NorthKorea

Did you know Stalin was Asian? As were other historic figures including Jesus, Abraham, and Muhammad.
Nonjudgment / NorthKorea

Did you know Stalin was Asian? As were other historic figures including Jesus, Abraham, and Muhammad.

In the last book of Gulag Archipelago, Solzhenitsyn wrote about Stalin's death, "This was the moment my friends and I had looked forward to even in our student days. The moment for which every zek in Gulag (except the orthodox Communists) had prayed! He’s dead, the Asiatic dictator is dead! The villain has curled up and died!" I was curious about the term 'Asiatic.' I also just finished the book Fetishized, which talked about a lack of Asians in media. Was Stalin an example? He may not be a role model, but he gets plenty of coverage. Presumably you want accurate representation, not preferential. I looked up where Stalin was born: Gori, now part of Georgia. In the process I also learned that Stalin himself…

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May 25, 2026
I love when a team hits on all cylinders: when everyone acts with their specialty and we collectively achieve more
Hands on Practical Experience / NorthKorea / Stories

I love when a team hits on all cylinders: when everyone acts with their specialty and we collectively achieve more

I should have written about this fun interaction with the core team working on the alumni community site this spring. Four of us were on a call. We were struggling to figure out a technical challenge. We wanted to do something that the host software didn't seem capable of doing. We felt close to giving up. Would we have to pay for the higher tier? Pay for a service call with the company? Switch software? Give up on functionality we wanted? One guy mentioned how a text message outside the system had prompted him to act in the way the the software was supposed to. I commented that we might be able to work around at least part of the deficiency. Another person commented how…

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June 28, 2025
Would you propose changing Nazi culture by making it more efficient?
Freedom / NorthKorea

Would you propose changing Nazi culture by making it more efficient?

People who agree with me that to achieve sustainability, we have to change our culture, still struggle to see why making things more efficient not only doesn't change our culture, it accelerates it. That is, it will lead us to create more of the results we get now. Imagine going back to 1942. We are fighting the Nazis and imperialist Japanese. We know every German isn't a Nazi nor does every Japanese want to conquer the Pacific. In fact, if we knew then what we know now, we'd know their culture would transform to make their nations' some of our greatest allies. If the exact people in question could become allies, we don't want to kill them all. We want to change their cultures. Then…

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October 25, 2024
A North Korea compilation of video from my second trip
NorthKorea

A North Korea compilation of video from my second trip

I've meant to post this video for a while. I haven't posted in a while about my trips to North Korea. I found this video on my hard drive. I hadn't thought about visiting North Korea in a while, not having flown since 2016. I hope Cyrus doesn't mind my posting it. Plus you can see my long hair days. Here's a picture of me in North Korea. Those were the days.

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June 2, 2023
The Art of Charm Interview with Jordan Harbinger
The Art Of Charm Joshua Spodek interview
Audio / NorthKorea

The Art of Charm Interview with Jordan Harbinger

Jordan Harbinger and I met when he lived in New York City about ten years ago. I haven't seen him as much since he moved to California except for two things. First, he invited my to North Korea twice, making two of my life's most memorable trips. As I wrote in 2011, here's how it began: The trip of a lifetime began with this message on my birthday from my friend Jordan Hey happy birthday man! All the best! What do you have planned for this year? p.s. I’m going to North Korea in August -get jealous! 🙂 North Korea?!? That came out of the blue. I had never considered going before. Could I travel there legally? Safely? I didn’t even know what questions to…

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May 7, 2017
Neil Strauss, 7-time NY Times bestselling author, covers Leadership Step by Step
Leadership / NorthKorea

Neil Strauss, 7-time NY Times bestselling author, covers Leadership Step by Step

Two weeks in North Korea gives you the chance to get to know someone. Few writers define a genre. Neil Strauss made himself one of the great writers of our time by creating Transformational Journalism. His About page begins: Neil’s Journey into Transformational Journalism Neil Strauss is a seven-time New York Times best-selling author. His books, The Game and Rules Of The Game, for which he went undercover in a secret society of pickup artists for two years, made him an international celebrity and an accidental hero to men around the world. Both books topped The New York Times best-seller list and were #1 on Amazon, and the former has the dubious distinction of being the most stolen book at Barnes & Noble besides The Bible. In his follow-up book, The Truth: An…

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February 18, 2017
Creativity / Habits / NorthKorea / SIDCHAs

Five years of daily posts! Not one missed.

