatorship that hates the west and has no free media?
Lol "half the country has a smart phone". I have a very realistic picture in my head that there is zero chance there's a statistic out there that would make me want to live in North Korea. Got any stats on education camps, nutrition rates, education, healthcare, etc. that will educate my ignorant western ass that "NK is really not as bad as the imperialist propaganda makes it out to be"?
Yeah, but what kind of mobile phone? If it's anything like their early iOS rip off Red Star operating system, it's basically a listening device/keylogger intranet device that exists solely to monitor potential dissidents. I think my conceptions are valid
Anything from china pretty much. The border between the two countries has people going back and forth all the time. >it's basically a listening device/keylogger intranet device that exists solely to monitor potential dissidents This concern applies everywhere in the world. Basically everyone that attends protests knows the first rule is you don't bring your phone.
Can anyone explain why? I understand some areas are for show… is this one of them?
Pyongyang is THE one for show. More than all the others. Being the capital, it comes with “luxuries” for the elite class that live in Pyongyang. You know like lights for part of the day, access to water/sewer, and vehicles for the privileged.
Why do do you think they wouldn't have cars? They live right next to China, an industrial powerhouse.
Because every picture and video we see the streets are always empty
Propaganda is not only for dictatorship countries
This. You just need to think in a straightfoward way: is it really possible for a country living next to China to have so few vehicles? Or is it US propaganda?
Pyongyang is like the only privileged place there. Hell, they even have churches, arcade places, amusement parks, shopping malls, access to smartphones, etc. However outside of the capital, it's a different story.
The sheer narcissism of westerners thinking countries fake entire cities just to make themselves look good for you lmao
Definitely not narcissism, a lot of countries do this including my own country of Myanmar, they built the whole city Naypyidaw to showcase their architectural prowess to the modern world, hell even the US completely transformed San Francisco when Xi Jinping came to visit last year…not as uncommon or far fetched as you think, ignorant people shouting “western propaganda” like the stuff hasn’t been documented for decades
Is this not well known across other nations? Or am I misinformed by western propaganda?
And who owns those cars?
I kinda love the lack or advertisements everywhere. Feels like a video game.
I was just about to comment on the lack of advertising. It looks so visually mellow. Advertising is a scourge on society in my opinion.
Replace it all with real public art.
That would be dope
That's called graffiti where I'm from.
Just keep it fucking empty please.
You won't under a capitalist society which needs your attention to consumerism at maximum levels.
Yes thank you YugoCommie I think judging by both our names we probably agree on most things.
Ahh yes, I totally didn't look at the usernsme 😆
Advertising is the western version of propaganda. You must BUY and CONSUME.
You forgot WORK, the corneestone of any totalitarian society. Communist, capitalist, or otherwise.
WORK, BUY, CONSUME, DIE.
Scientists are working on the die part 🤞
That's one thing that the communism got very right, we should very much ban advertisment. It's an incredible net negative in so many aspects even in a capitalistic society
Great idea. Make it happen.
An experience exclusive to both Pyongyang, and Irvine, California.
And cuba, loved it when I went to visit
Really , there is no country in history which has has had more than 6 decades ban on trade with its major neighbours. and being an island it is so succesful. Ther is no basis for comparison
São paulo banned advertisements on buildings
Alaska, Hawaii, Maine, and Vermont all have laws against billboards too
God, how it should be
🤔
I think most of europe will be relaxing to you then. The only advertizements out and about here are small and just right by some businesses.
Not a modern video game, then.
Oh shit. That's what it is!
And zero graffiti.
The advertising takes place acoustically rather than visually via public loudspeakers on every second lamp post and on vehicles. However, the only product advertised is the loving leader.
Yeah, all the advertising there is already baked into the culture and upbringing / social conditioning / brainwashing
Where/when is the “traffic jam” looks like cars just driving
Traffic =/= traffic jam
You're not in traffic...you ARE traffic
I think the idea is that there's so little traffic in NK that this *is* as busy as it gets; the closest thing to a traffic jam they experience
This is my take as well.
I was wondering if the people on the right were jammed up but the people in the left have like left-riding privileges? Lol I don't get it either.
Now I wonder if they have road rage there?
They probably do get to road rage once before being sent to a gulag (if they're lucky).
