At Home In The Wasteland Travel Blog

Here is the last of the footage shot while we were driving around Pyongyang. Not many recognizable landmarks in this video, but there are some large portraits of Kim Il-Sung and other propaganda.

This one of the more amusing panels you will see at the Berlin Wall East Side Gallery. It is a reproduction of a Berlin Wall graffiti painting titled “My God, help me to survive this deadly love” that depicts an actual kiss that took place between Soviet Leader Leonid Brezhnev and East German leader Erich [...]

When the Soviet Union fell, the symbols of that regime – the innumerable statues of Marx, Engels, and Lenin – were brought down as well. Many were melted down, demolished, or sold to wealthy Westerners who installed them in American casinos. Some of these statues still survive throughout the former Soviet Union, however, either in [...]

A high-rise apartment building in Pyongyang. The building on the left is the Koryo Hotel, which is basically the Ritz-Carlton of Pyongyang. Like most hotels in North Korea, it features a revolving restaurant.

Today I uploaded more footage taken while driving through Pyongyang. The first video includes footage of Kim Il-Sung Square, the Ryugyong Hotel, Pyongyang Traffic Girls, and the Grand People’s Study House. This second video was taken while driving through Pyongyang in the evening. There is not much to see, due to the lack of electricity, [...]

Near the Monument to the Foundation of the Korean Workers’ Party, a group of North Korean dancers waits to be dismissed by their supervisors.

North Korean students attend a mass dance that was taking place to celebrate the DPRK’s independence day on September 9, 2009.

Taekwondo athletes perform at the Arirang Mass Games in Pyongyang, North Korea. What exactly are the mass games? Well, take 100,000 North Koreans, place them in the largest stadium in the world, add some perfectly choreographed gymnastics, dancing, singing, and a heavy dose of propaganda, and the end result is a massive show glorifying the [...]

In Teatralnaya Square, directly across the street from the Bolshoi Theatre stands Moscow’s last remaining monument to Karl Marx, which was erected in 1961. The inscription reads “Proletariat of all countries, solidarity!” (aka “Workers of the world, unite!”) While the Communist Party still occasionally rallies around the monument, some have suggested replacing the monument with, [...]

Yes, they still exist, and occasionally hold small rallies. Photo taken in the summer of 2003.