North Korea is not able to afford nearly as many bricks as most countries, as the only country willing to sell any bricks to North Korea is China. For this reason, the few bricks that there are in North Korea are reserved for Kim Jong-Un, his closest confidants, and foreign tourists who can bring in currency.
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@@mangonel The seat of this Austrian chairlift was designed to fit two average, fit, western-European sized adults. It can comfortably accommodate four typical, malnourished, North-Korean peasants or one obese glutton.
Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un are discussing their countries, and decide to have a contest to see whose soldiers are more obedient. They are in a hotel at the top of a mountain near a cliff. Vladimir Putin instructs a soldier to run and jump off the cliff. The soldier says "Please Putin, I have a wife and children!" Putin lets him go. Kim Jong Un instructs a soldier to jump. The soldier runs to jump off the cliff. Putin grabs him before he can, telling him not to jump. The soldier says "Please Putin, I have a wife and children!"
Rumour has it fellow North Koreans are constructing a huge ramp that they can jump off of while skiing and then use a paraglider in order to go over the wall.
Developed nations = United States, Canada, N. & W. Europe, Greece, Cyprus, Malta, Israel, S. Korea, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macao. This is basically the map shown at 1:00 with few exceptions such as Patagonia in S. America because of the mountains there.
@Moritz der Echte Yeah, Jefferson did the continent dirty when he referred to the colonies as "united states of America," them being the only independent American nations at the time. But it's hard to imagine it being called anything else
@Moritz der Echte The idea was that we were 'states, united, in America," and Jefferson called us "these united states of America," on the Declaration of Independence and the name just stuck. A description became a name
Here’s the little known story of how skiing was invented: once a US invasion force was invading Korea, and the Korean army was pinned down on a mountain and surrounded by the US imperialists. They were almost out of ammo so the US president said to them in a broadcast: “you are defeated, surrender now so we can impose our imperial might on your weak pathetic country”. Our great leader was so angered by this that he took two kalashnikovs that had the only ammo left, strapped them to his feet, and skiied down the mountain with them and used his toes to pull the triggers, killing every American soldier with perfect accuracy. The president was so scared that he started crying and ran all the way back to America. After this the whole world adopted skiing in recognition of the great leader’s accomplishment. The word “ski” is actually an acronym, meaning “south Korea incineration”, reflecting the world’s greatest hope that the South Korean imperial regime will be destroyed and all Koreans will be united under our great leader.
We actually had four young guys from North Korea in Sweden, Kittellfjäll. They where up here to train for the olympics. Quite crazy and they where obviously supervised and watched at all time but we where able to talk to them ish freely. And also, they where dope at skiing.
The gondola at their ski area came from a ski area called Ischgl in austria, the lift was part of a 2 section system and the lower section was taken out and sold to China. But the upper section is still in Ischgl so you can technically ride one of the lifts at the noth Korean ski area in austria
Really well written. Love the “Western North Korea”. Top notch presentation, even the in video infomercial direction to writer’s own course is well positioned.
"Dear Leader, we need food" "I just built a ski resort for your pleasure" "But we need food" "Uh, I just built you a ski park!!! Are you being ungrateful???" "No, Dear Leader...thank you..."
The funny thing is: Switzerland is actually everything *but* neutral in this case. They have one of the most vigilant attitudes world wide towards north korea and other dictatorial regimes. That's probably why it's an austrian lift, because there are news stories out there that they also tried to aquire a swiss one via China and the swiss government prevented their company from selling to China in the first place. [Switzerland is also famous for arresting the son of libyan dictator Gaddafi when his own staff filed complaints to swiss police that he had abused them during a visit in Switzerland. Libya withdrew a lot of money, their ambassador and their support vote in the UN council and threatened military action, but Switzerland did not budge. They diplomatically convinced the UN to hold a trial in front of a third party tribunal - which was led by a UK judge. This never came to be though, because Libya violated terms of the agreement, so the son was held. Unfortunately, Libya managed to get the staff to withdraw their complaint even though Switzerland had offered them asylum in case they would talk, so the son had to be let go eventually.]
