From the New York Times Style Section, Sep 1, 2030

Posted At : September 5, 2010 7:29 PM | Posted By : Emanuel Derman

…Despite globalization, New York’s denizens still fondly remember the countries they came from. After the fall of North Korea, in 2015, many upper-class North Koreans were free to emigrate to the United States. Some of them, like the previous generations of Eastern Europeans who came here in the 1990s, sometimes get nostalgic for the lifestyle and system they left behind.

Interviewed outside the Tavern on the Green Condominiums at Central Park yesterday, two fifty-something couples, former residents of Pot’onggang-guy?k, which they nostalgically referred to as the Scarsdale of Pyongyang”, reminisced:

“We had a good life there, you know. America is good, but there are many people without culture. In Pyongyang the skies were clear at night — you could see the stars. It was beautiful. No pollution. The food was wholesome, all locally grown, in season. People could appreciate the small things in life. Everyone who lived near us was cultured; we all loved classical music. We got only the best movies and books. The newsstands weren’t full of trashy magazines, like here.”