Random Weird North Korea Stories That Are 100% Tru (16 items)

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  (#2) They Published a Letter From "Abraham Lincoln" to Obama

  It's common for the North to throw operatic insults at the military and diplomatic skill of both South Korea and the US. In April 2016, they went one step further, conjuring a letter from deceased 16th president Abraham Lincoln to President Obama. The "Lincoln letter" was published on the internal state-run website DPRK Today, and was titled "Advice from Lincoln to Obama."

  Concern trolling Obama by saying that it looks like he has "a lot on his mind," the letter scolds him and the US for not reducing their nuclear weapons stockpile, while simultaneously demanding the DPRK reduce theirs. "Lincoln" even throws himself under the bus, saying the American people won't stand to be deceived the way he did back in the day.
  
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  (#14) They Do Have Elections - But Not to Elect Anyone

  While it's a corrupt and repressive dictatorship, North Korea does actually have elections... which, of course, are corrupt and repressive, existing almost entirely for public show. Parliamentary elections are held every five years to elect the Supreme People's Assembly - but each district has only one candidate, who is personally selected by Kim Jong Un. Voters who wish to dissent must do so in public, using a special ballot box. Needless to say, nobody does this.

  Beyond being for show, the elections serve as a form of census taking. Hence, voting is compulsory. Voting rolls are checked against village population lists, and citizens who don't appear on both are severely punished. The last election, in 2014, had 99.97% turnout - which was actually down from 99.98% in the 2009 election. That election was postponed for a year, for reasons that were never explained.
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  (#16) Kim Jong-un is Cracking Down on Western-Style Clothing

  In preparation for the May 2016 Party Congress, Kim Jong-Un dropped the hammer on North Koreans wearing western clothing. Among the items that will now be policed by "inspection units" are t-shirts, short skirts, jeans, along with piercings and long hair. Kim had already mandated that men use his high-and-tight haircut. The ban applies to all of North Korea, but will be especially enforced in villages near the Chinese border.
  
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  (#10) They Built a Giant Luxury Hotel and Never Opened It

  North Korea is all about appearances. How do you make it appear your country is way more prosperous than it really is? Build a huge luxury hotel in your capital that nobody can miss. Shaped like a giant rocket, the Ryugyong Hotel has 105 stories, is the 49th tallest building in the world, would have anywhere between three to seven thousand rooms, and five revolving restaurants.

  But it's never had a guest stay in it, because it was never finished. Economic problems caused by the fall of the Soviet Union, combined with a complete lack of funds, left the tower unfinished. It sat as a concrete shell for over a decade, and rumors abounded of the concrete being shoddy and the elevators crooked. Construction has started and stopped several times, and it's currently being re-purposed into a "mixed-use" building.
  
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  (#3) They Built a Fake City to Intimidate South Korea

  The North Korean border village Kijong-dong sports rows of new houses and offices, a school, a massive radio tower, farm fields bursting with crops, maintenance works, and even a hospital. What it doesn't have, though, is people. It's entirely fake, likely built as a carrot to entice South Koreans to defect.

  Up until 2004, the North used it as a massive base for loudspeakers to blast propaganda at the South. Then both sides agreed to stop propaganda broadcasts, and the village simply sits there, empty.
  
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  (#12) They Take American Tourists to a Museum Extoling the Virtues of Dead Americans

  The "Victorious Fatherland Liberation War Museum" is a hub of North Korean tourism, and numerous American tourists have been taken there. This is ironic, given that it's essentially a celebration of killing US troops.

  A gigantic Pyongyang monument to the DPRK "victory" over the corrupt UN in 1953 (which never actually happened), the museum bursts at the seams with war ephemera, including captured American guns, pieces of shot down planes and knocked out tanks, statues, and a captured US ship.

  A DPRK soldier acts as a guide, pumping out regime propaganda about evil westerners. Most disturbingly, it's full of rooms of life-size murals and dioramas showing heaps of dead Americans being eaten by vultures. Again, all of this is gleefully shown to Americans, without a thought to hurt feelings.
  

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