What Stalinism Looks Like in 2006

North Korean School Children Celebrate their Dear Leader

Last night I stumbled across pictures of a tour of North Korea taken by Russian Artemii Lebedev. These pictures are both frightening and tragic. They are news. They inform.

There are 5 pages. The first 2 pages have been copied and have the photographer's captions translated into English. I did pump the original 5 through Babelfish, but it provides little help with the text. The original pages are much better, though, even I don't read Russian. Lebedev is a web designer.

Lebdev remarks:

North Korea is a perfect reproduction of the year 1950.

That doesn't sound too threatening, until you realize that these are the words of a Russian.

Here is the first translated page.

Here is the second translated page.

Here is the original Russian page 1, page 2, page 3, page 4, page 5.

I owe a hat tip to somebody for this, but I lost the trail. Sorry.