The third of three video blogs I produced while visiting North Korea for Reuters in 2012 to report on celebrations surrounding the 100th birthday of the country's founding father Kim Il-sung. Young Kim Jong-un presided over his first military parade since becoming the country's leader. The military and civilian celebrations aimed to showcase the country as the "strong and prosperous nation" it had pledged to become by the end of 2012. But grinding poverty and malnutrition in the countryside, which I saw on a Reuters Alertnet trip the year before, highlighted the gulf between the slogans and the reality.
