ALEX HOBAN
The Third Korea
Most people get it now that Korea is split in two: one half is evil while the other makes great flat screen TVs.
The Croatian Tattooed Grandma Cult
That little girl in the middle there is Tea Turalija. She grew up in Bosnia and Herzegovina surrounded by tattooed women. Every day she would plant kisses on her great grandmother's hands, thinking nothing of the etchings on her arms.
Tsunami Ground Zero
I used to live out in Japan and have a friend in Sendai who was caught up in the mind-blowing destruction caused by last week's earthquake. When she got in touch to let me know she was safe, she pointed me in the direction of Aika and Jesse Ortiz.
Youth Cults in Nonexistent Countries
We were in Transnistria, the unacknowledged Soviet State that claims it's a country, sandwiched between Ukraine and Moldova.
The Country That Doesn't Exist
Out on the fringes of the former USSR, in one little pocket of Eastern Europe, the trauma of the Soviet Empire's collapse has never quite been shaken off.
Abandoned Japanese Islands and Beyond
If you've been reading Viceland for a while, you'll remember the absurdly popular blog that Alex Hoban wrote about Battleship Island, the abandoned island of high rise buildings which was once the most densely populated place on earth.
Chairman Mao's Underground City
In 1969, Chairman Mao commanded the construction of a second Beijing beneath the surface of the original city, designed to accommodate all six million of its then inhabitants so that if nuclear war did kick off, folk would still have somewhere to hang...
SEOUL'S JUMBO HUNK OF JUNK
One afternoon in Seoul, while bored and looking for anything to occupy my time, a guy I’d met a few days earlier told me he’d heard a rumour that a giant Boeing 747 had been dumped inexplicably on the doorstep of a housing complex out in the suburbs...