North Korea, Country Without Books

After returning from a visit to North Korea in 2007, I eagerly uploaded to Flickr hundreds of photographs I’d taken of Pyongyang, Kaesong, Panmunjom, and the Myohyang area. While posting my photos, I discovered that versions of my favorite pictures were already online. Almost everyone who’d managed to visit the DPRK had snapped that little bell hanging from the eaves of the International Friendship Museum. Everyone had captured the same subway car in the Yongwang metro station, the tumbling Arirang gymnasts at the Mass Games, that same chrome Kalishnikov catching the light.