In the land of no smiles

Posing as a businessman looking to open a chocolate factory,documentary photographer Tomas van Houtryve entered North Korea to take some brilliant shots of everyday life in Pyongyang Ht-Harry's Place)

This piece in Foreign Policy shows the realities of what he describes as the world's last gulag.

Pyongyang has been in the news in recent weeks as its regime launched a prototype rocket which the West has interpreted as being the first stage in a capability to launch nuclear weapons.

For more information on North Korea it is worth reading Glyn Ford's piece in Time this week.In an article entitled Pausing for Mr Obama,Glyn describes a country in the balance

Pyongyang is trying to build a “strong and prosperous” country by 2012, the centenary of Kim Il-sung’s birth. The increasingly prominent Workers’ Party is united on the slogan but divided on causality. Is it to be strength through prosperity or prosperity through strength – an issue that has divided communists for almost a century?