<p>Young women prepare to perform a synchronized swimming routine in Pyongyang, North Korea. The event was part of a celebration for the 75th anniversary of the birth of late North Korean leader Kim Jong Il.</p>
Young women prepare to perform a synchronized swimming routine in Pyongyang, North Korea. The event was part of a celebration for the 75th anniversary of the birth of late North Korean leader Kim Jong Il.
Photograph by Ed Jones, AFP/Getty
Candid moments shine through in North Korea photos
Get a glimpse into life in North Korea’s capital as people gather to celebrate a national holiday.
ByNatasha Daly
Published March 28, 2017
• 2 min read
The world’s eyes have long been on North Korea—but rarely in North Korea. The “hermit kingdom” is a perpetual flashpoint of global tension, yet it remains more difficult to get a look inside North Korea than any country on Earth.
Glimpses of everyday North Korean life are fleeting and highly sanitized, often coming courtesy of state-sanctioned photos of major political events.
Other glimpses are entirely artificial. Guided tours near the DMZ offer foreign tourists views of Kijŏng-dong, or Peace Town, a village built in the 1950s that features brightly colored homes—and no inhabitants. Widely believed to be a blatant display of propaganda, the town is fascinating in its own right, but hardly representative of real life behind the North Korean curtain.
Ed Jones,
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