When my friend set up this blog page for me, I asked him how often he blogged. I expected him to say something like three days a week, weekdays, when big events happened, or something like that. Instead he said "Every day," then adding: If you miss one day you can miss two. If you miss two, it's all over. I took the practice to heart. Today finishes my fifth year of posting daily without fail. January 29, 2011 began my habit of posting here daily. I'll hit 2,100 posts in a couple days. I posted twice a day around my North Korea trips since I considered that material too far from the leadership focus I want here. Here is the archive of all my…

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January 28, 2016
Leading Colonels, Majors, and other Officers In Charge
Events / Freedom / Leadership / NorthKorea

Leading Colonels, Majors, and other Officers In Charge

I had the chance to lead a leadership workshop at the United States Army Garrison Yongsan in Seoul, South Korea. This was my first chance to work with the military, though I felt particularly motivated after lunch with Frances Hesselbein last summer, who has worked with West Point and the White House for decades and holds many there in the highest regard, and after interacting with an NYU-based project with the New York Mayor's Office of Veterans Affairs to teach entrepreneurship to returning veterans. I was gratified to see the dedication among the troops and to interact directly with the different culture. It's as bureaucratic and stratified as any large company, but different in a way I can't immediately put my finger on. For one…

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January 11, 2016
Op/Ed Fridays: Banning billboards and outdoor advertising
Awareness / Nature / NorthKorea / Perception

Op/Ed Fridays: Banning billboards and outdoor advertising

Articles like "Can cities kick ads? Inside the global movement to ban urban billboards" remind me of North Korea, where I saw pictures of Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-il in most rooms of every building I entered. I wondered, "how does it affect someone's life to see those pictures every day, everywhere?" Then I realized people there weren't comparing their environments to ones they didn't know about. The images probably faded into their background. The North Korean government knows that people not consciously noticing the pictures doesn't stop them from being effective. They influence people. I can only speculate the effects, but the images must give power to the state. As I kept thinking, I thought, "I wonder if anything in my environment affects me…

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September 18, 2015
Nature / NorthKorea / SIDCHAs

Why I plan never to visit Brazil again

Today's post is mostly a rant from someone who has eaten too many carrots and little else for a week, but I've traveled six continents and in only two places did I go hungry---Brazil and North Korea. North Korea has a failed authoritarian central planned economy. It's tragic for the people living there, but at least I understand the situation and knew to prepare for difficulty finding food. Brazil has no economic reasons why it shouldn't have food available, but it doesn't, at least if you don't eat meat. Actually, even if you do eat meat. I may be extrapolating too far from the situation on the island of Fernando de Naronha, but a week of hunger will do that to you. Most restaurants serve…

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November 12, 2014
Blog / Freedom / NorthKorea

Op/ed Fridays: A living death: laws that remove judges and juries undermine justice

Different people mean different things by the term justice. I think of the term having at least four meanings or purposes. To deter people from committing crimes To punish people who committed crimes To give crime victims a sense of retribution To keep criminals away from society if society expects them to commit crimes again These four purposes don't always work in concert. In any case, the United States seems focused more on retribution and punishment than other places. We put more people in jail than any other country, with the possible exception of North Korea, putting us or them in dubious company, depending on how you look at it. Before anyone jumps on me about North Korean prison camps, I'll remind you of the…

