Welcome to Cambodia's Angkor museum, created by a North Korean art factory

Siem Reap, Cambodia

THE giant mural in the foyer depicting a smiling stone face offers a mere taste of the grandiosity within the new Angkor Panorama Museum here. Inside, a 360-degree painted vista covers an area the size of nearly four basketball courts. Over 45,000 figures populate this cyclorama, a depiction of 12th century Angkorian history.

The museum, which opened in December, is a sweeping homage to what historians call one of the greatest cities in the world between the ninth and 15th centuries and the capital of the Khmer empire. But almost everything that went into this building - the money, the concept, the design and the artists - came not from Cambodia but from North Korea, namely, Mansudae, the largest art studio in that country.