Who would have thought there might be a romantic upside to living under a repressive regime?  Barbara Demick, the Beijing Bureau Chief at the LA Times, had an excerpt from her upcoming book, Nothing To Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea running in the magazine over the weekend.

Pretty much the entire country is starved for not just food but power (see map above).  A lack of electricity, though, makes it much easier to choreograph a romantic rendezvous—especially when being seen in public might damage a career prospect, or, in the case of the woman discussed in Demick’s account, damage a virtuous reputation.

...their dates consisted of long walks in the dark. There was nothing else to do anyway; by the time they started dating in the early 1990s, no restaurants or cinemas were operating because of the lack of power.

They would meet after dinner.  The girl had instructed her boyfriend not to knock on the door and risk questions from her older sisters or younger brother.  The clatter of the neighbors masked the sound of his footsteps.  He would wait hours for her.  It didn?