North Korea is not an undeveloped country; it is a country that has fallen out of the developed world.

North Korea is probably the only country in the world deliberately kept out of the Internet.

This is not the sort of thing that shows up in satellite photographs. Whether in CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, or in the East Asian studies department of a university, people usually analyze North Korea from afar. They don't stop to think that in the middle of this black hole, in this bleak, dark country where millions have died of starvation, there is also love.

In the 1990s, the United States offered to help North Korea with its energy needs if it gave up its nuclear weapons programme.

All of North Korea is a jail.

In 1984, George Orwell wrote of a world where the only colour to be found was in the propaganda posters. Such is the case in North Korea. Images of Kim Il-sung are depicted in vivid colours. Rays of yellow and orange emanate from his face: he is the sun.