Here is the North Korean produced footage of our visit to the DMZ. I had to break this up into two parts due to YouTube’s ban on videos over 10 minutes.
Part 1: This has some incredibly dramatic music as well as dialogue that explains how the “U.S. imperialists bent their knees” to the North Koreans. [...]

“For your own safety,” the lieutenant colonel explained, “several of our soldiers will be accompanying you to the border.”
Statements like this are to be expected when visiting the demilitarized zone that divides North and South Korea, but when that announcement is coming from an impeccably dressed officer from the North Korean People’s Army, rather than [...]

Photos taken while driving from Pyongyang to the DMZ.

A section of the highway was closed, so we had to take a slight detour.

I really wanted to steal that cone

A quick stop at the Sohung Rest House

Anti-tank barriers. Rigged with explosives so they can be blown up and the rubble strewn across the highway to [...]

Here is the North Korean Tourism DVD footage of our trip to the USS Pueblo in Pyongyang. In this clip you can hear the narrator describe how the “US armed spy ship Pueblo” was “captured by the heroic Korean People’s Army while committing espionage acts”. You can also see us “imperialists” playing around [...]

Over the past few weeks there have been several interesting articles about North Korea. The first, “Soldiers, Mines and Sounds of Children Playing” is actually about the South Korean Taesung Elementary School, the only school inside the Korean DMZ.
Kim Han-seul, a fifth-grader, attends a most unusual school. Each morning, his school bus [...]

If you’ve known me for a while then you’re well aware of my interest in touring US warships. Ever since I can remember, my parents would take me down to San Diego so we could visit whichever ship was open to the public. I’ve been on everything from aircraft carriers to dock landing [...]

A few days ago there was a segment on NPR about North Korea. The correspondent had actually been allowed into North Korea, but from what I could tell they are basically shown the exact same thing as us regular tourists. I really should have pursued that foreign correspondent career. I could have [...]

I still have a ton of Costa Rica photos to upload, but here are a few photos from this past weekend when Liz, Nick, and I went to the Joint Service Open House at Andrews Air Force Base. You basically spend the day checking out all the cool military equipment that your tax money [...]

For many detainees who grew up in Afghanistan — where music was prohibited under Taliban rule — their interrogations by U.S. forces marked their first exposure to the pounding rhythms, played at top volume.
The experience was overwhelming for many. Binyam Mohammed, now a prisoner at Guantanamo Bay, said men held with him at the CIA’s [...]

I’ve always been fascinated by the French Foreign Legion. Probably due to the “Crock” comics. Or maybe because the enlistees fight for a country they have no connection to. The NYTimes visits the Legion’s Camp Szuts in French Guiana:
And new legionnaires like Mr. Baird of Virginia must adopt pseudonyms, which often evoke their [...]