North Korea remains one of the world’s most secretive and tightly controlled countries, making even ordinary details about life there seem surreal to outsiders. 25 Bizarre Facts About North Korea explores the strange realities, unusual laws, propaganda campaigns, and unbelievable historical events tied to the isolated state. From bizarre basketball rules and propaganda villages to kidnapped filmmakers and luxury obsessions among the leadership, these facts reveal a country that often feels stranger than fiction.
A Leader’s Million Dollar Taste
1. Kim Jong Il’s preferred drink was Hennessy, and he spent roughly $1 million per year on it.
2. In 1976 North Korean soldiers murdered two American officers who were trying to trim a tree in the DMZ. The U.S. responded by sending an 813-man task force to cut the tree down.
3. In 2016 a North Korean teenager named Jong Yol-ri was chosen to go to the International Mathematical Olympiad in Hong Kong. He used the event to escape North Korea and start a new life in South Korea.
4. When North Korean gymnast Kim Gwang Suk competed at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, her age was given as 17, but she was missing her front teeth and may have been as young as 10. Aside from an Olympic torch relay, her subsequent life and whereabouts are unknown.
5. A North Korean village just across the border from South Korea is nicknamed “Propaganda Village”. It is apparently uninhabited and for many years it had speakers that broadcast propaganda across the border 24 hours a day.
6. North Korea uses Songbun, a national system that ranks citizens by loyalty and can determine what rights a person receives, including the amount of food.
7. Kim Hyon-hui is a former North Korean agent responsible for blowing up a South Korean plane that killed 115 people; she was raised to hate the west but, after being shown the affluence of Seoul and realizing it was all lies, she confessed, and although she was initially sentenced to death she was later pardoned and released.
8. North Korea captured a U.S. ship, the U.S.S. Pueblo, in 1968 and continues to keep the vessel as a tourist attraction and propaganda symbol.
9. North Korea uses a different calendar from the rest of the world in which year 1 marks the birth of Kim Il-Sung.
10. North Korea sits on an estimated $6 to $10 trillion worth of minerals that it cannot access because it lacks the necessary technology and equipment.
Pilot Brings MiG to America
11. In 1953 North Korean pilot No Kum-Sok defected in his MiG-15, giving Americans their first look at the fighter. As part of Operation Moolah, he was given $100,000 and he later became a US citizen and aeronautical engineer.
12. In 2011 a drunk North Korean man passed out on a wooden board and a flood carried him and the board to an island controlled by South Korea, so he found himself in South Korea the next day.
13. North Korea has its own basketball scoring rules: slam dunks are worth three points; field goals in the final three minutes of the game count for eight points; three-pointers are worth four points if the ball does not touch the rim; and a missed free throw results in a one-point deduction.
14. Because Kim Jong Il was a Godzilla fan, North Korean Intelligence kidnapped a South Korean director and his wife and coerced him into making propaganda films. The film ‘Pulgasari’ was inspired by ‘Return of Godzilla’ and serves as a metaphor for the effects of unchecked capitalism and the power of the collective.
15. In 2004-2005 North Korea ran a show called ‘Let’s trim our hair in accordance with the socialist lifestyle’ as part of a government propaganda campaign promulgating grooming and dress standards.
16. North Korea has a set called The Ten Principles for the Establishment of a Monolithic Ideological System, its version of the Ten Commandments, which consists of total and complete devotion to Kim Il-Sung.
17. Because the price of oil is too high for most citizens, some trucks in North Korea are powered by burning charcoal.
18. North Korea is the only country that has been caught cheating twice at the International Mathematical Olympiad.
19. In the summer of 1968, an elite group of 30 North Korean commandos snuck across the DMZ tasked with assassinating the president of South Korea; they made it to within 100 meters of their target before their plot was foiled.
20. The International Friendship Exhibition in North Korea houses gifts presented to former leaders Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il from various foreign dignitaries, and it includes a VHS copy of the movie Space Jam.
Wheat Demand for NBA Permission
21. North Korea demanded payment in wheat to permit 7’8½\” (2.35m) tall Ri Myung-Hun to play in the NBA.
22. North Korea placed an order for 1,000 Volvos from Sweden in 1974 and has not paid the bill, leaving a debt of 2.2 billion kronor ($322 million).
23. North Korea drafts roughly 2,000 women into a ‘Pleasure Squad’ composed of attractive women who provide entertainment and sexual services for top officials. One defector reports that Kim Jong-il was ‘sentimental when drunk, and even shed tears.’
24. In North Korea every political candidate is selected by the ruling party, so each ballot contains a single name. A voter can strike out that name to register a vote against the candidate, but must do it with a red pen beside the ballot box while electoral officials watch.
25. Kim Jong-Il’s eldest son, Kim Jong-Nam, was widely seen as the heir apparent to North Korea’s Supreme Leader until he tried to enter Japan using a fake passport to visit Disneyland.
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