by Calvin Sun | Aug 14, 2011 | North Korea, Summer 2011: From the Middle East to North Korea, Way Way Off the Beaten Path
The cult of personality. That’s the term giving to folks like Mao, Stalin, Ho Chi Minh, Mussolini, Castro, and Kim Il-Sung. It’s the idea of using mass media and propaganda to fuel the notion that a single human being is a god-like hero, a savior of...
by Calvin Sun | Aug 14, 2011 | Mythbusters, North Korea, Summer 2011: From the Middle East to North Korea, Way Way Off the Beaten Path
What trip to Pyongyang would be complete without seeing the structures that represent the very soul of North Korea? We take a look at central Pyongyang and Kim Il-Sung square, the heart of its communist movement and the 16th largest city square in the world. In a way,...
by Calvin Sun | Aug 13, 2011 | Mythbusters, North Korea, Public Transportation, Summer 2011: From the Middle East to North Korea
What riding the Metro helped debunk: There’s no way that they could pay so many actors to pretend everything is peachy; if they were hiding anything, it would have been more cost-effective to leave this out of the tour in the first place. So people really do use...
by Calvin Sun | Aug 13, 2011 | North Korea, Summer 2011: From the Middle East to North Korea
The constant fog (to the point I had joked that the government was creating it) definitely doesn’t help debunk the stereotype. Let’s face it: Pyongyang is a very clean city unfortunately inhabited by a soulless buildings spread out on a flat space of 2630...
by Calvin Sun | Aug 13, 2011 | Getting that VISA, How Did You Do That?, Let me tell you a Story..., Mythbusters, North Korea, Summer 2011: From the Middle East to North Korea, Way Way Off the Beaten Path, What Dreams May Come
Press play. And then start reading. Well, I just got into the most isolated country in the world without a hitch and I’ll be coming out with a lot of stories. There’s a lot of material to go over in terms of what I’ve seen...
by Stephanie Quan | Aug 12, 2011 | Cambodia, Summer 2011: From the Middle East to North Korea
Battambang doesn’t have much, but what it does have is a bamboo train- which is really really fun to ride. I first read about this in a Smithsonian article, which is also where I read about that Yangon art gallery (where I ended up participating in a performance...
by Stephanie Quan | Aug 12, 2011 | Let me tell you a Story..., Summer 2011: From the Middle East to North Korea
THIS BLOG IS MINE!!! –steph
by Calvin Sun | Aug 9, 2011 | North Korea, Summer 2011: From the Middle East to North Korea
…I should be in North Korea. Bye bye Internet. - At time of posting in Pyongyang, it was 75.2 °F - Humidity: 88% | Wind Speed: n/a | Cloud Cover:...
by Stephanie Quan | Aug 9, 2011 | Cambodia, How's the weather?, Summer 2011: From the Middle East to North Korea
Is the name of a bar in Siam Reap. If you buy two buckets, you get a t-shirt. I have a t-shirt. Its been raining. Which is nice because it normally happens in the late afternoon, just when the heat is past my level of toleration. It has meant though that I’ve...
by Calvin Sun | Aug 8, 2011 | North Korea, Summer 2011: From the Middle East to North Korea, Travel Warnings
Thank you, U.S. State Department, for issuing this warning for me. In any case, I’ll be in North Korea within the next 12 hours! The Department of State warns U.S. citizens against entering North Korea (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, or DPRK), without...
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