SKIRMISHER

[Good citizens: Pedestrians obediently use the underpass and a policewoman stands ready at an intersection just in case some motor vehicle actually passes by like, say, one day ten years from now.]

There are five things that struck me about Christopher Morris’s North Korea photoessay on Time magazine.

1. 1. It seems nobody’s in the mood to smile and everything’s bleak. They should visit Manila; people here snigger all the time even when somebody’s robbed, stabbed, smashed by boulders, or even when Jinggoy Estrada says something serious.
2. 2. Every day seems a “slow day”–with restaurants and streets starkly empty
3. 3. Everybody seems kind of slammed, with faces that say, “Man, I’m kind of slammed.”
4. 4. People wear what looks like funeral garb.
5. 5. Look, there are actually buildings! Wow. And is that road really asphalt?

Now, Mr. Morris, tell me you didn’t really wait for the bad, boring days to settle in Pyongyang before shooting these pictures. Because somebody might say this is just one of those Western black propaganda to put handsome Kim Jong Il in bad fuckin’ light. You might piss off El Supremo and make his hair turn into real snakes. That happens.

And I’m not sure if it’s just me, but why is it that almost every photo of North Korea I see on the web looks like one of those scenes in Darren Arronofsky’s grainy black and white film called Pi? It’s just super depressing.

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