Scholar uses trash as treasure to study life in North Korea

Gotta admire his ingenuity.

crafty communists and their cheesy tactics, probably make these plastic packages just to dump them into the sea and wow South Korea with their instant lamen and strawberry milk

Excellent work! Congratulations.

Very clever idea. i applaud his scholarly ingenuity.

“This can be very important material because we can learn what products are manufactured in North Korea and what goods people use there,” Kang, 48, a professor at South Korea’s Dong-A University, told The Associated Press in a recent interview.

Did he find any nuclear waste?

There are collectors of consumer packaging materials from different periods of their own history, from the 70s and 80s right back to the 19thC century. I have some 70s UK stuff and retained packaging material from all sorts of things whenever I was in Japan, carefully cleaning and flattening it and taking it back home with me.

Essentially, he is an archaeologist, building an understanding of a culture from the bits left behind. Archaeologists love excavating waste tips as they are rich sources of finds.

Excellent research, well conceived. Good luck to him. An English language edition of his book would be welcome.