North Korea Politics

Throughout the late 1970s and early '80s, dozens of Japanese citizens were abducted from coastal Japanese towns by North Korean commandos. In what proved to be part of a global project, North Korea attempted to reeducate the abductees and train them to spy on the state's behalf. When the project faltered, the abductees were hidden in a series of guarded communities known as "Invitation-Only Zones" - the fiction being that these were exclusive enclaves, not prisons.

Robert Egan could have been a roofing contractor, like his father. Instead, he opened a barbecue restaurant. His interest in the search for Vietnam-era POWs led to an introduction to North Korean officials desperate to improve relations with the United States. So Egan turned his restaurant into Camp David, with pork ribs.

When Anna Broinowski learned that fracking had invaded downtown Sydney, she had a brilliant idea: she would seek guidance for a kryptonite-powerful, anti-fracking movie from the world's greatest propaganda factory - apart from Hollywood. After two years of trying, she was allowed to make her case in Pyongyang and was granted full permission to film. She worked closely with the leading lights of North Korean cinema, even playing an American in a military thriller.

The fearsome Kim regime of North Korea, though not lasting for centuries, has become one of history's most controversial bloodlines, not without cause. This is why Kim Jong-Un, the baby-faced 30-something with the bizarre flat-top seated at the throne today, is an object of such fascination. The world watched as the keys to the sinking ship were passed down to the young Kim, hoping for the state's long-awaited metamorphosis, but as it turned out, this young man could be far more erratic and inflexible than those came before him.

North Korea has long been the butt of jokes, and it has been a longstanding target of international criticism, but the startling satellite image was anything but amusing, for it demonstrated the truly catastrophic conditions North Koreans find themselves in. Statistics show that the average South Korean uses up to 10,162 kilowatt hours of power per year, whereas their neighbors in the north consume only 739. This is only one amongst a slew of stumbling blocks affecting the state, impeding it from proper progress. The mismatching network of sprawling, yet lifeless cities and squalid, poverty-stricken provinces stands eerily silent next to the bustling metropolises on either side of it. North Korea is trapped in an impenetrable, soundproof bubble, the entire state frozen in time.