1Kim Il-Sung
North Korea uses a different calendar than the rest of the world, with year 1 indicating the birth of Kim Il-Sung.
2. North Korean authorities objected to the 2015 documentary "Under the Sun" after discovering that the film crew had smuggled unapproved footage. The camerawoman put the memory card in her trousers when she went to the toilet in order to keep the footage.
3. North Korea uses a system called Songbun, which is a national system that ranks citizens' loyalty. It can determine what rights a person gets, including the amount of food.
4. North Korea's International Friendship Exhibition houses gifts presented to former leaders Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il from various foreign dignitaries. It includes a VHS copy of the movie Space Jam.
5. North Korea wanted to be paid in wheat for allowing a 7'8½" (2.35m) tall Ri Myung-Hun to play in the NBA.
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6North Korean trucks
Some trucks in North Korea are powered by burning charcoal because the price of oil is too high for most citizens.
7. North Korea has its own version of the Ten Commandments called The Ten Principles for the Establishment of a Monolithic Ideological System which consists of total and complete devotion to Kim Il-Sung.
8. The majority of North Korean clothes are made from Vinylon, a synthetic fiber made of coal and rocks. It is the only country in the world to do so.
9. North Korea runs a multi-billion dollar crime syndicate called Bureau 39 that commits illegal activities throughout the world. It has a slush fund of up to $5 Billion and is involved in Meth and Heroin distribution. Until 2004 North Korea even had an official bank in Vienna, which they used for money-laundering, trade with radioactive substances and was linked to “Bureau 39.”
10. Kim-Jong-Il's favorite drink was Hennessy, and he spent around $1 million a year on it.
11Propaganda Village
There is a North Korean village just across the border with South Korea nicknamed "Propaganda Village". It is apparently uninhabited and for many years it had speakers that broadcast propaganda across the border 24/7.
12. North Koreans must abide by one of 28 approved haircuts. Unmarried women must have short hair, but married women have many more options, and the hair of young men should be less than 2 inches long, older men can go as long as 2¾.
13. In 1953, a North Korean pilot named No Kum-Sok defected in his MiG-15, allowing the Americans 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.
14. The Ryugyong Hotel in Pyongyang, North Korea is 330 meters (1,080 feet) tall and was intended to be world's tallest hotel but these days it is the tallest unoccupied building in the world.
15. When a North Korean gymnast named 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.
16North Korean teenagers
The average North Korean teenager is 8 inches shorter than the average South Korean of the same age, due entirely to malnourishment and privation.
17. North Korea captured a U.S. ship, the U.S.S. Pueblo, in 1968. North Korea maintains the ship as a tourist attraction and propaganda symbol to this day.
18. In 2013, North Korea executed 80 people for secretly watching the ABC drama “Desperate Housewives” using mp3 players, hard drives, and DVDs.
19. Kim Jong-Il's personal sushi chef Kenji Fujimoto escaped from North Korea in 2001 by telling the supreme leader he wanted to buy a sea urchin to cook for him. He subsequently wrote a memoir about his experiences with Kim Jong-Il.
20. Kim Jong-Il's eldest son, Kim Jong-Nam, was widely considered to be the heir apparent to the title of Supreme Leader of North Korea until he attempted to enter Japan with a fake passport so that he could go to Disneyland.
21Han Hyon-Gyong
In 2012, a 14-year old North Korean girl named Han Hyon-Gyong drowned while trying to save portraits of Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-Il, and the government renamed her school after her.
22. In 2011, a drunk North Korean man passed out on a wooden board to find himself in South Korea the next day as a flood washed him and the board to an island controlled by South Korea.
23. North Korea is the only country to have been caught cheating twice at the International Mathematical Olympiad.
24. In North Korea, since every political candidate is chosen by the ruling party, there is only one name on a ballot. A voter may cross off the candidate's name to vote against him but must do so with a red pen next to the ballot box in sight of electoral officials.
25. In 2004-2005, North Korea had a show called "Let's trim our hair in accordance with the socialist lifestyle" that was a part of a North Korean government propaganda campaign promulgating grooming and dress standards.
