North Korea is a mysterious country all we hear about nowadays is their improving nuclear missile power. The nation is infamously stuck in its dictatorship-ways, and there isn’t much we know about life in North Korea that their government didn’t want us to see. North Korea isn’t necessarily a favorite vacation spot. Tourists aren’t necessarily flocking there, and that’s cool with North Korea seeing as how they’re very selective about visitors from other countries. Photographer Eric Lafforgue has been given a rare opportunity to visit the country of North Korea 6 times since 2008. Eric went on the trips with a mission was to get an inside perspective on the country. He was aiming to show how life really is and how the citizens actually felt, whether it was good or bad. He wanted to share with the western world what life in North Korea is really like.
Eric was taking a considerable risk seeing as how photography is basically forbidden entirely. Lafforgue cleverly used a 300mm zoom lens on the camera that allowed him to take pictures that were otherwise just not possible to capture. Government officials monitored Eric’s pictures and attempted to wipe memory cards of the forbidden photos. Luckily, Eric had a nifty memory card that wouldn’t allow the images to be deleted.
After returning home safely from his 6th trip from North Korea they government found the once “deleted” pictures on the internet. They quickly commanded Lafforgue to remove all the “illegal” photos. Luckily, Eric wasn’t going to play that game. He declined and left the images up for all to see. Eric has since been banned for life from North Korea which is sad because the insight he’s given to what life is actually like is quite eye-opening. It‘s not hard to think why North Korea is so strict with photography. Some of the images of how their citizens live everyday life are shocking.
1.
This photo was taken in Chongjin, which has a history of malnutrition, which is illegal to photograph. Here you can see children transporting a huge bag of rice by hand in a trailer.
2.
This woman is standing in the middle of a group of soldiers. It is illegal to takes photos of the military in North Korea.
3.
This is a new restaurant in the center of Pyongyang. It only costs the equivalent of a few Euros to eat there, yet only the wealthy in North Korea can afford it.
