Seen from space, North Korea stands out as a dark area unusually void of city lights.

Astronauts on the International Space Station recorded video of the Korean Peninsula in late January while they were flying over East Asia, Fox News reported.

The lights of the largest cities are visible from space, reflecting their economic value to their respective countries.

But compared with nearby South Korea and Japan, North Korea is almost totally dark and looks like a stretch of water that could link the Yellow Sea and the Sea of Japan, NASA said in a statement.

The country's difficult-to-spot coastline makes sense when per capita power consumption is compared. While South Korea comes in at 10,162 kilowatt hours, North Korea figures at just 739 kilowatt hours, according to Fox News.

Even North Korea's capital city, Pyongyang, isn't much of a spectacle from space despite its population of 3.26 million, the light coming from Pyongyang being about the same as that from smaller towns in South Korea.

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