Kim Jong-il

We try Muji’s new “communist” suit【Photos】

Minimalist chic or Kim Jong-il cosplay?

Read More

Uniqlo’s new “communist dictator” jacket has Japanese commenters confused and snickering【Photos】

Some say the fashion brand’s springtime outfit looks more like Kim Jong Il cosplay.

Read More

Kim Jong-un Golf: the game where every shot is a hole-in-one

In the online game Kim Jong Golf, players must carefully line up a moving bar in order to pull off the perfect shot. Right on the money? Hole in one! Miss completely? Doesn’t matter. Hole in one! Hang on…

Whether on a snowy mountaintop or rolling fields, players hit every shot with superhuman accuracy and grace. Then again, such things are to be expected when your character is the Glorious Leader.

Read More

Over 3 decades, North Korea paid for full-page propaganda ads in western newspapers

From 1969 to 1997, the North Korean leadership purchased expensive full-page ad space in the most prominent western newspapers, Benjamin R. Young reports for NK News. The ads, which cost anywhere from $3,000 to $10,000, were placed in high-profile publications like The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Guardian.

Read More

North Korean defector describes her crazy escape and adjustment to modern life

Life inside a communist country with a controlling dictator for a leader is not only suffocating and dangerous; it’s also vastly different from life in developed countries elsewhere across the globe.

Joo Yang, who defected from North Korea in 2010, did an “Ask Me Anything” on Reddit Wednesday and explained what it was like to leave the oppressive country and experience life in the outside world.

North Korean defectors have to escape the country covertly. Some of them were basically brainwashed by propaganda growing up — one defector who spoke to UK newspaper The Independent said she was raised to believe that Kim Jong-il was a god who could read her mind.

Yang joined her family in South Korea in 2011. An NGO helped her travel through a “modern-day underground railroad” to escape North Korea.

Here are some of the observations she made about life in North Korea versus life on the outside:

Read More