this is the country's largest fertilizer factory which kim il sung's honored with more than 30 visits. it's recently been modernized in a bid to increase the productivity of the country's co-operative farms. co-operative farms like this one with its familiar ox cards geese and ducks and the omnipresent red flags. i. another visit to a collective farm a year later. it's raining and everyone has gone to seek shelter. the productivity chart proudly displays the farms yields. we take shelter in the living room of one of the farm workers she tells us about the bitter cold winters hot summers and the fact breaking work in the rice fields her son is 14 small for his age she admits but the family has been through hard times. her son was born just as the great famine was ending. behind her one of the country's ubiquitous historical melodrama says playing on t.v. . then she launches into a vivid description of her visits to pyongyang. who sent him to the nothing in addition to the muslim of the great need as i visited the museum of the revolution the amusement park near the neatest birthplace t

main roads pass through kim il sung square. it's obligatory to slow down when passing in front of the portraits of the great leaders so the temptation to reach for our cell phones and cameras is high. we observe the portraits as they observe us. during our 1st visits here we were like many foreigners and treat by their omnipresence. but the more often we visited the less we noticed them. through the same does not apply to north koreans cyclists are required to dismount from their bikes and look upon the statues of their leaders. cars must slow down. the 6 6 passers by turn to gaze at the images. shortly after kim jong il's death through my young upper class woman trying to explain what the leaders meant to her. it's a bit like you with your jesus she said except for us jesus would also be a member of the family. in the heat of the summer we occasionally saw a fan cooling the portrait of the leaders. north korean art like this fresco near the entrance to a sports shoe factory is designed to protect the country as the party would