VISITORS TO North Korea always return with at least one stark image from the last bastion of Stalinism. It's usually one that highlights for them the dysfunctional nature of the isolated state.
For Aron Harilela it was the silence. He first sensed it at a giant statue of the 'great leader', the late Kim Il-sung in the capital Pyongyang, where North Koreans honour the communist state's founder by laying flowers as school children, regimented into a straight row, sweep the ground.
With the monument surrounded by images depicting the Korean people overcoming Japanese occupation and developing their socialist 'paradise', the scion of the wealthy, hotel-owning Harilela family realised the society and its people were mindlessly devoted to these themes.
'To me, what was even more shocking was that I found it to be one of the quietest societies I have ever been to,' said Mr Harilela, recounting his visit as a member of what was described as the first official Hong Kong business delegation to Pyongyang.
'The children swept in silence. People walked on the streets and did not seem to talk to each other. When some of us took a walk around the streets at night, people were sitting in the parks talking to one another in hushed tones.
'Maybe people were so quiet because, before the turmoil that is happening now, there were no contradictions in North Korean society. Everything was made to plan. Everything was in order.'