North Korea, the highly isolated and totalitarian Asian nation, is home to some unusual superlatives, but for many within its borders, living in luxury is far from it.
And what reality has in store for Travis King, the 23-year-old US soldier who defected to North Korea on Tuesday by running across the border yelling “ha ha ha!” during a tour of the area, it is not clear, but it will certainly not be glamorous.
In terms of its strange records, the hermit kingdom, bordering China, Russia and South Korea with a population of 26 million, is home to the 105-story Ryugyong Hotel in Pyongyang.
That is the tallest building in the country and has reportedly never hosted a single guest. It is also one of the tallest unoccupied buildings in the world, and despite construction beginning in 1987, it has not yet been completed.
Even stranger, North Korea is also home to the largest stadium in the world.
The 1989-built May Day Stadium in Pyongyang, which received an update in 2014, fits a staggering 150,000 people inside a magnolia blossom-inspired design.
Pyongyang is also home to its own Arc de Triomphe, similar to the iconic oft-photographed one in Paris, which is the second tallest on Earth behind the Monument to the Revolution in Mexico City.
Hollow appearances aside, it all raises the question of whether King understands what he’s gotten himself into.
North Korea has long been equated with a hunger crisis.
Last month, in secret communications with the BBC, three North Koreans recounted the horrors of watching their neighbors starve to death in a famine that may be worse than that of the 1990s, which killed 3 million residents.
COVID-19 lockdown measures in North Korea meant sealing its borders with Russia and China, which has impacted Chinese imports of grain, fertilizer and machinery.
King is believed to have been detained by the North Korean military, and North Korea is also known for its long-term detention of US citizens.
A recent and tragic example: Otto Warmbier, a 22-year-old student at the University of Virginia, who spent 18 months behind bars there for alleged anti-state acts before returning home in 2017 in a coma.
Warmbier, who confessed to trying to steal a political banner during a tour of North Korea in 2015, died a week after returning to the United States.
Life in North Korea is unsafe in other ways, too.
In 2014, regarding residential property, officials apologized for the collapse of a 23-story apartment building under construction in Pyongyang, apparently caused by improper work and irresponsible supervision.
The building was believed to house approximately 100 families, which meant a high death toll.
For North Korea’s elite, however, life is a long way from tragedy.
In 2022, North Korea’s best-known propaganda TV host, Ri Chun Hi, was gifted a luxurious home in Pyongyang by the country’s leader, Kim Jong Un, for his loyalty to his Workers’ Party and state.
Details of the house are unclear, but images from his publicized tour of the property show an apparently newly built building whose levels are connected by a sweeping staircase.
In reality, rural North Koreans live in poverty.
King, who is in the military, had spent time in US military detention in South Korea and had faced charges of assault and damage to a police vehicle.
King, who was also reportedly “breaking down” over the death of a 6-year-old relative, was scheduled to return to the United States on Tuesday.