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November 22, 2013
Blog / Freedom / Leadership / NorthKorea

Leadership and United States’ spying

I'd like to look at some headlines from a leadership perspective. I don't intend for today's post to be political. Governments have needed secrecy and spying since before Sun Tzu's The Art of War over two thousand years ago. People will also oppose governments that overreach their influence into their lives. Different people oppose different levels of intrusion so that the more a government intrudes the more people will oppose the government. One of the main roles of a government's highest leaders is to balance the government's secrecy and spying with its citizens' private interests. Government officials and decision-makers have conflicting interests because their jobs get easier with more of the former and harder with more of the latter. If a leader doesn't take responsibility…

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June 26, 2013
A model for strategy
Education / Entrepreneurship / Exercises / Models / NorthKorea / Tips / Visualization

A model for strategy

[This post is part of a series on "Mental models and beliefs: an exercise to identify yours." If you don't see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you'll get more value than reading just this post.] Strategy is a fundamental study for many fields, including leadership, military, games, and plenty areas of business. If you're reading this page, you don't need motivation to understand its value. I've read a bunch on strategy, taken classes, written a book on strategy and North Korea, and lived through my share of strategic situations. I play chess decently too. Of all the resources I know, one stands above, the book Competition Demystified: A Radically Simplified Approach to Business Strategy, by Bruce…

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June 2, 2013
Favorites / NorthKorea

Summary of North Korea Videos

Any trip to North Korea will be eye-opening and amazing, even before Dennis Rodman visited. I visited last April for the celebration of the anniversary of Kim Il Sung's birth. I believe visiting creates more understanding and communication than potential problems. As I've explained before here and in my book on North Korea, I consider such interactions among the best ways to increase communication and understanding with North Koreans, which I consider the best ways to bring about more peaceful relations. I believe all related governments have motivations to maintain adversarial relations, so I don't have much faith in them to create peace. As I say in one of the videos in this series, I believe regular people like you and I will have to…

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March 13, 2013
Video: Teaching our North Korean guide colloquial English
Humor / NorthKorea

Video: Teaching our North Korean guide colloquial English

Last year we tried teaching our guide, Ms Yu, the phrase "You're so money and you don't even know it." So this year when Jordan was busy doing something else, I decided to teach it to Ms Han, then have her say it to him. I don't think she quite got the meaning of the phrase, but I think the fun came across. About halfway through the video switches to her saying it to Jordan. Like I've said before, I don't know when the United States and North Korea will have peaceful relations, but we're bringing it closer -- more than any diplomat. I wonder if she'll remember it the next time we visit. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yeGWJMHu748

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March 8, 2013
North Korean tour guide singing
Art / NorthKorea

North Korean tour guide singing

One of the more touching moments of our trip was our guide, Ms Han, singing Arirang for us on our last night after nearly two weeks. According to Wikipedia, the song "is sometimes considered the unofficial national anthem of Korea." Since the government requires tourists be accompanied by two guides plus a driver at all times and the guides communicate only the party line about North Korea's history, politics, etc, people who haven't visited tend to presume the guides are drone-like agents of the state or overseers. On the contrary, they're regular people with lives, stories, family, etc. We created great relationships with ours. I'm sure all of us would keep in touch but for the North Korean government controlling communication. I defy you not…

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March 7, 2013
Video: North Korean subway museum
NorthKorea

Video: North Korean subway museum

North Korean museums do things differently than museums elsewhere. First, I don't remember seeing art museums there. They seem to make museums for historical and technical things, like wars and subway systems. Second, instead of trying to present the history or teach understanding of the technology, its development, or the people who created it, they do two things: describe the involvement of Kim Il Sung or Kim Jong Il and make elaborate, detailed dioramas of it. I shouldn't overstate things. They do show some historical things and technical things, but those don't seem their main goals. I'm used to inspiring kids being a major part of a museum. I didn't see that in museums we saw. Here is a video of a subway museum diorama…

