What seems like part of an innocent peninsula in the Far East has been described as "the closest you can get to Mars without leaving Earth". It's people are perhaps the only on the planet who believe that Stalinism is ok and that wrestling isn't fixed. It's a wannabe nucluar power and it's leader, Kim Il Jong, learnt English by watching repeats of Star Trek. Welcome to North Korea.

A brief history

Not much is known about the origins of Korea and it's people. It is cut-off from the rest of the world by it's remote location. In the 1800s it's monarchs lead a policy of isolation, earning the country a nickname: "the hermit kingdom".

Dragons played a strong role in early (and even relatively recent) Far East culture, and they continued to do so in Korea. The Koreans that every river and stream had it's own resident dragon which guarded it's home.

For centuries female divers called haenyo have collected seaweed and sea cucumbers off the coast of Cheju Island. A haenyo can dive to 18 metres and hold her breath for up
to four minutes.

North Korea separated itself from the south in 1948. In 1950 North Korean troops, armed with Russian weapons, invaded South Korea. The USA led a UN force to stop them. On the 29th August, 4000 British soldiers joined many more Americans, and they occupied most of Korea
(both countries) in less than six weeks.

Then the Chinese sent in troops to stop the Americans. By 6th December 200,000 Chinese troops had swarmed across the border. For a year the war dragged on with little happening, until the city of Suam was levelled on the 8th May, 1952. The war eventually ended on 27th July, 1953. South Korea had been saved, after 2 million people had died.

The country's first communist dictator, Kim Il Sung, once gave his son a goldmine for his birthday. North Korean children are taught that Kim Il Sung invented the toaster and car, and was the first man on the moon. When he died in 1994 there was nation-wide mourning, which is surprising considering the stranglehold he and his son have had over North Korea.

Since inheriting dictatorship of the country, Kim Il Jong has:

• ordered the kidnapping of an actress and film director to help improve North Korea's film
  industry (in 1978)
• allegedgly ordered two bomb attacks on South Korea
• blackmailed the West with nuclear weapons to get cheap food from the USA (500,000 people died of starvation in the 1990s).

Geography

North Korea is a communist state 46,541 square miles big. It has a population of 22,600,000 people, with 487 people to each square mile. It's currency is the Won, and has no religions to call it's own, as religions are discouraged by the state.

A lot of North Korea is mountainous, with copper and zinc being mined from the mountains. Other majors reserves are of iron ore, tungsten, magnesite and graphite. The highest mountain is Mount Paektu on the Chinese border, at 2744m. The country's population lives mainly on the west coast, where the land is flat. The plains are a bit infertile, and in the 1990s the country has been in a semi-continuous famine. Starving country-dwellers have been known to eat dogs, grass, acorns and wild plants to survive.

The capital of North Korea, Pyongyang, was the site of a Chinese colony in the 2nd century BC. In Korean, p'hyon means 'plain'. Seeing as Pyongyang is sited in the north-west of North Korea, the naming of the city becomes obvious. Average temperatures in the city (and most of Korea) are 24.4ºC (76ºF) in July, to approx -10ºC in winter. Temperatures in the south are a few degrees higher in winter.

Much of the west has been deforested, with forests now confined to the middle of the country. This puts species of leopards, tigers, bears, wolves and deer at risk. The species of trees in the forests are spruce, pine, larch, fir and cedar. Birdlife in the country is predominantly cranes, herons, eagles and snipes.

Though perhaps slightly eccentric, the majority of North Koreans are extremely patriotic. Seeing as there are only two state owned TV channels and you have to register to read a book, you can forgive the people for being slightly ill-informed.