North Korea is the weird kid at the back of the class who keeps making disturbing drawings in his notebook and trying to convince everyone that he’s the coolest. Still, other countries give North Korea a lot of gifts. Some are presented to the current leader, Kim Jong-un, but a surprising number are still given to Kim Il-sung, a guy who has been dead since 1994, and Kim Jong-il, who died in 2011. The gifts are usually housed at the International Friendship Exhibition, a museum of the bizarre located two hours northeast of Pyongyang.
What do other world leaders get dead and crazy people who already have nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons? Why, a weird-looking Olympic bear, of course.
Misha the bear was the 1980 Summer Olympics mascot. Held in Moscow soon after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the 1980 Olympics were the only Games boycotted by the U.S.
If the situation calls for something a little grander, North Korean leaders could always use a third personal train. The first was gifted to North Korea by Soviet General Chairman Joseph Stalin and the second came from Chinese Chairman Mao Zedong. They seem to share a paint job, but the Chinese train has better decorations around the windows. Stalin also gave the regime a bulletproof limousine.
Nicaragua’s Sandinista rebels showed their love of Kim Il-sung by gifting him this not-at-all-creepy statue of a crocodile serving drinks.
That’s not the only dead animal on display in the museum. An anonymous Canadian supposedly gave the North Korean leaders a polar bear skin with the head still attached while the leader of Madagascar presented them with a fossilized snail.
This dead bear was a gifted by Romanian communist leader Nicolae Ceausescu. No one is sure why it was presented with a lazy eye.
Bears are a repeating symbol in the museum. Here, a family of bears plays inside of a large egg because reasons.
And then there’s the plate with an animal walking off of it.
The exhibitions contain many weapons including a hunting rifle from Vladimir Putin and this sword from the N-Trans Group, a Russian transportation company.
Of course, life in North Korea isn’t all about awesome crocodile statues and sweet swords. Some argue that the money expended to build the grand museum would have been better spent feeding starving citizens. They’re probably just jealous of the more than 100,000 total gifts presented to the Kim dynasty.