DPRK to attend Shanghai World Expo 2010

We just received news that North Korea has expressed its intention to attend the Shanghai World Expo in 2010. How exciting is that, people!

Having attended the World Expo in Hanover in 2000, we just wonder what wonderful propaganda awaits us at the DPRK pavilion in 2010! So we looked up Youtube and found this clip which we thought would be a fantastic example of what would be shown at the North Korean pavilion.

Leo Lewis, Asia Business correspondent of The Times, also has this insightful account of what President Roh and his South Korean delegation were shown at the recent landmark summit in Pyongyang:

The visiting South Korean delegation was given wonderful tours through Potemkin Village-type facilities and factories all screaming with economic backwardness and dysfunction. Despair dressed in the sad robes fantasy popped-up at every turn. South Korea's first lady was shown a school room with lipsticked girls chanting a traditional song. It was as heart-breaking as it was sinister.

They later went to a hospital where everyone was wearing clean pyjamas and supposedly being treated for serious, long-term diseases like cancer. One of the bed-ridden in-patients was being treated with a small pyramid of smouldering herbs that was being applied to his tummy. It was strangely nostalgic. My auntie Mona once did that to me when I fell over and grazed my shin - it was during her "homeopathic" phase in the early 1980s. The wound went septic later that weekend and had to be treated with TCP.

Shanghaiist has been meaning to make a trip up to North Korea sometime, but if they're going to come to Shanghai instead, we will save our hard-earned cash!

Related link
Yonhap News Agency: North Korea To Attend Shanghai World Expo In 2010
Times Online / Urban Dirt: The Roh 'n Kim show part VIII: Malice in Wonderland