Huge stadium lights shown down on central Pyongyang for North Korea’s military parade last week, illuminating wave after wave of soldiers and missiles parading through Kim Il Sung Square.

And as it turns out, such nighttime spectacles are so bright that satellites whizzing overhead register a brief but significant jump in average light levels — a dramatic demonstration of how the regime prioritizes the use of electricity in a country famously shrouded in darkness.

According to NK Pro analysis of years of NASA imagery, major nighttime events in the North Korea capital have created spikes