Here is a quick video with my thoughts on some differences between my expectations of North Korea (and those of everyone I know who visited) and experiences. I’m on the avenue between the Foreign language bookshop and Kim Il Sung Square. You’ll see Kiwi Tom being silly in the background (he does stand-up comedy, among other things) and the usual desolate, sparsely populated city. Here I shake hands with a[…] Keep reading →

Following up yesterday’s post on George Clooney on living well, I sampled another clip from the same interview in which he talked about accountability. The context is his winning an award for his work on Darfur. I think the clip illustrates how to keep focused on results, not accolades. And even to remember that the results you can achieve don’t necessarily mean results that you want to achieve in the[…] Keep reading →

Usually I post North Korea posts separate from my main page, but I consider today’s videos too-good examples of leadership not to include in the main page (despite being in the middle of a series of George Clooney posts). The scene: Kim Il Sung Square, Pyongyang, April 14, 2012 — the day before the celebration of the hundred-year anniversary of Kim Il Sung’s birth. Whether you like him or not,[…] Keep reading →

Today was see a few random videos. First some oil tankers in the river by a road in Pyongyang seen from our bus. Sorry not that interesting. Just sharing for completeness. Here we see the inside of our bus while we road on an insanely bumpy road. The North Korean government seems to want to portray itself as the best at everything, so putting foreigners and such a poorly kept[…] Keep reading →

As if getting to see an industrial site like the steel factory wasn’t enough, we got to tour a glass factory too. Here we see the input, which I think is melting down old glass and other ingredients to make new glass. You can see they color different parts of the machinery different colors. Input: melting glass and ingredients Middle: the machine Here we see the middle part of the[…] Keep reading →

As I wrote before, North Korea seems to like making models of sites and I like making fly-through videos of models. Here are two more videos of models. I’m not sure of what. Something industrial. Maybe the steel factory? Here’s the second video. Typically when they showed us models like this they described how they represent a time Kim Il Sung visited the place, even if his visiting probably contributed[…] Keep reading →

Part of my series of videos on North Korea from my April 2012 visit, for now unedited and in the order I took the videos. Today’s videos are of our visit to a North Korean steel factory. They told us we were among the first foreigners to visit the place in a long time, maybe ever. We loved visiting this place. That we got to tour right into the heart[…] Keep reading →

Do you dream of a life on the red carpet, gracing black-tie events with your presence, choosing among the best projects, working with the top people in your field, with your name in lights? Sound unbeatable? Think again. At least if you’re George Clooney. With all of that, he found simplicity from regular working men. He acted on it with something few of us could materially afford, but we can[…] Keep reading →

Part of my series of videos on North Korea from my April 2012 visit, for now unedited and in the order I took the videos. Today’s videos happen to cover infrastructure. Pyongyang Roadside This video shows the view out of a tour bus of a typical Pyongyang street. You can see the (in)famous Ryugyong Hotel, a subway stop entrance, and Pyongyang’s typically empty roadways. You can hear our guide’s voice[…] Keep reading →