An Astronaut's View of the North Korean Electricity Black Hole

North Korea may be a horribly repressive dictatorship by day. At night, it also does a good impression of being nothing – a barren wasteland, an expanse of ocean, a light-devouring black hole.

That's if you look at it from space, as one of the astronauts aboard the International Space Station recently did. This photo from more than 200 miles above the planet's surface shows just what a difference a robust electric grid can make on a country's appearance. To the north is China, blazing out of the darkness like a sea of fire. Below is South Korea, its borders defined as clearly as patterns on a Lite-Brite. And between these two is a big sandwich of darkness with Pyongyang, a city of more than 3 million people, emitting only the faintest smudge of fluorescence.