It didn’t take long to discover that this was no ordinary department store. It was filled with thousands of people, going up and down the escalators, standing at the corners, going in and out of the front entrance in a constant stream both ways – yet nothing was being bought or sold. I checked this by standing at the entrance for half an hour. The people coming out were carrying no more than the people entering. Their shopping bags contained as much, or as little, when they left as when they entered. In some cases, I recognised people coming out as those who had gone in a few minutes before, only to see them re-entering the store almost immediately. And I watched a hardware counter for fifteen minutes. There were perhaps twenty people standing at it; there were two assistants behind the counter, but they paid no attention to the ‘customers’. The latter and the assistants stared past each other in a straight line, neither moving nor speaking.
...snip...
I also followed a few people around at random, as discreetly as I could. Some were occupied in ceaselessly going up and down the escalators; others wandered from counter to counter, spending a few minutes at each before moving on. They did not inspect the merchandise; they moved as listlessly as illiterates might, condemned to spend the day among the shelves of a library. I did not know whether to laugh or explode with anger or weep. But I knew I was seeing one of the most extraordinary sights of the twentieth century.
[1] http://www.skepticaldoctor.com/2010/01/15/classic-dalrymple-...
Years later I saw paint by number sets at a store as an adult and then bought two and spend a weekend doing just that, because I had been dreaming of doing it for years. Ritter Sport is everywhere in the US now, but when I see it, I'm just reminded of the misery of a childhood behind the iron curtain. It's gonna be a loooong transition for the victims of the Kim regime.
The smuggled footage in this is fantastic and remarkable. The interviews with the North Koreans in the South were also quite interesting.
It's kind of silly considering we actually contribute to PBS (according to PBS Seattle, we make up a 3rd of their contributions).
TBH, if you've watched 2 or 3 other North Korean documentaries, this is kind of more of the same, except maybe a full third of it was filmed by North Koreans in North Korea using smuggled cameras. The information is more up-to-date also, but it the basic gist isn't really anything too new.
> ... all the merchandise on display is for display only.
?
But, it is a 'show' city. It is the only place where foreigners are allowed, for example. School children do not go to school to learn. They go to school and drill endlessly in song, dance, marching, playing musical instruments, and so on. Then they put on shows for visiting dignitaries, government officials, and tourists. Woe be to the child that makes a mistake. Where 'woe' could include prison camp for them and their family.
Use Google Earth, and look around the city. Then go to some no-name China city and do the same. In Pyongyang the streets are very wide, yet entirely empty. It is thought that part of the emptiness is due to the famine - millions died - but it is also because it is a facade. Entire tall apartment buildings and factories are built - and left empty. Most of the tall buildings, so far as we can tell, are empty. People are employed to mill in and out to give the appearance of business, but Google earth tells the real story - this is a ghost town. I mean truly empty. You'll see a few trucks or cars, and a few people walking around, but otherwise...entirely empty. Meanwhile all of the fake stuff is recorded and transmitted in the weekly propaganda (news) shows. "Great Leader inspects department store and gives advice on how to improve sales". "Young Leader breaks ground on glorious new apartment building project". And so on. They spend millions on this while the people starve. Cannibalism was fairly reliably reported during the famine. A rat was a real treat, if you caught one, but you would be sent to prison camp if caught doing so.
It is an astonishingly bad place run by psychopaths mad on power.