North Korea from up end: The self-reliance philosophy

Pyongyang, North Korea – Here is never any doubt the cleanest, the most shipshape and the most controlled verbalize I bear ever visited.

For the length of speed hour here, traffic is gentle and the roads are aloof, even supposing all of them somewhat bumpy.

Pyongyang’s portraits and statues dispute the narrative of an isolated nation flee by three men, all from one family.

The grandfather and the nation’s founder became Kim Il-sung; the father became Kim Jong-il; and the son is the unusual chief, Kim Jong-un, who we had been told is too modest to bear mosaics made of him.

Nonetheless, he’s in every single put on the verbalize-controlled media – on tv and within the newspapers.

In the centre of this metropolis is the tallest landmark, the Juche Tower.

Juche, or « self-reliance », is the governing theory of this nation of 25 million other folks.

All about self-reliance

Our recordsdata explained: It’s now not about self-reliance of the person however as a replacement that individual Koreans must enact all they’ll to originate their nation self-reliant.

For years, North Koreans were told the nuclear programme is one thing that will wait on their nation stable, and that the US is their mortal enemy.

Both are messages that will now need modification as talks come.

Below one of the significant crucial stiffest global sanctions ever imposed, North Koreans snarl juche is the answer.

In the subway, trains inherited from East Germany are rising used.

A handful of novel carriages had been produced in North Korea, including some seats designed ostensibly by Kim Jong-un himself.

It looks the chief takes a order hobby in loads of areas of nationwide lifestyles.

He has made a discuss over with to the principle shoe factory.

Total admire

On the plant producing the Korean nationwide dish kimchi – made of pickled vegetables – we had been told the air-conditioning system became supervised by the supreme chief.

And at an used other folks’s dwelling, we had been told Kim Jong-un became the architect of a staircase.

Such benevolence is of route matched by complete admire.

Kim Jong-un has never granted an viewers to the global media. He has never given an interview.

I purchased about as end as an outsider can fetch to him: I became attending a efficiency of a visiting Chinese language ballet firm in Pyongyang when Kim Jong-un entered the theatre.

The crew clapped persistently – a standing ovation – with cries of « Hooray! Hooray! Hooray! »

The clapping very finest stopped when Kim Jong-un himself signalled with his hands.