It’s still rare for the outside world to get a glimpse of daily life in North Korea. The country only recently allowed Western tourists back in following the COVID-19 pandemic, and sometimes photographers have difficulty getting to certain locations.
Last year, an AFP photographer captured rare images showing daily life in North Korea.
Pedro Pardo took photos of a remote part of North Korea’s border from China’s Jilin province. The images offer a bleak yet fascinating look at life in a country shrouded in secrecy.
Recent images that other photographers took in Pyongyang, the country’s capital, almost seem like they could be from any city. They show people strolling the streets or celebrating the New Year, yet there are often large signs displaying propaganda as a backdrop.
North Korea was founded in 1948 under Kim Il Sung as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, inspired by strict Marxist-Leninist principles.
Its population of roughly 26 million people lives largely in isolation from the rest of the world in the austere communist state, barred from going abroad without permission from the government and subjected to state-run media that blare propaganda praising the nation and its supreme leader, Kim Jong Un.
North Korea’s self-imposed isolation is largely because of its guiding principle of “Juche,” or self-reliance, the idea that it should be able to function completely independently and remain separate from the rest of the world.
In practice, this has achieved little other than stifling the country’s economy and trade, and many of its citizens face high poverty levels and severe food shortages. The CIA says the country “remains one of the World’s most isolated and one of Asia’s poorest.”
The Guardian reported last year that since the 1950s, an estimated 31,000 North Koreans had sought to escape and defected to South Korea. The number surged in 2023 amid what the unification ministry in Seoul called “worsening conditions in North Korea.”
Photos present a unique look into those conditions and life in one of the world’s last communist states.
A sign reads “Great leader Comrade Kim Jong Il will always be with us” in Pyongyang, the country’s capital.A loudspeaker for broadcasts is seen in Kaepoong, which South Korea considers a propaganda village.Buildings appear in need of repair in Kaesong.An art exhibit for Kim Jong Il’s birthday is full of paintings of the family.People walk along a street in Pyongyang.North Korean soldiers work on the border near China.The North Korean city of Hyesan is seen from China.A train carriage pulls a wagon in the North Korean city of Namyang.A sign on a hillside in the town of Chunggang reads, “My country is the best.”A watchtower is manned on the border in Hyesan.Portraits of the former North Korean leaders Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il are seen in Chunggang.Large portraits of the former leaders are displayed on a government building in Namyang.North Korean people work in a field.A sign in Chunggang reads, “Let’s unify the party and all society with the revolutionary ideas of comrade Kim Jong Un!”Trucks cross a border bridge connecting Changbai, China, and Hyesan, North Korea.
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