"This looks just like Pyongyang," our 24-year-old guide exclaimed at the Grand People's Study House, the downtown central library built in 1982, where students frequent to study for their examinations.
But what she had been looking at was a panorama of Singapore's city skyline in 1981, as published in the then Port of Singapore Authority annual report that year that had somehow wound up in the North Korean library catalogue.
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A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Straits Times on October 02, 2018, with the headline Pyongyang or Singapore? ST correspondents struck by how North Korean capital reminds them of home. Subscribe