Here are some big stories from today's The Kathmandu Post.

In this Nepali city, the North Korean dream is alive—and it's thriving

Bhaktapur is pristine, especially when compared to the other cities of the Kathmandu valley. While Lalitpur and Kathmandu are metropolitan cities teeming with people and seemingly always in the midst of a building spree, Bhaktapur is quiet, almost as if it were frozen in the 70s. There is little garbage on the streets, which are well-paved and well-maintained. The glass-concrete monstrosities that offend the Kathmandu- Lalitpur skyline have yet to make inroads into Bhaktapur.

In the historic inner city, brick roads lead to a durbar square where all that was demolished during the 2015 earthquakes is already up and running, even as Kathmandu, and to a lesser extent Lalitpur, still struggle to get their ancient monuments rebuilt.

Behind Bhaktapur’s enviable state is one political party—the Nepal Majdoor Kisan Party, or Nepal Workers and Peasants Party—which has ruled the city for nearly three decades. Presiding over that party is one man who has shaped Bhaktapur with an iron hand—Narayan Man Bijukchhe. And behind Bijukchhe is a radical ideology imported from a hermit state in a peninsula thousands of kilometres away—juche.

Click here for more.

Dahal says he will take responsibility for insurgency deaths but his actions don’t match his words

For the last few months, Nepal Communist Party Co-chair Pushpa Kamal Dahal has repeatedly insisted that he is committed to transitional justice. Since September, Dahal, who was the supreme commander of the rebel Maoists during the decade-long insurgency, has, on at least three occasions, said that he is ready to take responsibility for all positive and negative implications of the ‘peoples war’.

“As the only living signatory to the peace agreement, I am committed to concluding the transitional justice process as demanded by the victims,” Dahal said on the 13th anniversary of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, which was signed on November 21, 2006.

On Wednesday, he went a step forward, saying he would take responsibility for 5,000 deaths during the conflict. Addressing the Maghi festival of the Tharu people in the Capital, Dahal said that the state had killed 12,000 of the total 17,000 dead.

Click here for more.

Poverty alone not a leading cause for involvement in illegal wildlife trade, new study says

Poverty and ignorance of the law are not the driving factors behind wildlife crimes in the country, according to a new study.

The study, published recently in the journal Conservation Science and Practice, attempts to provide insight into the motivations of people who have taken part in poaching and the illegal trade in animal parts. While Nepal has been internationally lauded for its conservation model, there have been consistent concerns about the effects of this model on indigenous populations that once lived in symbiotic relationships with the forests and wildlife.

Based on a sample of 384 individuals jailed across the country for wildlife infractions, and interviews with 116 of them, the study concludes that “despite common assumptions about the links between IWT [illegal wildlife trade], poverty and organised crime, most respondents were motivated by the desire to earn extra income and by the ease of IWT compared to other employment.”

Click here for more.

How a photo has come to symbolise long wait for justice

On Friday, a stream of people started sharing a horrifying photo from nearly two decades ago: the lifeless body of a middle-aged man tied to a tree.

The man was Muktinath Adhikari, the headmaster of Parini Sanskrit School in Lamjung and then coordinator of Group 79, Lamjung of Amnesty International Nepal. On January 16, 2002, he was in the middle of teaching a ninth-grade science class when a group of Maoist combatants came to take him away. Despite protests from his students, the Maoists did not relent, according to Suman Adhikari, Muktinath’s eldest son.

The Maoists had demanded a share of every teacher’s salary to fund their insurgency—a practice that Muktinath had opposed, according to Suman.

Muktinath’s legs were tied with a rope and he was dragged half-an-hour uphill. He was then tied to a tree with his own muffler, stabbed repeatedly in the chest and then shot in the head. His body left hanging by the neck, with a warning to all villagers that the body was not to be moved.

Click here for more.