A Look at Life Inside North Korea
I’ve spent the last 11 years working in and out of North Korea, having made around 50 separate trips into the country. It’s a complex place and my relationship with the country is equally complicated.
A mother bikes with her daughter on a rural side street in Chongjin City, North Hamgyong Province, DPRK. Tiled roofs with chimneys hold a special place in the minds and hearts of many older North Koreans. After the Korean War, the country had to be rebuilt from the ground up, as most of the structures in the country had been destroyed during the aerial campaigns against the north. One objective of this reconstruction was to make sure every Korean from the countryside would be able to live in a house with a tiled roof and chimney for ondol heating, a traditional floor heating method throughout Korea.
One thing I’ve learnt over the years is the value of slow, step-by-step cooperation to achieve projects that bring people together. While that is not easy to accomplish in North Korea, it is nevertheless doable and worth pursuing with patience and perseverance. Much of my adult being is anchored to North Korea and it is a place I love because of the friendships I’ve been able to form there.
I recently decided to go through my hard drives of images— tens of thousands of photos taken in the country since 2009, and I am both excited and a little bit nervous to curate this piece.
I’m excited because I want to show people some images that reflect more about the country than the standard tourist snaps, propaganda shots and humanitarian aid images. I’ve written some descriptions to help people understand what is going on in the photos along with some additional background comments about life in North Korea.
I’m also nervous because my experiences working in North Korea are deeply personal and I’m not used to sharing much about my work, and certainly not publicly. I am not looking to offend anyone, inside or outside North Korea. To me, these images hold beauty and are a part of my personal journey and growth over the last decade.
When I first started out in 2009, I was curious to see how education can be used as a medium to form bridges. Since then, my projects have ranged from educational exchanges, conferences, overseas student placement and scholarships, to documentary film production.
This piece is not meant to serve as a critique of cooperation with North Korea, nor it is meant to project negative or positive images of the country. My purpose is not political; we can let the photographs speak for themselves. Rather, my thinking behind showing these images is to offer people a more diverse, nuanced look into a country and culture I have come to care deeply about.
The Arirang Mass Games were held almost annually until 2014 in Pyongyang. The games involved over 100,000 citizen performers working on a highly choreographed display showcasing North Korean patriotism and history, many of them school students.
They would practice in the afternoons throughout public squares across Pyongyang in the run up to the performance, which would last for around three months every night except Sundays.
These students form the background scenes by holding up coloured pages in a card book, flipping them on command by flag waving choreographers. Between scenes the students would pop their heads out from behind their books to wait for the signal to change pages.
A North Korean factory worker sews a pair of trousers at a joint North Korean-Chinese factory in the Rason Special Economic Zone bordering China and Russia in the far northeast of the country.
This small region, far removed from the capital Pyongyang, has been used as an experimentation ground for foreign investment. Approximately 90 percent of the investment and interest in the region comes from China, hungry for port access and cheap labour.
The material for the pants is imported from China and re-exported back to China after finished. The factory employs mostly North Korean women and the on duty quality control manager is Chinese.
Top Left: Two middle school students write math equations on the blackboard in a classroom at the Kim Ki Song Middle School in Hoeryong City. Portraits of North Korea’s late leaders Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il hang on the top of every North Korean classroom.
The country enjoys a very high literacy rate and every village and city has a well developed school system with a compulsory 11-year curriculum. This school is the top high school in Hoeryong, a small border city on the Tumen River across from China. Hoeryong is well-known throughout the DPRK, as it is the birth place and ancestral home of Kim Jong Suk, the mother of Kim Jong Il.
Top Right: Kindergarten teachers position their students to sing a song in front of their school in the town of Hamju, South Hamgyong Province. The accordion still plays a prominent role in North Korean music alongside traditional Korean folk instruments and classical musical instruments, likely a Soviet influence. The slogan above the entrance way reads: “Thank You Dear Marshall Kim Jong Un."
Top left: Middle school students visit the bronze statues of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il while on a school-organized field-trip in the city of Hamhung, South Hamgyong Province, DPRK. It is customary to visit the statues during national holidays, days of national importance, mourning and even your wedding day.
Visits must be organized and approved in advance, as people are not allowed to randomly make visits to the statues. In the case of school groups, visiting these monuments is part of the national educational curriculum, and many people from the countryside will travel to Pyongyang on an educational pilgrimage to visit the originals.
