Foreign Policy: The Land of No Smiles

Mind-blowing photo essay!

"SHOP GIRL: This is shopping in North Korea. The clerk sits in the dark, unheated special store, waiting to turn on the lights for foreigners, the only permitted customers. “She’s wearing a ski jacket or parka; the rest of this time they’re sitting there with the lights off, freezing,” van Houtryve says. The goods—toys, televisions, and the like—are imported from China. The store only accepts euros."

"When van Houtryve approached North Koreans, they walked off or averted their eyes. He never once photographed a smile. Even children ran away from him. “They’d turn and notice me and immediately bolt off—as if a wolf had come up to them.”

Foreign Policy: The Land of No Smiles

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NEOMEDIEVALISM

"The world is fragmenting, badly. Gird yourself for a new Dark Age."

Nice article by Parag Khanna:

"Many see the global economic crisis as proof that we live in one world. But as countries stumble to right the wrongs of the corporate masters of the universe, they are driving us right back to a future that looks like nothing more than a new Middle Ages, that centuries-long period of amorphous conflict from the fifth to the 15th century when city-states mattered as much as countries."

(more)
Foreign Policy: The Next Big Thing: Neomedievalism