Esther Han, a medical student from Texas, said the most impressive part of her Pyongyang Project trip was the Airing Festival, a roughly 100,000-person strong dance and gymnastics performance dedicated to the nation’s founder Kim Il-sung.
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“It was definitely one of those events that could kind of take your breath away,” she says.
But the 26-year-old said she noticed what she described as a number of “red flags” throughout her visit.
At one point during a tour through a computer lab at Kim Il-sung University, students stared blank-faced into machines that were turned off, she said, adding that some rooms in the university even felt unused and smelled of fresh wood and paint.
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