History of the North Korean Army

Okay, this is pretty far from what I usually talk about on this blog, but I also thought it was pretty cool -- it is the US Army's 1952 History of the North Korean Army. It was classified up until 1982 (if I am reading it correctly), and was posted onto the Secrecy News website a couple of days ago.

The profiles of the NK leaders (including Kim Il Sung, of course), beginning on page 90, are especially interesting. Like this fun tidbit:

Non-Communists who know KIM personally describe him as a roughneck, poorly-educated, poor at languages, with little administrative ability. He is, however, an able and ruthless guerrilla leader.

Kunsthalle One-Year Anniversary Party

One of the more interesting artistic spaces in Seoul, imho, is Kunsthalle, the stack of shipping containers located close to the Dosan Park Intersection in Gangnam. And they are having their one-year anniversary party this weekend, April 8-10.


Each day from 5pm until 3am will feature events, music, dancing and plenty more. Saturday will also have brunch from noon to 5pm. Sounds like a lot of fun.

Kunsthalle has hosted a wide range of artistic events and other cool stuff since it opened last April (it was event host to the Korean Music Awards on March 30). Set up by the Berlin artistic group Platoon (they call themselves a "movement"), this is an attempt to blend the artistic and the political into a seamless entity. Or, I suspect, it is a cool way to meet girls. Whatever, I think it is worth checking out and supporting.


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Oh, and over at my main website, I talk about Seoul Fashion Week, the recent article about it in the New York Times, and Korean design in general.