![]() “Then later on, he asked a member of the audience for a cigarette and a lighter. ![]() He would also break into a little tune for her and she would circle round as if she was dancing,” she added. “She would perform little tricks like touch her nose, bow and raise her arms to greet visitors. The exhibit is simple, with a moat separating people from the enclosure, and a handful of visitors from school children to the elderly were in that area as the keeper shouted instructions at Dallae. In an email with TIME, she described how the scene unfolded. AP noted that renovations to the zoo, built in 1959, began two years back in an effort by leader Kim Jong Un to construct additional leisure centers around Pyongyang. Read more: Peek inside North Korea through a new set of eyesĪlongside colleagues who were visiting on a business trip, Wong and Talmadge went to the zoo that had reopened over the summer and now welcomes thousands of daily visitors. Part of that includes covering mass staged events, but she also hopes to lift the veil and focus on daily life or the quieter moments. She and Eric Talmadge, the AP’s Pyongyang bureau chief, try to make monthly visits into the country for about 10 days each. The zoo actually dates back to 1959, when Kim Il Sung, the nation’s first leader and the grandfather of Kim Jong Un, ordered it built on the outskirts of the city.Īccording to its official history, the zoo started off with only 50 badgers.Wong, based in Singapore, became the organization’s lead photographer in North Korea in 2014. Renovations for the new zoo began in 2014, as part of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s efforts to create more modern and impressive structures and leisure centres around the capital. The zoo also has performances featuring other animals trained to do tricks, including a monkey that slam dunks basketballs, dogs trained to appear as though they can do addition on subtraction on an abacus and doves that fly around and land on a woman skating on an indoor stage. The zoo is pulling in thousands of visitors a day with a slew of attractions ranging from such typical fare as elephants, giraffes, penguins and monkeys to a high-tech natural history museum with displays showing the origins of the solar system and the evolution of life on Earth.Īnother of the most popular attractions that might come as a surprise to foreign visitors is the dog pavilion, which has everything from German shepherds to Shih Tzus. The trainer also prompted her to touch her nose, bow thank you and do a simple dance. Though such a sight would draw outrage in many other locales, it seemed to delight visitors who roared with laughter on Wednesday (Oct 19) as the chimpanzee, one of two at the zoo, sat puffing away as her trainer egged her on. ![]() If a lighter is not available, she can light up from lit cigarette if one is tossed her way. Thrown a lighter by a zoo trainer, the chimpanzee lights her own cigarettes. They insist, however, she does not inhale. PYONGYANG - Pyongyang’s newly opened zoo has a new star: Azalea, the smoking chimpanzee.Īccording to officials at the newly renovated zoo, which has become a favourite leisure spot in the North Korean capital since it re-opened in July, the 19-year-old female chimpanzee, whose name in Korean is “Dallae”, smokes about a pack a day.
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