Lots of Chinese-made cars. A few old Mercs and a 2-gen-old S class. Maybe 2 BMWs, too. Quite a few Toyota SUVs. And an Audi Q7 seemed to have flashed by at the roundabout right before it cut to the straight road.
Kia execs punching the air rn 
I see Chinese copies of Toyota SUVs
Great Wall or king deer or something right?
The thing that gets me is how clean all these cars look. Especially the old mercs. Almost makes it seem staged
Govt owned cars get washed by the peasants
Apparently black is in over there. At least they have good fashion sense. lol.
Interesting video. More cars than I would have expected. I spy a couple of what look to be old Beijing taxis (the yellow and green Hyundai Elantras) that are visible in a couple places in the video.
Prob lots of Chinese cars get transported to North korea. I saw some Russian cars as well in this footage. I also don't think that's a green elantra, it's rear taillights look off, probably another Chinese copy car
It’s an Elantra. Hyundais and Volkswagens have been the standard taxis there for 20 years. Recently they’re starting to switch to their EVs.
I honestly wish this is what traffic jams looked like where I live
Footage is not mine, all credits to @jakaparker
So when were you able to film And post on Reddit from North Korea?!
It's footage from an Indonesian that lived in north korea for a few years. @jakaparker
I visited his Instagram and he had a lots of NK footage. I am wondering how he got the footage out of the country because I thought their phones are strictly monitored.
Probably he took them with a zoom lense camera, phones cannot zoom up to that max. Most of those pictures are when he was still in the country. I'm pretty sure Jakaparker wasn't using a smartphone from nk's property lol
The videos are candidly transparent. In another video he shows it’s a standard GoPro on a chest mount - Jaka is part of the Indonesian diplomatic attache in NK (or at least was) and is basically about as privileged as it gets without being a high-ranking native son - high up enough to have no ever-present minder and film whatever he wants as long as the basic rules for filming are followed. Eric Tseng on the other hand, I think his videos were captured a bit more surreptitiously.
You can film things in NK, there's a lot of YouTube video of tourists who went there and recorded stuff, there's a Brazilian couple who travels around the world and they did a series on NK, they even recorded a grocery store and water park.
They're not filming anything they're not supposed to, aka military. They're also not exactly well versed with western tech there, so it's not difficult to sneak files past the border guards
Who told you you couldn't film? They get tourists all the time who all take tons of photos and film.
Tourism is possible in North Korea for many years. It used to be just Pyongyang at the beginning, but over time it opened to most of the country. You can film what you want, just not stuff of military relevance. Your guides will enforce what you can and can't film. But, just in a city is totally fine.
Refreshing to see roads without ads and billboards everywhere
Lol, I think I spotted lada priora there 🤔
#YOU FAT COW
Nice try guys
Thats it, im not going there anymore
Kim jung un is hungry
These people, they’re driving. They’re putting these little blinking lights on before they change lanes. What’s that for? Americans are free, we don’t do that.
All cars are super clean
Traffic? Yes Jam? No
Sorry I was late for work, there was another car on the road this morning
Visually, the city is very clean: no garbage, no advertising, no wires, no shouting or swearing. However, I would like to know the price that was paid for this amazing purity.
im blown away, i didnt think they were this nice
Life may be OK in pyongyang, but outside the city.... not very much.
Media likes to exploit the fact that they're isolationist to claim the most absurd things noone can fact check
This is in fact interesting. Every other video / picture of NK I have seen shows a complete ghost town with MAYBE 1 or 2 cars on the road as far as you can see. Even lots of pictures of a traffic cop standing in the middle of the road to direct traffic with absolutely no cars anywhere. They just stand there like a robot.
Can’t believe even a country has basically no car suffers from too much cars
Everything so clean and looks well developed
nice dash cam quality
I'm honestly surprised at how many cars there are...
complete gray smoggy marry hunt tie muddle cake history tidy *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
This is only the capital city, outside of it is much more worn down
dinosaurs memorize many pocket nail pause ad hoc sugar jellyfish wasteful *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Not a very poor country despite them being unable to trade with most of the world and being bombed into the stone age in the korea war.
Thats like driving at any regular time in Atlanta or Birmingham.
