This is absolutely surreal.

 

Inside North Korea

Aug 2, 2011 | 126

 

Earlier this year, David Guttenfelder, chief Asia photographer for the Associated Press, along with Jean H. Lee, AP bureau chief in Seoul, were granted unprecedented access to parts of North Korea as part of the AP's efforts to expand coverage of the isolated communist nation. The pair made visits to familiar sites accompanied by government minders, and were also allowed to travel into the countryside accompanied by North Korean journalists instead of government officials. Though much of what the AP journalists saw was certainly orchestrated, their access was still remarkable. Collected here are some of Guttenfelder's images from the trip that provide a glimpse of North Korea.

 

http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2011/08/inside-north-korea/100119/

The first photo of Pyongyang looks like a huge, austere, maximum-security prison.

Cool shots, but let's not kid ourselves. These were very carefully arranged to show NK in its best light. You might as well show people smiling in Mogadishu today or German kids swimming laps in 1940 Germany.

^Not so sure about that.  There were some pretty dreary shots in there. 

 

Thanks for sharing that Surf.  Fascinating stuff.

Great pics but they were carefully orchestrated to show off 'the best' of pyongyang as someone already mentioned.  Any outsider who goes to North Korea has 'minders' that show them only what they want you to see. 

 

If you guys want to see how surreal life is like in North Korea, I highly recommend checking out these youtube documentaries:

 

National Geographic: Inside North Korea

 

Less Formal Documentary Part 1(all clips on youtube:

 

Vice Guide to North Korea Part 1(My favorite one of the 3): The Vice Guide to North Korea Part 1 of 14

 

Labor Camps:

 

Some Tourist videos from the DMZ and how crazy it is everyday:

 

 

If you want to see a documentary of a place that may be worse than North Korea, here's part 1 of a documentary from the Vice Guys Guide to Travel on Liberia

 

The Vice Guide To Travel - Liberia - Part 1

Interestingly enough, I just saw many of these photos first-hand on Friday. I was invited to join the Seoul Foreign Correspondents Club and attend a series of meetings over the weekend where I met a slew of high-profile Asian correspondents including Jean Lee from the AP.

 

The insights she, and others, had into North Korea were simply fantastic. I met one French journalist who had lived in Pyongyang for approximately one year.

Anyone that's is interested in NK should definitely read Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick. 

 

Book Descripion:

A National Book Award finalist and National Book Critics Circle finalist, Barbara Demick’s Nothing to Envy is a remarkable view into North Korea, as seen through the lives of six ordinary citizens

 

Nothing to Envy follows the lives of six North Koreans over fifteen years—a chaotic period that saw the death of Kim Il-sung, the unchallenged rise to power of his son Kim Jong-il, and the devastation of a far-ranging famine that killed one-fifth of the population.

 

Taking us into a landscape most of us have never before seen, award-winning journalist Barbara Demick brings to life what it means to be living under the most repressive totalitarian regime today—an Orwellian world that is by choice not connected to the Internet, in which radio and television dials are welded to the one government station, and where displays of affection are punished; a police state where informants are rewarded and where an offhand remark can send a person to the gulag for life.

 

http://www.amazon.com/Nothing-Envy-Ordinary-Lives-North/dp/0385523904