Some things in this video you’ll also find in SK even today:

• drivers hanging around and smoking at bus stations
• large apartment buildings
• older guys walking with their hands behind their backs
• poker hat-style visors
• There’s plenty of regimentation in SK these days as well. Kids will practice in the dirt fields outside their schools just like you see in this video, sometimes for hours (although thankfully for only a week or two out of the year). They’ll just be using SK flags instead of red ones. It’s a holdover in both countries from the colonial period.
• The military is pretty present in SK as well, especially in and around Seoul. It was honestly disturbing for the Americans to flaunt themselves there (speaking as an American). I never saw women in uniform while I was in SK, however. (I lived there for 8 years.)
• Honestly, throughout this video I found myself thinking that I wouldn’t know it was NK unless someone told me. I would have thought it was a video of SK shot in the ‘80s. It made me feel nostalgic for SK. I haven’t been there in three years.
• Cars don’t wait for pedestrians in SK either. Still looks like NK is a way better place to be a pedestrian. Honestly felt sorry for the traffic lady. My guess is that the cars usually ignore(d) them.
• Both cultures are pretty macho. I only saw women taking care of babies in this video. (Scratch that, just saw a dude carrying a baby @ 11:58.) It’s rare for men to do this in SK but it happens and can sometimes be seen. I had little kids while I was there and sometimes older Korean women would actually point at me, laugh, and exclaim that it was strange for a man to be caring for a child. These were also total strangers. It reminds me of Luna Oi’s video about the “dark” side of living in communist Vietnam—how people are constantly telling you what to do. Having a more communal society means that strangers will treat you like family, for better or for worse.
• As a lib I swallowed a lot of CIA propaganda about NK. I’m pretty sure not all of it was nonsense, but it’s absurd to blame NK entirely for its problems. Ending the blockade and signing a peace deal would probably turn NK into something very similar to Vietnam today, but this is kind of a sword that cuts both ways. It would undermine private capital in SK and Japan, but it would also probably bring NK closer to the West. Correct me if I’m wrong, but Vietnam appears to be allied with the USA since they’ve almost always had kind of a difficult relationship with China and wish to use the USA as a counterweight.
• I believe this video comes from the end of what North Koreans refer to as “the good old days,” at least in one or two videos I saw shot inside the country—when Kim Il Sung was still in charge and Kim Jong Il had yet to assume official leadership of the country.

Some things you won't see in SK, aside from the obvious red flags:

• people riding around in the backs of trucks
• farmers working out in the open with pickaxes. There are plenty of farmers in SK but they're highly mechanized.
• These people strike me as being pretty relaxed. In SK everyone is in a fucking frantic rush, all the time. Every morning you'll see hundreds of people sprinting as fast as they can in subway stations. It's insane.

oh yeah, its "born wrong time and place" time 😎