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 →

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 →

I visited North Korea for the celebration of the anniversary of Kim Il Sung’s birth last April. The trip was eye-opening and amazing. I believe it created more understanding and communication than whatever potential problems. As I’ve explained before here and in my book, 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[…] Keep reading →

North Korea constantly talks of reunification with South Korea. South Korea is doing well and as generations change seems to lose interest. Unrequited love hurts.

I’m going to present an over-simplified case related to issues many of us face in much smaller contexts. The goal is to learn from simple hypothetical cases to build experience for more complex, real-life cases. Normally I separate my North Korea posts from leadership ones, but they overlap here, along with my being in China now. One of the greater challenges the world faces is how to bring some kind[…] Keep reading →