North Korea's fake village with painted-on windows

From the South Korean side of the DMZ you can look through binoculars at a tidy North Korean town - bright blue roofs, multicolored walls, a childcare center, schools, a hospital. Kijŏng-dong is a stage set.

The buildings are concrete shells with no glass in the windows, and some of the windows are just painted on. Their lights switch on and off on timers to fake signs of life while caretakers keep the place tidy. Built in the 1950s and aimed straight at the border, the village was meant to tempt South Koreans into defecting to the good life across the line.

When the South put up a 328-foot flagpole in the 1980s, the North answered with a 525-foot one flying a 595-pound flag - for over a decade the tallest flagpole on Earth. Loudspeakers mounted on the buildings blasted propaganda toward the South for up to 20 hours a day, until both Koreas finally agreed to switch them off in 2018.

Previously:

• North Korea's creepy fake civilian village fools no one

• Pretend cities to fool bombers through history

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