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Vice Blog

NORTH KOREA, LAND OF NO FRUIT

OK, I normally hate it when blogs do that thing where they just run a bunch of quotes from someone else’s story, but some of the details in this Slate piece by a Chinese-American lady who went on...

OK, I normally hate it when blogs do that thing where they just run a bunch of quotes from someone else’s story, but some of the details in this Slate piece by a Chinese-American lady who went on an investors’ junket to North Korea are mind-bezonkening. Here are my three fav’rites:

Once I walked into a grocery store on the ground floor of a residential building. The store was empty except for three 10-foot-tall heaps on the ground—one of cabbage, one of tomatoes, and one of turnips. There were no price tags and no customers.”

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and…

Pyongyang was a quiet city. There weren’t many vehicles on its wide streets, and rush hour was marked by long queues at bus stops. On three occasions I saw passengers physically pushing their bus until the engine started up again.”

and who could forget…

On one occasion, I drew a banana on a piece of paper and showed it to a waitress; she had never seen one. She knew about apples, but she had never eaten one.”

In light of our own adventures in the hermit kingdom, it’s pretty incredible to think that somebody was actually able to make it off and back on Yanggak Island without sharing cellspace with Lisa Ling’s sister. Then again, I’m guessing the North Koreans are a little more likely to give you a little leeway when they think you’re about to pour money into their coffers versus drag their dirty laundry all over the internet.