A real street
This picture was taken during a tour of the North Korean border town of Kaesong, located on the border with South Korea. The tour guide focused on the nicer area of the town near the hotel and gave assurances that the rest of the town looked the same.
The photographer succeeded in sneaking a few shots of the rampant poverty which is rampant in all areas of North Korea outside the capital city of Pyongyang.
Need a lift soldier?
There are almost no cars traveling the roads of North Korea and the locals usually walk or bike everywhere. So, when a car does come along, people often try to catch a ride, and the first in line to hitchhike are obviously the soldiers. But soldiers are relatively well off, shouldn’t they just use a bus or a train? The truth is there is no public transportation between towns and people cannot leave their home villages without a special written permit from the government to travel.
This picture shows a group of people taking advantage of the empty highway to walk between villages.
Soldiers on the farm
Farming is the most important national activity in North Korea and everyone must take part in one way or another. Since the North Korean government cannot afford to pay all its soldiers, new recruiters and lower rank soldiers often find time while not doing target practice and reciting military doctrine, to work on farms in order to make a living.
It is common practice for conscripted soldiers, like the young man in the picture, to work on farms in exchange for food or money.
A tire boat
Similarly to the fishermen on the Taedong River, this villager from the countryside of North Korea is trying to catch fish for his family to eat, as there is no way they will get any in their government approved rations.
In his desperation for sustenance, he has decided on an original way to improve his chances and is using an old tractor tire as a boat and paddling it to the middle of a small pond. Fingers crossed that the fish were biting that day.
The people are hungry
The North Korean propaganda machine is very sensitive about showing the world their poor and starving citizens. They try to maintain a façade of success, strength and happiness with carefully crafted publicity shots. This photographer managed to take a picture of a North Korean worker who is clearly malnourished and suffering from iron deficiency brought on by lack of food.
This was a very dangerous photograph to take, if the photographer was caught, he could be put in a concentration camp for his “crime”.