While everyone else watches the Olympics, Asia's weirdest sporting event transpires in the world's most secretive country

In the capital Pyongyang, your tour group (there’s no other way to enter but on an officially sanctioned tour) will cheerily clap along as your shy guide, exhibiting all the undisguised nervousness of a karaoke virgin, balances at the front of the bus while warbling the cheery Korean song “Pan Gap Seumnida,” or “Pleased To Meet You.” Should your country ever cross swords with hers, however, rest assured that she would have no qualms about mowing you down with an AK-47. The DPRK is permanently on a war footing, and all outsiders are viewed with suspicion.

And while China has marshaled its masses to provide cheap labor for the rest of the world, thereby becoming an economic superpower, the DPRK invests an estimated 200 million of its people’s man-hours each year in a choreographed extravaganza of gymnastics, music and dancing.