North Korea

Time carries a portfolio of images of North Korea by David Guttenfelder, AP’s Chief Asia Photographer (more of his work here).

These are some of the most impressive images I’ve seen in a long time. Beautiful work, insightful and revealing. Take some time today to have a look, you wont regret it.

 

Feb. 12, 2012. A North Korean man rides a bike along the banks of the Pothong River in Pyongyang. © David Guttenfelder

Feb. 12, 2012. A North Korean man rides a bike along the banks of the Pothong River in Pyongyang. © David Guttenfelder

 

“Although he is accompanied by a guide wherever he goes and has to request in advance where he wants to go, the daily life photographs that he has taken—often one-off shots made on the way to or from an event—provide a stark contrast to the highly orchestrated government news-agency photos that are more commonly seen out of North Korea.

Despite the normalcy portrayed in these photographs, Guttenfelder says they are actually the most important images because they paint a picture of a place that has been hitherto a mystery. And that can open the window for understanding in both directions. “At the beginning I would take a picture in the street of people standing waiting for the bus. I could tell they didn’t really understand and thought it looked bad, looked poor,” he says. “I would spend a lot of time explaining that people wait for the bus and commute to work everywhere in the world and that someone beyond North Korea could make a connection—that picture breaks down barriers.” “

Author — John Macpherson

John MacPherson was born and lives in the Scottish Highlands. He trained as a welder in the Glasgow shipyards, before completing an apprenticeship as a carpenter, and then qualified as a Social Worker in Disability Services. Along the way he has cooked on canal barges, trained as an Alpine Ski Leader & worked as an Instructor for Skiers with disabilities, been a canoe instructor, and tutor of night classes in carpentry, stained glass design and manufacture, and archery. He has travelled extensively on various continents, undertaking solo trips by bicycle, or motorcycle. He has had narrow escapes from an ambush by terrorists, been hit by lightning, caught in an erupting volcano, trapped in a mobile home by a tornado, kidnapped by a dog's hairdresser, rammed by a basking shark and was once bitten by a wild otter. He has combined all this with professional photography, which he has practised for over 35 years. He teaches photography and acts as a photography guide & tutor in the UK and abroad. His biggest challenge is keeping his 30 year old Land Rover 110 on the road. He loves telling and hearing stories.

Discussion (6 Comments)

  1. tonemeister says:
    May 1, 2013 at 21:26

    Thanks for this John. My wife is Korean (South), I’m sure she’ll have an inscrutable opinion on these;-).

    Reply
  2. tonemeister says:
    May 2, 2013 at 22:01

    Been out all day John so haven’t shown these to the missus yet, but did notice in today’s Torygraph an article on Regent Holidays/Tours (based in Bristol); they are continuing to offer various tours to North Korea, including one to the area where the Korean-American tourist/spy/evangelist/bargaining-chip (delete as appropriate depending on whose propaganda you believe), otherwise known as Kenneth Bae, was recently taken prisoner (and is now banged up for 15 years). Gotta be rich to go to North Korea looking at the prices of the tours (excluding air fares from UK to China).

    Reply
  3. tonemeister says:
    May 2, 2013 at 22:27

    Just shown the photos to my other three-quaters and of course she is saddened by what she saw – though no particular surprises really. She did comment that the people in many of the photos looked like South Koreans of the 1960s in terms of clothing and nourishment. But since General Park Jeong-Hee got South Korea going in the 60s (albeit as a military dictatorship), the economies of the two Koreas have gone in completely different directions. The gap between the two Koreas is much wider than that between the two Germanys when the Berlin Wall came down, so there’s no way South Korea can absorb North Korea without financial help from the world’s richer economies.

    Reply

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