>>5090718
>sometimes things in NK look old because the styles/tech are lagging
This. Just like with Cuba, everything there looks like its frozen in time from the 1950s. That's the state of their advancement, with a few (but not many) exceptions.
Its almost like North Korea is a sort of Cargo Cult from when the Soviet Union occupied the area and created the state. They're trying their best to immitate the Stalinist USSR because that was the country which birthed them and made them what they are. So that's why a lot of what we see looks like its a copy of the USSR circa the time of Stalin, because that's what it very much is.
And aside from that, they're also impoverished as hell. And also isolated. This has also limited their technological advancement too. It effects even mundane things few people even think about like the quality of those books on that shelf. Books everywhere in the world used to be made like that in the mid-20th century, but you don't see books like that anymore. The quality of paper has changed/improved. The process and technology of making paper, books, printing, and binding it has all improved in various ways. But not in North Korea. They're still doing it however which way Papa Stalin showed them, and its not changed since then.
You also have to remember that even though paper is a cheap thing in any other country, it like anything else is a scarce resource in North Korea. I read on wikipedia that they ran out of paper during the COVID pandemic and couldn't even print money as a result.
