Theatrics are part of the DPRK way. As I wrote when I returned from North Korea,

everyone in the DPRK is, in some sense, an extension and a reflection of the state. The boundary between genuine and calculated, actor and citizen, is—or at least feels—much thinner in North Korea.

And no more so than in the announcement of Kim Jong-il’s death on state television this morning. The news, dripping with histrionics and reminiscent of Kim Il-sung’s death 17 years ago, was another performance in the hermit kingdom’s grand repertoire.

Below is the “special broadcast” announcing that the Dear Leader has died in Pyongyang.

Photo credit: Andrew Lombardi

North Korea is a staggering place. There’s no other way to describe it. It’s an eerie, perverse, brutal country — this we know well — but it’s also tender, funny and entertaining in a way I have never encountered. It’s the only country where you will visit the corpse of a dictator who still reigns, see a 100,000-person acrobatic spectacle, enjoy a hilarious round of dick jokes over afternoon spelunking, take walks with starving child soldiers, then finish up the day at a shooting range that serves alcohol — and all of this on a peninsula that boasts an enviable gene pool and one of the craziest chapters in history.

If that sounds absurd, it was. And I haven’t even told you about the citizen actors or stand-up comedy yet. The seven days we spent there were insane — and insanely interesting. We were on a straight-up high for a good two months after returning to the States. I think I still am.

Which is why North Korea is the perfect place for a bachelor party.

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Crumbling from end to end and punctured by gaping holes, Pyongyang’s massive 12-lane Youth Hero Highway is a free-for-all for the few dozen vehicles that actually use it. Trucks, buses and the occasional sedan weave in and out of oncoming traffic in order to avoid the sickly workers stooping to repair the road, a symbol of the mindless excess and abject failure of North Korea’s infrastructure. The road was built, James Bond Villain explained, by students and people under the age of 30. It is a point of national pride.

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According to an envoy I met in a park in Pyongyang, there is one informant for every three citizens in the DPRK. To put that penetration into perspective, the East German Stasi, one of the most pervasive police organizations in history, boasted one informant for every ten citizens.

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There was a point in my trip to North Korea when the gravitas and decorum of the country devolved into madness and hilarity. That point was the Train Museum.

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On the escalator into Pyongyang’s mass-transit underworld, I asked one of our guides why the subway is built so deep.

“Loose soil,” she responded, gripping my elbow.

“Cool in the summer, warm in the winter,” said another guide.

Structural requirements aside, the subway was clearly designed with war in mind. The tunnels double as a massive bomb shelter or vast storage space when the inevitable occurs. We inquired until one of our guides relented.

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Imagine the sight of one-hundred thousand humans executing the world’s most impeccable live performance. This is the Arirang Festival, also known as the Mass Games, dubbed the greatest acrobatic spectacle on earth.

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“Good-a evening lay-deez and a-gentlemen,” said our government guide in a vague pastiche of American talk shows. Through the cold eyes of a James Bond villain, he stared at me. “Welcome to Pyongyang.”

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