The truth about life in North Korea: 20 illegal photographs taken illegally

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

How people live in North Korea, you can only learn from the propaganda media. True, this will have little to do with the real state of affairs. Photographer Eric Lafforgue has managed to collect images that capture various moments from his travels to this closed country. He smuggled out most of these shots, violating the prohibitions on photography in public places.

Lafforgue has traveled to North Korea six times since 2008. During his travels, he took thousands of photographs in places where photography is officially prohibited. Often he found himself in a situation where after each photo he took, he was urged to delete the picture. By hook or by crook, he managed to take valuable pictures with him to his homeland.

From the first visit to North Korea, Lafforgue was convinced that he was not interested in the front side, he wanted to see real life, so official excursions were not for him. Much more he wanted to get acquainted with the life of Koreans, find out how they live, how they cope with total control.

There was practically no way to go for a walk on my own, more often I had to go on a bus excursion, secretly documenting everything that I could see. Saved 300 mm zoom and the habit of sitting in the back seat. In North Korea, Lafforgue faced a ban on photographing the police and the army. After he returned home from his last trip in 2012, authorities discovered that he was distributing secret photographs on the Internet, and they pressured him to hide the pictures from the public domain. Lafforgue refused to do so, explaining that he showed both the positive and negative sides of North Korea, like any other country he has visited. “I refused to make an exception for North Korea, and the government didn't like it,” he said. Soon Lafforgue was banned from entering North Korea for life.

“During my visits, I visited the villages a lot, communicated with the locals for hours, thanks to my guides. They told me so much about how they live, what they dream about. The main thing you need to know about North Korea is that there are sincere people who are interested in those who come to them, they are very hospitable, even considering that most of them have nothing,”Lafforgue said about his trip.

1. Life without electricity

Lafforgue said that the guides are happy when tourists take pictures of children in front of their computers. They want to show the world that North Korea is keeping pace with the times. But as soon as they notice that the computer is turned off due to the fact that there is no electricity, they demand to immediately delete the picture.

2. Taking pictures of the army is prohibited

It is highly undesirable to photograph soldiers, therefore, such photographs of the author were asked to be removed immediately.

3. Community service

Such photographs occasionally make it into the Western press with headlines that North Koreans are eating grass harvested from the park. In order not to develop this myth, guides forbid taking such pictures.

4. Soldiers help local farmers in their free time

5. Exhaustion

In North Korea, it is forbidden to photograph people with obvious signs of exhaustion and malnutrition.

6. Lack of cars

Cars began to appear on the roads only in recent years, and even then there are very few of them. Children still play on the main road, as if in the courtyard of their house.

7. Metro

The North Korean subway is considered the deepest in the world, since it was designed not only as a transport, but also as a bomb shelter. The metro workers demanded to remove this photo, since the photo shows a regime object - a tunnel.

8. Street artist

Walls in North Korea can only be painted by specially approved artists. Taking photographs of a drawing before it is completed is prohibited.

9. Photo with a portrait of Kim

It is forbidden to take photographs in which people are fooling or joking, if portraits of political leaders fall into the frame.

10. Queuing is a national sport

11. Dolphinarium

12. Photo from the church

It is forbidden to show officials in an unfavorable light, so this picture of Lafforgue was asked to remove. It was made in one of the Christian churches.

13. Imaginary well-being

There are houses in the countryside where the environment is much richer than the rest. They like to bring tourists to such houses. However, the details can reveal how difficult life these people are. For example, homes have no water supply and the bathtub is used as a water reservoir.

14. Taking photographs of the poor is prohibited

In poor families, children are forced to work hard. However, their work cannot be photographed. Even when Lafforgue tried to explain that there are poor people in all countries, and this is not a vice, he was strictly forbidden to take out his camera.

15. Low safety standards

16. Restaurants for the elite

Only the wealthiest people can afford to dine in the restaurant, although prices are very low by world standards. The average bill is equivalent to 2-3 euros. Lafforgue visited such a restaurant, and noted that the sturgeon was served unusually tasty.

17. Weekdays

18. Forbidden shot of a resting man

The man fell asleep on the coast. After seeing the photo, the guide asked Lafforgue to remove it immediately, as, in his opinion, the frame could have gotten into the Western media. The information will be distorted and the man may be called dead. In fact, this person is alive.

19. Mom with a child during the rest

The paranoia in North Korea is so strong that the picture of the mother and child also provoked a negative reaction. The tour guide was concerned that these people might be mistaken for homeless people.

20. It is forbidden to photograph the monuments to Kim from the back

These facts about life in North Korea, the reality of which is hard to believe, once again prove that, in reality, behind the Iron Curtain lies a completely different country than we used to think …