In pictures: Unseen North Korea

The USS Pueblo is an incongruous presence, moored as it is in the centre of Pyongyang. It's a US spyship that was captured in 1968 for spying in North Korean waters.

The Koreans are very proud to display this as a symbol of their resistance to US "aggression", and to demonstrate to their people the apparently hostile attitude of the USA.

The author and photographer prefers to remain anonymous.


More pictures at the link below.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/picture_gallery/05/asia_pac_unseen_north_korea/html/1.stm

Especially the empty highway. Eerie.

The people there don't seem all that bad off? Yes, most are extremely poor but they are still taking care of themselves. You don't clean the curbs for fun unless you're relatively healthy.


Obviously parts of North Korea must be very beautiful.

One of the things I learned in India is that intense poverty does not necessarily mean squalor and filth. That tends to be an urban thing, and cities tend to be - relatively - materially better off. In fact, you need to have reached a baseline of wealth to be able to "afford" litter, for material consumption to have reached that level.

The really absolutely poorest rural areas tended to be very well tended. Material consumption would have to rise for them to be less tended. An odd paradox.

Also, the DPRK has kept itself going for the past 50 years on the concept of "Juche", national self-reliance. That may be the spirit at work here; or state makework programmes. What is mean is that we don't know that they're doing this for "fun" - it could be any number of reasons. I would guess that under-employment is involved, though. Considering the prioritisation of food production elsewhere.

I was amazed to read the part about MP3 players being for sale. I bet that's for show. Even if someone was able to buy one, where would they download the music from?!

Everybody has a state official with them at all times. My defination of roaming freely is NO GOV'T MINDER.

A Western businessman who has had the rare chance to travel throughout North Korea has sent these images of daily life to the BBC News website. These are his observations from within the normally secretive state.

I could travel more or less where I pleased for my work, and even though we always had translators and minders, I was rarely prevented from taking photographs.

I am under no illusions about the nature of the state. What I saw was how North Koreans live and work.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/picture_gallery/05/asia_pac_unseen_north_korea/html/1.stm