Top right: Students stop to read a copy of the Rodong Sinmun— a State-run newspaper— in a metro station in Pyongyang. News boards carrying the State mouthpieces are a common site throughout the capital. There is no independent publishing of any kind permitted in North Korea.
A women collects sea water, likely for boiling, in a remote village near Orang, North Hamgyong Province. Seaside fishing villages dot the eastern coastline of North Korea, and while large sections of the coastline have been fenced off, some villages enjoy access to the sea for fishing. The Korean diet is very seafood heavy, even kimchi, the national dish, uses oysters and small shrimp. Traditional wooden fishing boats, all public and registered to the village, are still used for small-scale fishing and crustacean collection.
Top left: Rural residents ride their bicycles through the countryside near their village in North Pyong’an Province. In these parts of the country, a bicycle with a basket and back tire rack is king, as it’s a much needed transportation tool for people to get around— to their fields, school, work, shopping, etc.
Top right: The city of Sariwon lies approximately half way between Pyongyang and the DMZ. While few cars can be seen, there are plenty of pedestrians walking and riding bicycles. It was not too long ago when most of Pyongyang’s streets also looked like this, but over the last few years cars and traffic have increased steadily in Pyongyang, along with the development of new high rises. Sariwon, for now at least, still retains much of the reconstruction era and Soviet-inspired architecture and feel to it.
A rarer moment at the DMZ’s Line of Control between North and South Korea is when tourists from both sides come face to face. In this photo taken from the North, military officers from both sides guard the border while duelling tour groups are each fed different propaganda lines from their respective military guides. Both North and South Korea offer tours to the DMZ, but the general vibe on these tours could not be more different. Perhaps surprisingly, the North Korean tours are far more relaxed, as the country’s position is that the DMZ is an arbitrary line made by foreign forces that prevents their country from reunifying.
Top left: Women from the town of Kowon in Kangwon Province, use farming shovels to try and clear snow from the road. The area was hit by a surprise blizzard, causing significant snow to build up on the roads. Each community is responsible for clearing their section so trucks and traffic can pass by to bring essential goods to the cities in the northeast. The townspeople were organized into groups to help with shovelling snow off the road.
Top right: A group from the local women’s union sing and dance in the streets of Chongjin city to encourage residents to work hard during a campaign for economic progress. These campaigns— in this case a 70 day economic development campaign in 2016— from the central government are announced periodically and focus on increasing economic productivity of workers and industries throughout the country.
A family and pedestrians walk the snowy streets of Pyongyang one early winter morning, as people head out and make their way to school, work, social activities and the market. This represents a typical morning street scene in downtown Pyongyang on a winter day.
Top left: A woman leans against a wall inside her home near Hamhung, South Hamgyong Province. The three pictures on the wall, issued by the government, are in every North Korean household— a framed photograph of Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Il, and Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il together.
Military families are also issued portraits of the leaders dressed in military regalia to hang in their homes. These portraits are expected to be kept in immaculate condition, and the government sends inspectors to drop by homes unannounced to make sure the portraits are in good order.
There is a famous North Korean movie that depicts a efforts of a citizen who sacrifices their life in order to save the pictures from a flood and numerous reports have circulated around North Korean news about citizens saving the portraits at all costs during natural disasters as the ultimate form of patriotism and loyalty.
Top right: Two men play table tennis with each other after work in the eastern city of Hamhung. Table tennis, along with soccer and volleyball are among the most popular sports in the DPRK, and are taught in schools throughout the country. North Korea hosts both domestic as well as international table tennis tournaments.
Top left: Pedestrians look out the window of an aging public bus in Pyongyang. Before 2014, taxis were a rare sight in Pyongyang and the vast majority of people were dependant on the busses, trolleys, trams, and metro to get around. Now, taxis are abundant, but still expensive, at $0.50 per kilometre.
Pyongyang has already began upgrading their busses, so these old style red and white buses have been quickly disappearing from the streets over the last few years. While public transportation is not entirely free in North Korea, it might as well be, since fares are only 5 Won ($0.0006 USD). This is not considered a significant expense by citizens in North Korea.
Top right: Very few cities in the DPRK have traffic lights. Instead, traffic police in blue uniforms direct traffic by hand during bust times of the day. This photograph shows a male officer in the city of Hamhung directing traffic from a major intersection; however, he was far more interested in sneaking a photo on his smart phone of the foreigner standing in front of him (me). Foreigners are a very rare sight in Hamhung, despite it being North Korea’s second largest city with a population of just under a million.
