Trashy story

Representation pic

When the waves bring trash onto the beaches of front-line South Korean islands, Kang Dong Wan can often be found hunting for what he calls his "treasure" - rubbish from North Korea that provides a peek into a place that's shut down to most outsiders. "This can be very important material because we can learn what products are manufactured in North Korea and what goods people use there," said Kang, 48, a professor at South Korea's Dong-A University.

He was forced to turn to the delicate information-gathering method because Covid-19 has made it much harder for outsiders to find out what's going on inside North Korea, one of the world's most cloistered nations even without pandemic-led border closures.

The variety, amount and increasing sophistication of the trash, he believes, confirms North Korean state media reports that leader Kim Jong Un is pushing for the production of various kinds of consumer goods and a bigger industrial design sector to meet the demands of his people and improve their livelihoods.

"Current North Korean residents are a generation of people who've come to realise what the market and economy are. Kim can't win their support if he only suppresses and controls them while sticking to a nuclear development programme," Kang said, adding, "He needs to show there are some changes in his era."

Kang said he was amazed to see dozens of different kinds of colourful packaging materials, each for certain products like seasonings, ice cream bars, snack cakes and milk and yogurt products. Many carry a variety of graphic elements, cartoon characters and lettering fonts. Some still seem out of date by Western standards, and are apparent copycats of South Korean and Japanese designs.

Kang recently published a book based on his work titled, Picking up North Korean Trash on the Five West Sea Islands.

Ocean beds as resting place

A company in Florida needs your dead body to fight climate change

A not-for-profit organisation in Florida has an eco-friendly way to restore coral reefs while simultaneously providing an eternal resting place to those whose final wish is to use their remains to benefit marine habitats impacted by climate change. The company creates a reef ball with the cremated remains of a person (or pet) and drops them to the ocean floor to provide marine life with a new ecosystem. Todd Barber and Don Brawley were college roommates at the University of Georgia in the late 1980s and routinely went scuba diving off the Florida Keys. They noticed that the local reefs were deteriorating, and came up with the unique idea.

America has two of the world's kinkiest cities

A new study has ranked the sexiest cities in the world and two American hotspots have made the cut. London is rated as the city with the kinkiest energy in The Bottle Club's latest study where they ranked the sexiest cities on a 40-point scale. Las Vegas follows shortly behind London's near-perfect score of 39 and New York City is in the top four with a score of 29. In order to determine each city's sexiness score, many factors were taken into account - number of kinky people, sex events, and porn stars named after the city.

Diva dog goes viral on TikTok

A "diva" dog proves that he's the head of the house when he throws a temper tantrum because his dinner is few minutes behind schedule. Lizzie Colden's impatient two-year-old Staffordshire bull terrier, Alfie, struts around the house and "dramatically" paws at his food bowls when she forgets to feed him on time. Colden, 28, recently posted a TikTok showing Alfie tapping his food and water bowls as he clamours for his dinner. Colden revealed that he has a lot of fans because he's a "bit nutty".

60-year-old inhales dentist's drill bit

A routine trip to the dentist was anything but normal - after an Illinois man inhaled the dentist's drill bit and had to go to the hospital to get it removed last month. Tom Jozsi, 60, said that he was at the dentist getting his tooth filled when he was told that he swallowed the tool.

Pig named Putin gets a name change

An animal park in Bavaria that had named one its wild boars Putin due to its Russian genetic heritage held a ceremony to rechristen the hairy hog with a German name following Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Eckard Mickish, operator of the park said that he named the boar Putin three years ago.

Python found chilling at Walmart store

Animal control officials in Indiana said they were left scratching their heads when a ball python was found "chilling on a shelf" at a Walmart store. In a Facebook post, City of Bloomington Animal Care and Control said, "A good Samaritan saw him and notified county officers to pick him up."