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Comment by SiempreViernes | Hacker News Reader

You are exaggerating, there's always less people out at night in residential areas and its not easy to clearly see furniture inside apartments unless you are firmly into "stalker" distances.

Compare to this picture of Seoul: https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/riverside-apartment...

You can find more here, but most are from further away: https://www.shutterstock.com/search/seoul-night-landscape-re...

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There is no exaggerating the difference in the night photos between NK and SK.

Every window in every building in the NK photo has the same exact lighting, but that isn't how a real city works.

The photos of SK have very different lighting coming from every window, it's a real patchwork of apartments. Different colors, light levels, and textures due to the unique lighting and furniture inside the apartment.

The NK photo is in stark contrast to this, with exactly uniform lighting from every single window in every single building, with all of the lights being on in every window.

It's kind of ridiculous to suggest there's anything similar about these two cities. One is obviously vacant and lit up completely as a show, the other is a real city with real people living real lives.

I was responding to the following statement:

> it looks like every visible unit is empty of any furniture or fittings. Literally no signs of life.

The claim you are refuting is found in another comment, you'll have to jump into another pipe to get to it.

The NK photo is exactly what empty buildings fully lit would look like. There's no furniture in those buildings, they are empty and lit up only for propaganda purposes. Nobody lives or works in those buildings.

>It's kind of ridiculous to suggest there's anything similar about these two cities. One is obviously vacant and lit up completely as a show, the other is a real city with real people living real lives.

It's a new development in Hwasong area, people haven't moved in yet. These are propaganda inauguration photos. Same lighting is what photos of empty new construction suppose to look like. Once people move in, it'll look like a "real city" see pic of Pyongyang Skyline with patchwork of different lighting. Well real relative to NKR in terms of electricity usage.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pyongyang_skyline_at...

Those photos are quite supportive of OP. There's much more realistic diversity in the units: presence of light, color of light, objects blocking the light.

The uniformity in the NK photo is bizarre.

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