Do you know what’s so, so much worse than facing military discipline in America?

…U.S. soldier, Private 2nd Class Travis King…was reportedly being escorted back to the United States from South Korea for disciplinary reasons. After going through airport security, King allegedly returned and managed to join a border tour group before crossing into North Korea willingly, officials told CBS.

If you guessed “fleeing to an totalitarian state that views the US as its mortal enemy”, you are correct.

Photographer Fabian Muir has visited North Korea five separate times, and he’s brought back photos that are much more revealing than usual.

Artist Statement

This is a selection of the many images I collected over my two years in the DPRK. Working within the constraints placed upon visitors there, the series seeks to offer a fair, honest and intimate portrayal of the country and its people.

See Muir’s site for much more.

I initially missed this while traveling, but given my love for the bizarre world that is North Korea, it’s well worth posting now. It appears that thanks to a server configuration error, we now know that North Korea has just 28 websites.

Speaking of bizarre stories out of China, the country is apparently now producing knockoff North Koreans. These fake defectors are then able to gain asylum, and benefits, in Europe.

Something is amiss in a recent image out of North Korea, and it’s more than just the fact that Kim Jong-un is smoking in a nursery. In the background over his shoulder, a bit more is going on.

This is too perfect, right?

It’s hard to believe this is real, and yet one simply must hold out hope that it is.

In keeping with embargoes setup by the West, Switzerland has refused to sell ski lifts to North Korea. North Korea, ever playing the role of tantrum-throwing five year old, has decried this as a “serious human rights abuse”.

American citizen Kenneth Bae was recently sentenced to fifteen years of hard labor in North Korea, for “crimes aimed to topple the DPRK”. The nature of those crimes is not known, but it’s likely that Bae is being used to get America’s attention. Now, the big guns have been called in:

Yes, in a story which clearly should have been in The Onion, Dennis Rodman has entered the fray. Hopefully he’ll be as successful as Bill Clinton.

If you can make it up, sooner or later, North Korea is going to do it. This time around, they’ve given some of their country’s highest honors to an inanimate object. ¹

Previously, on “The Simpsons”

Footnotes:

1. Because this site seems likely to disappear, or at least not have useful archives, here’s a screen grab of the full article. ↩︎

If you were curious why North Koreans were wailing and gnashing their teeth during the funeral for deceased dictator Kim Jong-Il, here’s your answer.