Instagrams from North Korea

Instagrams from North Korea(justsomething.co)

30 points by ekurutepe 12 years ago | 20 comments

intopieces 12 years ago |

These are fascinating, but please keep in mind that this is Pyongyang, not North Korea proper. The city itself is managed to look as modern as possible; a more interesting look would be into the villages, where they use horse-drawn carts and have barely a television in each home.

People who live in Pyongyang are selected, usually because of their connection to politicians. The rest of the country resides either in primitive villages or labor camps in the north, where they are barely clothed and fed during the harsh winters.

TallGuyShort 12 years ago |

Unable to log in to post this comment, but there is discussion in the comments about how nobody is smiling. One observer points out that although people in the US and Europe rarely smile on streets, nobody was even smiling in the wedding photo. I'd like to point that if you look at wedding photos from a lot of hispanic cultures from more than a few years ago, you won't see many people smiling either. "Say cheese" may be very ingrained in western / European culture, but it's absence is not necessarily a sign of oppression. I'm sure there are plenty of sinister goings-on in North Korea, but I think it's easy to overlook some key cultural differences and see all sorts of signs that aren't there.

brianshaler 12 years ago | |

I photo bombed a wedding photo in that same spot. Apparently most Pyongyang weddings include a family photo there, several a day. They were not smiling in their photos, and I don't think the bride smiled at all (the dress and makeup didn't look entirely comfortable). However, there was plenty of smiling in between photos, mostly caused by the awkwardness of our inability to communicate.

That reminds me, I read somewhere that people in North Korea tend to smile when uncomfortable.

In an amusement park, at a bowling alley, at dancing events, in the park, and playing in streams, it seemed like people smiled about as much as you would expect them to anywhere else. I encountered some who wouldn't stop smiling.

What always tends to happen with photos and conversations of certain things (e.g. DPRK) people tend to see what they want to see and manifest their own narrative. Tend to.

ekurutepe 12 years ago | |

Spot on. One should also keep in mind that when photography was something new and rare people also took it very seriously and didn't smile in the 'western' world. If you only get relatively few number of pictures taken over the course of your life you want to leave a respectable impression for the future generations. I'm not sure about how wide-spread and available photography is in NK but that might also have to do with this.

glogla 12 years ago | |

Indeed, we had discussion about Russians not smiling just a few days ago.

nashashmi 12 years ago | |

Some chinese, korean, japanese have very flat faces. You cannot tell anything from reading them.

egonschiele 12 years ago |

The site keeps failing to load or shows me a facebook banner with no close button. So I mirrored the photos and captions: http://imgur.com/a/JdZ7A

I'm very interested in North Korea and this is a fascinating album.

fennecfoxen 12 years ago |

So just in case the site goes down again (because when I went there, it appeared to be down, and then recovered):

* http://instagram.com/dguttenfelder (n.b. more recent photos are Philippines, not NK)

* http://davidguttenfelder.com/

dominotw 12 years ago |

I was expecting pictures that the govt doesn't want you to see. Not the usual censored stuff. Why is this interesting?

timje1 12 years ago |

The last photo is very interesting. Why does the plot of Madagascar need to be explained beforehand? Is it noteworthy that they omitted that the initial setting is New York?

nashashmi 12 years ago | |

Not really telling from the photo that they missed the initial setting was new york

btbuildem 12 years ago |

Grand People's Study House is apparently unheated..

oftenwrong 12 years ago | |

On this page the author notes that none of the buildings she visited in the DPRK were heated, even during the freezing cold winter:

https://sites.google.com/site/sophieinnorthkorea/home

Maybe it is to save on energy costs? I imagine most citizens are used to it. Furthermore, if they have never experienced indoor heating, they would not see anything odd about it being so cold indoors.

blue11 12 years ago |

Everything looks like Eastern Europe in the 80s, except that, as many people noted already, nobody is smiling.

glogla 12 years ago | |

I saw some photos from Easter Europe before the Soviet Union fell, and the most striking difference to the West was lack of advertisements on every corner.

ehm_may 12 years ago |

How about this site go fuck itself with its "log in with facebook" banner that won't go away

ne0phyte 12 years ago | |

Just use a social media blocking browser extension. You should do that anyways.

josephagoss 12 years ago | |

Right click, then inspect, find the element and delete right on the page.

I do this all the time on website that do this cover trick.

goggles99 12 years ago |

Looks like a nice place to visit. Too bad this is the "Elysium" (Pyongyang) of North Korea. Where are all the pictures of the political camps and people literally starving to death (including children) and living in complete filth and sub-animal conditions.

shubb 12 years ago | |

You can see the outlines of the camps on google maps. They are fairly huge. Surrounding them is a strip of short grass between two fences, which is very visible on satellite photos.

You can see similar strips in the west around secure areas, for instance nuclear power plants or particular buildings in secure sites. Sometimes these are dog areas, or contain mines.

I suspect the inmates don't have android phones though.