Many cities, especially Pyongyang, began modernizing their traffic flow with lights a few years ago, and these officers are now being reassigned to other traffic duties.
Small fishing boats are anchored off the northeastern coastal town of Orang in North Hangyong Province, DPRK. The fishermen are not line fishing nor are they net fishing; rather, they are diving for shell fish, mostly abalone and sea cucumbers, from the side of the boat.
Pedestrians walk past a tile mosaic of Kim Jong Il in a Pyongyang metro station. This design was unveiled shortly after the late leader’s death in 2011 and was changed a few years later due to perceived imperfections.
In the picture, Kim Jong Il is standing at Mount Paektu, a sacred mountain for North and South Koreans as it holds a place in the origin legends of the Korean people. The mountain is closely associated with Kim Jong Il in state propaganda, as his purported birth place was near the mountain’s base. This legend serves to tie the Kim family with the idea of Koreans as a people, enshrining them together within the context of national identity.
Top left: The portraits of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il remain brightly illuminated at night in Pyongyang. Portraits of the leaders, along with statues and formal granite stone political monuments, must remain properly illuminated at all times for all to see.
Top right: Well-dressed and polished, members of Pyongyang’s upper-middle economic class pose for a photo at the Kimjongilia Exhibition Hall. The Kimjongilia is a unique lab-created flower named after the North Korean leader Kim Jong Il. There is also a Kimilsungia flower as well.
During the anniversary of the leaders’ birthdays, it is common for North Koreans to visit these flower exhibition halls and even compete in growing the flowers themselves. Pictures of the flowers can also be seen on the streets as reminders of the leaders.
Top left: Two girls study together at the Chongjin Central Library. Libraries are common in large cities, and most of them have a computer room where local people can access North Korea’s domestic intranet and internally listed books for research.
Internet access is not available. Many libraries also offer classes, including foreign language classes; however, permission from one’s work unit or school must be obtained before being allowed to enrol.
Top right: Citizens go about their daily lives in the remote city of Kilju, in North Hamgyong Province.
A kindergarten girl plays a sohaegum, a traditional Korean instrument, during a school performance in the northern city of Chongjin. Student performances are common throughout the DPRK as a way to instil State ideology coupled with traditional Korean folk culture.
A Korean People’s Army officer from Kaesong tasked with bringing tourists to see the DMZ between North and South Korea enjoys a cigarette from a more remote lookout spot over the Line of Control.
Top left: A man rides his bicycle past a local food products store in the northern city of Chongjin, North Hamgyong Province, DPRK. These stores are not so popular to visit, as most people purchase their produce from the open air markets instead.
Top right: April 15th, 2012 marked the 100th anniversary of the birth of North Korean Leader Kim Il Sung. In the port city of Rajin in the Rason Special Economic Zone, citizens climb marble steps to place a flower at the portrait of the late leader on this occasion. The holiday lasted for three days.
To mark the occasion, LED television screens were erected across the country and citizens heard a speech from Kim Jong Un, the first time North Korean citizens had heard their leader’s voice since 1994. Everyone gathered in public squares, restaurants, bars and homes to watch the speech, it felt as if time stopped.
I briefly caught the eye of a Pyongyang metro attendant waiting for a train to pull into station. Each station on Pyongyang’s two lines is decorated to match its namesake. Kaeson Station, meaning triumph station, is decorated with a mural to show Korean independence— triumph over the Japanese colonialist government.
Top left: Two women on the streets of Hamhung. The women with a plastic bowl on her head is a rural marketeer, selling food products from her bowl. This practice was widely discouraged until the Arduous March (famine) of the 1990s forced economic change in the country, sending many previously employed women into the private sector.
Top right: Students assist with rice transplantation in Anju, DPRK. Every May, urban residents are organized by their schools and work units to go to the countryside to assist farmers in this labour intensive transplantation, as rice is an essential crop to the country, which has faced issues of severe food insecurity and famine in the past.
Even today, food issues remain and North Korea is forced to import much of its food products, although this has also been changing somewhat in recent years, as Chinese packaged goods have largely been replaced by domestically manufactured brands.
Only a small percentage of North Korea’s land is arable; even during the Japanese colonial era, the northern half of Korea was largely industrial, while the south was considered the peninsula’s bread basket.
A group of young military recruits play cards while on the train between Pyongyang and Chongsu, a small city in North Pyong’an Province on the Yalu River, which forms the DPRK’s border with China.
