(#12) They Take American Tourists to a Museum Extoling the Virtues of Dead Americans
The "Victorious Fatherland Liberation War Museum" is a hub of North Korean tourism, and numerous American tourists have been taken there. This is ironic, given that it's essentially a celebration of killing US troops.
A gigantic Pyongyang monument to the DPRK "victory" over the corrupt UN in 1953 (which never actually happened), the museum bursts at the seams with war ephemera, including captured American guns, pieces of shot down planes and knocked out tanks, statues, and a captured US ship.
A DPRK soldier acts as a guide, pumping out regime propaganda about evil westerners. Most disturbingly, it's full of rooms of life-size murals and dioramas showing heaps of dead Americans being eaten by vultures. Again, all of this is gleefully shown to Americans, without a thought to hurt feelings.(#10) They Built a Giant Luxury Hotel and Never Opened It
North Korea is all about appearances. How do you make it appear your country is way more prosperous than it really is? Build a huge luxury hotel in your capital that nobody can miss. Shaped like a giant rocket, the Ryugyong Hotel has 105 stories, is the 49th tallest building in the world, would have anywhere between three to seven thousand rooms, and five revolving restaurants.
But it's never had a guest stay in it, because it was never finished. Economic problems caused by the fall of the Soviet Union, combined with a complete lack of funds, left the tower unfinished. It sat as a concrete shell for over a decade, and rumors abounded of the concrete being shoddy and the elevators crooked. Construction has started and stopped several times, and it's currently being re-purposed into a "mixed-use" building.(#5) They Once Nearly Went to War Over a Tree Stump
The "Axe Murder Incident" of 1976 started as a simple operation and nearly turned into a shooting war. UN Checkpoint 3 had been the site of numerous North Korean attempts to kidnap US troops. But the view of it was partially blocked by a tree, so US troop went out to cut it down. They were ambushed by North Korean troops, who claimed the tree had been personally planted by Kim Il Sung. They attacked the lightly armed US troops with axes, killing two.
The US responded by mobilizing massive force to remove the tree, sending hundreds of soldiers armed with machine guns and rocket launchers, moving tanks and attack helicopters into attack positions, and putting every American soldier in South Korea on alert. The tree was cut down without incident, but two North Korean observation posts were vandalized and the stump was left as a reminder of UN power.(#1) They Attacked South Korea with Poop Balloons
The 2016 "hydrogen bomb" test by North Korea prompted a salvo of propaganda balloons floated over the DMZ by the South. The North responded with their own fusillade of balloons, but these weren't filled with just propaganda, but with garbage. As in actual garbage, including cigarette butts and used toilet paper.
When they popped over South Korea, their human waste-covered messaged floated down to earth. South Korean authorities were concerned it was some sort of biomedical attack, but it turned out to just be crappy propaganda.(#8) Tourists Have Minders - And Tourist Minders Have Minders
If you do go to North Korea as a tourist, be prepared to have two state-appointed minders shadow you the entire time. They'll tell you who you can talk to, where you can go, what to do and - more importantly - what to never, ever do.
Why two minders? So the minders can watch each other, naturally. The DMZ works the same way, where one border guard actually faces inward - to watch the other border guards.(#2) They Published a Letter From "Abraham Lincoln" to Obama
It's common for the North to throw operatic insults at the military and diplomatic skill of both South Korea and the US. In April 2016, they went one step further, conjuring a letter from deceased 16th president Abraham Lincoln to President Obama. The "Lincoln letter" was published on the internal state-run website DPRK Today, and was titled "Advice from Lincoln to Obama."
Concern trolling Obama by saying that it looks like he has "a lot on his mind," the letter scolds him and the US for not reducing their nuclear weapons stockpile, while simultaneously demanding the DPRK reduce theirs. "Lincoln" even throws himself under the bus, saying the American people won't stand to be deceived the way he did back in the day.
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About This Tool
North Korea is still a country with a relatively closed regime. For decades, it has seldom interacted with other countries. The outside world knows little about it, people can only speculate based on various public news reports or the observations of a few travelers. Even travelers cannot communicate with too many locals, foreign tourists come into contact with are mainly tour guides, drivers and hotel attendants, etc.
Do you want to travel to North Korea one day? It is a chance to know some weird truths about North Korea, the random tool collected these 16 stories from the Internet.
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