North Korea is the “world’s most surprising economic success story,” said The Wall Street Journal. Despite being tightly controlled, technologically backward and subject to crippling Western trade embargoes, the country has recorded year-over-year GDP growth of more than 3%, far exceeding many advanced economies.

What has changed?
Five years after making a rare admission that the nation’s economic policies were falling short, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un told the Workers’ Party Congress in a February speech that “everything has fundamentally changed.” But while he may have taken the credit, he “has Russia and China to thank” for the boom, said Forbes.

North Korea has earned an estimated $14 billion providing military support to the Kremlin during the Ukraine war and hundreds of millions in trade and foreign aid from China. North Korea’s “emergence as a modern-day pirate state on the back of its lucrative cryptocurrency theft operations” has also helped, said Shreyas Reddy, of the analysis firm Korea Risk Group, to the Financial Times.

What does it mean for North Korea?
The Hermit Kingdom has used some of this windfall to modernise Pyongyang, building high-rise apartment blocks and brightly lit shopping districts filled with luxury and high-tech goods. Cars, once a rarity, are increasingly common and frequently electric and can now be hailed with ride-sharing apps.

Outside the capital, the regime’s ambitious “20x10” regional development initiative aims to build new factories, housing and public infrastructure in 20 counties every year over 10 years. All of this is an “incredible accomplishment for a country that’s this poor,” said regional expert Stephan Haggard to the Wall Street Journal.

Can it last?
About 17 million of North Korea’s 27 million citizens are still believed to live in extreme poverty, The U.N. estimates that more than 40% of the country’s people are undernourished. 

And analysts are sceptical that Kim can turn the short-term gains from the war in Ukraine into sustainable long-term growth. The country is in the throes of a “Russian sugar high,” said Peter Ward, of the Sejong Institute in Seoul, to the FT. It’s fueling a slew of “shovel-ready, exciting-looking projects that will catch the eye of the leader but aren’t necessarily sustainable.”

The U.S. is plagued by a housing crisis. One possible solution is manufactured housing, which can be produced quickly and relatively cheaply. A new federal housing law could supercharge the sector’s expansion. But to succeed, manufactured housing must overcome the stigmas against mobile homes and trailer parks.

Federal law, local codes
Manufactured homes are quietly “filling the suburbs,” said The Washington Post. The dwellings were long looked down upon as “low-quality, less-safe housing” that was mostly “limited to trailer parks and rural properties” for decades, but higher-quality models are starting to spring up. Cost is a big factor, as the average price of a manufactured home is just $90,700.

Prebuilt housing is the “most efficient, effective way to allow homeownership” in the U.S., said Joel Farkas of Fruition Communities, which is planning an 8,000-unit neighborhood in the Denver suburbs, to the Post. The median single-family home price now runs more than $400,000, and elevated mortgage rates are “suppressing housing turnover, constricting supply and inflating prices,” said the progressive think tank Groundwork Collaborative. 

Sears prebuilt home kits in the early 20th century made housing widely available and relatively inexpensive for generations of Americans. A proposed program to “deliver 500,000 high-quality, factory-built homes” across the country would create a “permanently affordable” source of housing that harkens back to those Sears homes, said the Groundwork Collaborative. 

The new federal housing law does not go as far as Groundwork’s proposal. But the legislation “aims to slash some of the red tape” that has hindered construction of manufactured housing, said The Wall Street Journal. 

‘More support’ needed
One obstacle is that the feds “can only do so much” in a country where housing policies are largely set at the state and local levels, said the Journal. And manufactured housing still has its own “affordability problem” even with the red tape stripped out, said Politico. 

Loans to buy such housing are different from regular mortgages and often feature interest rates “near double digits” that can “lock out many prospective buyers,” said the outlet. Now, some members of Congress want “more federal government support” to make factory-built home loans cheaper.

People wait near the Silver Bridge amid flash flooding in Arizona’s Grand Canyon National Park. At least two people are dead and more than 15 others are unaccounted for after significant floods destroyed footbridges, “forcing evacuations and prompting officials to ask the public for help locating hikers,” said KTLA.
Wieke De Boer / Reuters

Based on Anthony Bourdain’s first and most beloved memoir, “Kitchen Confidential” (2000), this summer’s “coming-of-age” film “Tony” is set during a summer restaurant job that “helped shape the beloved late chef and TV host into the icon he ultimately became,” said Deadline. Bourdain (pictured above with chef Eric Ripert) is considered “one of the best food memoirists of all time,” said Izzy Titherington at The i Paper. And these chef-writers follow in Bourdain’s tell-all food-steps.

‘Accidentally on Purpose’ 
Kristen Kish “interlaces kitchen anecdotes, the rigors of culinary school and restaurant life with deeper reckonings about identity, belonging and love,” said Saskia Kemsley at The Standard. She writes “candidly” about coming out, the “pressures and pleasures of professional kitchens” and how “comfort can take shape in both food and relationships.” 

‘The Devil in the Kitchen’
Marco Pierre White gives us an insight into the “obsession and sacrifice” behind his journey as the “youngest-ever chef in the U.K. (and the youngest anywhere at the time) to earn three Michelin stars and then the first to give them all back,” said Titherington. “The Devil in the Kitchen: Sex, Pain, Madness and the Making of a Great Chef” follows him through his working-class upbringing in Leeds and his subsequent “rise as one of the culinary world’s original rock-star chefs.”

‘Salt, Sweat & Steam’
In Brigid Washington’s “fast-moving coming-of-age” memoir, there are “injuries, flirtations, squabbles, name-drops and dishes gone awry,” said Bettina Makalintal at Eater. “Salt, Sweat & Steam: The Fiery Education of an Accidental Chef” has been described as “‘The Devil Wears Prada’ for the ‘yes chef’ generation,” as Washington explores her “grueling” days at the Culinary Institute of America.