Pyongyang Traffic Girls are coming to a mall near you ..............

Wow, they have a mall in North Korea?? This must be some sort of traffic police recuitment setup...

I'm still in shock that NK has a mall.

I'll bet anything that it's named Kim Il-Sung Mall, or Glorious Leader Mall or something like that.

If we can get some translation to what is displayed in that atrium, we may find out exactly where this photo was taken......

It looks like they're about to recieve medals or a promotion or some such thing.

....or possibly some form of disciplinary action. They've been reassigned to directing traffic at the mall with an army guard to watch their every move....

I think it is a promotional thing - you know - look at our brave beautiful Traffic Patrolgirls.

Yes, the Army guy is eyeing the brave beautiful trafficgirls intensely - it looks like he's getting ready to take his uniform off.

I did some investigating and found some info on this mall subject.

While one would think that the North Korean governmemt would give their popular malls grandiose names such as "Glorious Leader Mall", "Mall Of The Peoples Revolution" or the like, what I found was that the stores are actually given extremely drab names like:

Department Store No.1

Pyongyang Department Store No. 2

P'yongyang Children's Department Store

East P'yongyang Department Store

West Pyongyang Department Store

Kwangbok Department Store

Taesong Department Store

etc.


And then I came across this picture, taken obviously in the same mall as was our three traffic Ladies picture.


The picture was taken in 2005, the occasion was the Dear Leader's 64th birthday. (On display are more than 23,000 potted "Kimjongilias", a flower named after Kim Jong-Il. )

Now look at the ceiling. The mall, or store, has a long arching roof.

I searched on Wikimapia for keywords Pyongyang, store and market. The only building that came up that has a roof like the one in the picture is this one:

http://wikimapia.org/#lat=39.0253518&lon=125.6680799&z=18&l=0&m=a&v=2

West Pyongyang Central Market.
So I believe our original post picture was taken at the West Pyongyang Central Market on Sep. 9 2008, the 60th anniversary of the founding of the DPRK.