10 Mind - Blowing Facts About North Korea
Kim Il Sung (Photo: Dailymail) |
These are 10 mind - blowing facts about North Korea that you might not know:
1.The founder and first leader of North Korea, Kim Il Sung, created the country's policy of juche or "self-reliance," which cut off North Korea economically and diplomatically from the rest of the world, even in times of great need, such as famines.
2. North Koreans must abide by one of 28 approved haircuts. Unmarried women must have short hair, but married woman have many more options. The hair of young men should be less than 2 inches long, older men can go as long as 2¾ inches, according to a Taiwanese website WantChinaTimes.
North Korea severely restricts internet access for its citizens. There is one secure internet server in the country, but not even 1% of the population finds itself on the internet. Instead, citizens are relegated to using a state-controlled, domestic-only intranet network called Kwangmyong. The service is free (if you can afford a computer), but it only allows access to a select list of censored websites. |
According to The Daily Telegraph, the only North Koreans who can use the internet as we know it are political leaders and their families, students at elite universities, and people who work for the nation's cyber warfare units.
Vox reported that Kwangmyong "runs rudimentary email and browser tools that are restricted to a hand-picked collection of 'sites' that have been copied over and censored from the real internet."
9. There could be trillions of dollars worth of minerals underground in North Korea.
North Korea likely is sitting on a wealth of mineral deposits, with one estimate reaching nearly $10 trillion and another reaching more than $6 trillion, according to Quartz.
The deposits could include more than 200 types of mineral, including iron, gold, zinc, copper, and graphite. Likewise, there's plenty of rare metals used in smartphone production in China and South Korea.
The estimates of the mineral value come largely from South Korean companies, although Quartz noted that North Korea runs its mines inefficiently and private mining is illegal in the communist country.
10. There are two economies in North Korea, and two prices for everything.
Photo: Insider |
As a communist nation, there's the state-run economy and an underground economy.
Because of this, there are two prices for everything, Bill Brown, an adjunct professor at Georgetown University, told Marketplace last year. One state worker might get paid a fraction of another worker who is employed by a Chinese factory, cites Insider. |
A textile worker at a state-owned Pyongyang enterprise might make 3,000 North Korean won per month, Brown said, while the same worker might make 100 times as much by working in a Chinese-affiliated factory. It's "just a very destabilizing, inefficient system," he said.
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