What is Google’s Android mascot doing in North Korea?
Though North Korea boasts some trappings of technological modernity — a nuclear weapons program, its own internet, smartphones, and tablets — it’s rare to see traces of Silicon Valley in one of the most closed-off countries in the world. So, when stories about the escalating tensions between the Trump administration and North Korea cropped up last week, one widely used image stood out.
The photo depicts a visitor leaning over the banister at Pyongyang’s Mangyongdae Children’s Palace, looking out at a model of the Unha 3 Space Launch vehicle in a space-themed hall. The image has the grand sterility that marks most pictures out of North Korea: the colossal mural, the sparkling clean banister, the eerie sense of emptiness. But there, in the…
