Artemii Lebedev, described as one of the leading web designers in Russia, went to North Korea on "vacation" and brought back an impressive array of pictures, which he has thoughtfully annotated with comments.

They are fascinating.

The remarkable thing, both apparent from the pictures and the commentary, is that NK devotes enormous resources to creating the facade of an industrialized economy for foreign eyes. Of course none of it works because the absent details are so glaring--like no cars on the six lane highway.

From my perspective, the place didn't look that bad. Virtually any place in the third world looks the same or worse. Even developed countries like France have the odd mixture of ancient and modern. I recall staying at a modern mid-priced hotel near Brest that had a concrete communal wash basin across the street that women were still using to wash their clothes. It dated from the 19th century.

On the other hand, its missing the typical third world chaos you normally associate with this kind of decrepitude, and perhaps that makes it all the more scary.

You can understand how an absence of any meaningful goverment could result in the typical third world chaos, but NK is just the opposite--very well ordered and yet extremely poor. A society with this kind of discipline should naturally be quite prosperous. The fact that it isn't suggest an extreme dysfunction.