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March 7, 2013
Video: Little boy and his mom with pop-gun by Arc of Triumph in Pyongyang, North Korea
NorthKorea

Video: Little boy and his mom with pop-gun by Arc of Triumph in Pyongyang, North Korea

Near Pyongyang's Arc of Triumph (bigger than the one in Paris!), we saw this boy with his mother at a county-fair type target practice contest. How could we not stop and watch the his calm determination and his mother's help shooting a rifle in the middle of town. The rifle only shot little corks, but it was fun to watch. Not weird, but just different than you'd expect to see in America. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJ2T9H05Xos

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March 6, 2013
Video: Interviewing Joseph of the American in North Korea blog
NorthKorea

Video: Interviewing Joseph of the American in North Korea blog

Today's video is of Joseph, who publishes the famous American in North Korea blog, which has some of the most amazing pictures and commentary of North Korea around. That blog makes him a celebrity among foreigners in North Korea because many times we crossed paths with other foreigners, someone from the group would come up and ask him "Are you the American in North Korea?" He was also one of the main organizers for our group and made connections with North Korean officials -- no easy feat. I had been intending to interview him for a while and took this occasion on a boat ride on the Taedong River. The interview went great, but the wind ruined the audio. You can still hear some of…

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March 6, 2013
Video: Surrounded by North Korean soldiers and flowers
Nature / NorthKorea

Video: Surrounded by North Korean soldiers and flowers

Visiting a flower show in North Korea led to being in a building overflowing with North Korean soldiers (including, as a group of guys will notice, cute female ones), and flowers. They named some types after their leaders, so they have a lot of Kimilsungia and Kimjongilia, which they arrange into shapes of North Korea around small models of important places, like where Kim Il Sung was born and such. You can also hear the over-the-top North Korean music. Sometimes I held the camera low so as not to call attention. I hoped to catch some of the times the cute female soldiers looked at us and giggled, but they were more discrete than I was quick with my camera. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doWpYyVh4dQ

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March 5, 2013
Video: Incredible kids in a North Korean country schoolhouse
Humor / NorthKorea

Video: Incredible kids in a North Korean country schoolhouse

If you want to see the most amazing kids, you might be surprised to find some in this country schoolhouse in North Korea. Yes, we only see what the government lets us see, and the government seems to have learned showing off its kids shows off a part of the country the world will love, but this did happen and it's part of North Korea. Watch this video. You won't be disappointed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04zR_KCQ7F4

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March 4, 2013
Video: Incredible kids in Hamhung, North Korea
Blog / Humor / NorthKorea

Video: Incredible kids in Hamhung, North Korea

Another reason visiting North Korea became one of my most educational and thought-provoking experiences, as well as of my travel-mates. This experience was too incredible not to include it on my blog's main page (if you haven't been reading my North Korea posts, click to see the videos I've been posting of my trip there last April -- some inspirational, all educational). Our tour bus took us to a kids camp in Hamhung, North Korea, then to the city. I don't know how they chose to take us to see kids, but it seems they brought us to a lot of kids places. After our amazing experiences interacting with North Koreans directly at Kim Il Sung Square as well as playing Ultimate Frisbee in Pyongyang…

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March 3, 2013
Video: On seeing North Koreans seeing Kim Jong Un speak for the first time
NorthKorea

Video: On seeing North Koreans seeing Kim Jong Un speak for the first time

We discuss seeing North Koreans seeing Kim Jong Un speak for the first time, which he did while we were at a hotel the night before. They were utterly transfixed, some cried. His father, Kim Jong Il, spoke publicly only once in seventeen years in power. Now he spoke within the first weeks in power. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWbVrd7C-e8 Here is a quick view of a North Korean roadside entering a modest-sized city. We visited about a half-dozen cities and they all looked similar -- soviet-looking uniform buildings. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j47ydkAYQCA

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March 2, 2013

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