Pyongyang, North Korea – October 2012
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- Rungnado May Day Stadium – The largest stadium in the world by capacity
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- It just wouldn’t be North Korean without images of guys shooting guns on the outside of the stadium.
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- At May Day stadium, we went to see the Arirang Mass Games which is large-scale performance praising the Workers Party of Korea, the armed forces, Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-Il.
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- Quite possibly the most impressive thing I’ve ever seen, the Mass Games is a perfectly coordinated 100,000 person performance that will blow your fucking mind!
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- Here, the rising sun is meant to symbolize Kim Il-Sung. Other images that are meant to symbolize Kim Il-Sung in the Mass Games include but are not limited to purple and red flowers (red also signifies the working class) and a gun which he gave to his son Kim Jong-Il.
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- One in thirty of Pyongyang’s approximately 3,000,000 residents participates in the Mass Games. Citizens are selected based on their skill level and in many cases, this will be a way of life for them until retirement.
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- On the other side of the stadium where the large images take shape, over 30,000 well-regimented children hold up big cards or booklets and flip the pages simultaneously to create the huge mosaics seen from the spectator side.
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- They only peek their heads up and out like this to look for their cue to flip the pages. Otherwise, they’re not seen and duck behind their cards.
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- As the children are busy flipping the cards in the background, tens of thousands of gymnasts and dancers run through complex and highly choreographed routines on the field below.
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- Like father, like son. Kim Jong-Il was able to succeed to power with relative ease in the early 1990s “thanks to the painstaking preparations that had been underway for more than a decade, the overwhelming cult of personality and the unique charisma of Kim Il-Sung.”
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- A giant pig-head with dancers in cat suits exploding from beneath its frock
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- Here they took the concept of titty-tassels and applied it on a larger scale using the human head and large whips – most innovative
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- Glow-in-the-dark dancers on the field. I seriously had butterflies in my stomach the whole time watching this shit.
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- Elegant Korean ladies
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- Only in a place like North Korea where the population is so repressed and fearful of any transgression against the powers that be could they pull off a performance as extravagant and flawless as this. Anywhere in the “free world” something like this would never happen because everyone has their own lives, their own hobbies and, had a similar something existed stateside, there’d be no threat of being shipped off to some labor camp if we were to say, “I don’t care to donate 100% of my free time to some silly performance honoring our former leaders.” And that’s something to not be taken for granted.
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- Red commie bastards
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- A huge-ass, decidedly intimidating taekwondo exhibition
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- Five-story human tower
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- Fireworks
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- On that triangular structure are six human beings dangling from their hands and spinning in synchronicity. While this had been going on, some performers had been gliding from one side of the stadium to the other on ziplines while others were shot out cannons from opposite sides of the field at each other, giving spectators the illusion they were going to collide head on at mid-field.
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- BFFs
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- Near the end of the performance is an artistic plea for the reunification of Korea not under the democratic terms by which South Korea abides but one governed by those of Kim Il-sung’s Juche Idealism
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- Wavy!
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- How the wavy image is created – people on the field up close
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- Same deal – different peepz
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- Grand finale – so beautiful I nearly cried. Thank you Great Leader! Thank you Dear Leader!
