It is not until you encounter a society without adverts that you realise how ubiquitous they truly are elsewhere. As Naomi Klein detailed in student favourite No Logo, western society is awash with adverts. Even activities like festivals and schooling are adverts. Everything is marketed, and everyone is marketing. In North Korea, matters are a…

There are several distinct elements for foreigners visiting North Korea . Curfews, for instance, are not merely suggestions, but being in the accommodation come the evening and not being allowed back out. Consider the placement of Pyongyang’s Yanggakdo International Hotel, which is on an island in the middle of a river, and deliberately so. This…

Tagging a trip to North Korea onto the end of the Beijing Olympics made sense, and was surprisingly easy to do. As foreigners were not allowed to book or organise their own travel to ‘the world’s most secretive state’™, it was merely a matter a handing over money to an official travel company and accepting…