Distance stars

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Distance stars is a paint marking on North Korean (DPRK) vehicles displaying the longevity of the picticular vessel. It can be seen in this photo:

http://www.pyongyang-metro.com/pytrolleybus.jpeg

( 40+ stars @ 50,000/star = 2,000,000 Km! )

with this explaination:

"A majority of North Koreans cars and trucks were extremely old and worn out. In fact, the DPRK looked like a huge museum of the automobile history. In the streets of Pyongyang, one would often encounter cars of 30 or 40 years whose sides were covered with red stars, each star symbolising it having travelled 50 000 kilometres. Some cars sported more than a dozen such stars, symbolising a running life of 600,000 km or even more! One could only wonder how much effort North Korean drivers and mechanics had to put into some Soviet-made ZIS-150s produced in the 1950s in order to keep them on the road." -Andrei Lankov

http://www.fortunecity.com/meltingpot/champion/65/pyongyang_lankov.htm