The Strangest Show on Earth
Seems like North Korea is getting ready for another Arirang, which has to qualify as one of the strangest and most interesting spectacles of the modern world.
It has a cast of 100,000. It has a giant backdrop of colored cards which are rapidly changed by 30,000 children in order to display patriotic phrases, scenery and portraits. It has thousands of dancers, riots of color, and a stadium of 150,000 in a country which can barely afford to keep the lights on.
It is all at once a spectacle of societal control, a throwback to the days of Stalin (though it is unlikely even Stalin could have pulled this off) and the way the hermit kingdom fights back against the 'unfair' descriptions of poverty and despair common in western, and for that matter eastern, news and media.
It is also one of the only times that a nation with less than 300 full time foreign residents opens its doors to the outside world, because it is one of the very few ways in which N. Korea is able to get its hands on hard currency.
The last Arirang was in 2007, and the pictures from it - which you can see here - are dramatic. The next one should be later this year, so if you want to visit a Stalinist state, this might be one of your last chances.
It has a cast of 100,000. It has a giant backdrop of colored cards which are rapidly changed by 30,000 children in order to display patriotic phrases, scenery and portraits. It has thousands of dancers, riots of color, and a stadium of 150,000 in a country which can barely afford to keep the lights on.
It is all at once a spectacle of societal control, a throwback to the days of Stalin (though it is unlikely even Stalin could have pulled this off) and the way the hermit kingdom fights back against the 'unfair' descriptions of poverty and despair common in western, and for that matter eastern, news and media.
It is also one of the only times that a nation with less than 300 full time foreign residents opens its doors to the outside world, because it is one of the very few ways in which N. Korea is able to get its hands on hard currency.
The last Arirang was in 2007, and the pictures from it - which you can see here - are dramatic. The next one should be later this year, so if you want to visit a Stalinist state, this might be one of your last chances.
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