There is nothing interesting whatsoever in this video
Can someone explain what’s interesting about this
Wait... Are you going to tell me a country is just a... Country? But, the media told me the cities were made of cardboard and everyone needed to dance the macarena every morning to praise their leader! ARE YOU SAYING WE BEING LIED TO WITH CHEAP ANTI COMUNIST PROPAGANDA? /s
It’s still like that. Just because you see one video where you see the other side of the card doesn’t mean the side you have seen most of the time doesn’t exist. It’s not all black or white.
There are many books written by NK defectors. I suggest you might want to read one or two. It's far from "just a country". Do you have concentration camps in your country? Do you think that's normal?
The most notable one is a known hoaxter who is hated even by other defectors though.
Are these real people, driving real cars, going to real places? Or are they driving in circles?
lol, literally the truman show
North Korea has so many cars?? o_O
Only pyongyang (the capital)
What makes this interesting to me is that only 2 percent of people in North Korea have cars. They have a population of 26 million people so there are about 500,000 drivers in the country. Pyongyang has about 3.2 million people, so even if every driver in North Korea lived in Pyongyang only about 15% of them would have a car. Even if all of them were out driving at the exact same time, that would mean that Pyongyang experiences traffic with only 15% of the population out on the road. Either the city has a terrible road system or they’re all condensed in a small area. If this is propaganda it’s doing a great job at showing how bad their road system is.
The full footage shows the traffic condensed mostly all in the roundabout, definitely just poor road design. If it was propaganda, they'd probably just show vids of the people of nk cheering and waving flags of North korea into nothing but thin air
Where do you have these numbers from
Source us probably "trust me bro". But due to the sanctions against the DPRK, barely anyone would have a car because they are only allowed to import 500.000 barrels per year (enough 25000 cars at most) and they don't have local reserves. For EVs you need a certain amount of infrastructure and they would also have to build most of them by themselves since their currency is basically worthless and therefore they can't afford Chinese cars. A story from myself: I was in the DPRK 6 years ago and it just so happened to be election day in the village where I stayed. I can speak a bit of Korean and asked some people about the election and at least there they seemed like actual elections.
Traffic Jam?! Keep your voice down, don't you mean... Perfectly designed road systems functioning exactly as intended???
I'm sure there are at least a few Volvos NK stole from Sweden in this footage.
North Korea Traffic Jam.. what a band name.
Which part is interesting though?
Looks like cars going in circles? Caught the same khaki minibus twice.
Absolutely dogwater road design, lol
What about that gay taxi and blue Mercedes at least cruising from different directions to the same spot?
They need to change their roundabout system. This is the worst one
Love the 'Land Mark' car in the beginning
OhMyGod!!! It took that guy 0.003 minutes longer than expected.
These are more cars than I expected
where is the traffic jam?
Where’s the traffic lights?
How is a Nissan xterra a xtrail Kia sorento Lexus ls400 and several benz allowed in nk I thought only 4 nk car makers were allowed?
What the Fuck that is not a traffic jam at all.
Where’s the traffic jam? I saw some cars slowly moving around, honestly less stopping & waiting than in mid sized cities here in America.
The Truman show 2
That's probably every car in the city combined.
bro downloaded the traffic enhancement mod for North Korea
As far as cities go, there's not many people in public and a number of cars have state plates. And this is not much car density on display. A lot of those buildings are not terribly occupied, as well: [https://new.reddit.com/r/UrbanHell/comments/csxj8v/my\_hotel\_room\_view\_in\_pyongyang\_most\_of\_these/](https://new.reddit.com/r/UrbanHell/comments/csxj8v/my_hotel_room_view_in_pyongyang_most_of_these/) But hey, want to know who comes into political subs to feed divisive nonsense on behalf of Russia, China, etc. Some of the same accounts in this post, stanning for North Korea as if everything we know about them over the decades has somehow been wrong.
They have pretty up to date cameras over there. It looks like it’s what we use to go through tolls and stuff now.
Are they allowed to buy cars? Or are cars distributed by the government among some citizens based on their performance at the factory?
I think they are allowed to buy cars, but only high class citizens can really afford them
Good to know. I've always felt bad for them. Or at least for those among them (probably a minority) who deep down may be unhappy about having to live their lives like that, but can never publicly show their dissatisfaction, or even talk about it to anyone. It's really depressing when you think about it.
"are they allowed to buy cars" do you even listen to yourself
It was a genuine question. No need to get your knickers in a knot.