Ummmm... It's called RenMinBi which is roughly translated as people's currency. The unit of which is called the Yuan. Similar to to how the British currency is called Sterling but the units are Pounds.
Honestly if you look at the map it doesn't seem that sky resorts just exist in rich countries, rather ir seems to be associated with higher latitudes and therefore colder climates.
And #4: He is sitting in the *middle* on a two-person lift. If he had skis on sitting like this, he couldn't get off normally, they'd have to stop the lift for him - which, as you know if you have ever been to austria, is the single worst thing you can do as a tourist on a mountain.
@@QemeH the bar that his feet are resting on goes up? You can definitely still get off a lift chair if you're sitting in the middle haha. The reason they'd have to stop the lift for him is in fact because he doesn't have skis on.
@@dariussoohoo I know that it goes up. But how are you letting it go up, if you have long skis on? You would have to "manspread" quite a bit (or form a wide V, which would cross the skis). Which is obviously possible, but a super hard position to push off the lift from in a fluid motion. The lift is definitively designed to have two people on it, each resting *both feet* on *one side* of the T.
@@QemeH Imma just have to assume you don't ski regularly haha. It's pretty common for a skier to sit in the middle of a 2 person chair lift if they are riding alone, to stop the chair from leaning to one side. Also the great thing about skiing.... you're legs are independent lol. It's really not that hard to move them off of the tiny lil bar that they rest on. My skier friends do it all the time, especially now during covid when the chairs and rarely full. You generally lift the bar up well before you push off the chair so there's really no urgency to do it in a "fluid motion".
Just today I realized skiing is considered luxury. I know it's not a budget activity, but still, thanks for this eye-opener, it seems that living in a relatively mountainous country where skiing is a very normal thing gave me a bias.
The other weird thing about the picture of Kim going up the ski lift is that there are no skis on his feet. Most ski lifts require you to have your skis on to go up for safety reasons.
@@henriaasi2102 didn’t hear it. I snowboard, I see it. I didn’t say all cause I’m more than likely wrong, but every lift I’ve ever been to has required you to have your board or your skis on... and now that I’m actually thinking, the people who run the lifts don’t, yeah, I’m just just dumb, lol
@@henriaasi2102 In most jurisdictions there is a max speed at which you can load foot passengers and a separate one for skiers/boarders. You can load foot passengers at a lower speed or while stopped and then speed it up until they get to the other terminal where it can be slowed again for offloading
Eastern European countries had ski resorts during communism, and were affordable and used in general by locals. Regarding to equipment, for example my school had ski equipment that the students could borrow them for free.
FYI: North Korea first wanted to buy Ski Lifts from Switzerland in 2013. It was almost a done deal between a Swiss Company and North Korea until the Swiss Government stepped in. I remember Kim saying that „this is a severe case in hurting the Human Rights“.
I've just realized that the salary in north korea (a literally dictatorship) is 10 times bigger than the one in Argentina (a country that once was in the first world)
Hey Sam, good job on this!! Even if a few details were a bit off, you clearly put in a lot of effort to understand a complicated topic, and I appreciate you.
This channel has taught me many things but one of the main things that it has taught me is that there is stock footage of everything you could possibly think of, then tonnes more that you couldn't think of.
A friend and I were in fact traveling to North Korea in 2017 for a week tour. Our tour guides actually did invite us at the end, to come back in winter to check out their "great skiing opportunities". We thankfully declined.
Hey Wendov... I mean HAI-Guy, how close did you look into the Austrian Ski-Lift thing? There is actually a story going around in Austria, that China copied our domesticly produced Ski-lifts (form the company Doppelmayr). They actually copied them so closely, that they even used the logo. Doppelmayr then only found out once someone related to the company went there and was like "I didnt know doppelmayr sells lifts to china" and then the company was like "neither did we"
The currency of China is spelled "Yuan", but pronounced "Yen." I think that they only spell it differently to differentiate from Japanese Yen. The voice-over got it right, but the caption got it wrong.