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Journalist (or, just tourist) photo essays on North Korea are becoming a new cliche. The set-up usually goes as follows: "The press portrays North Koreans as goose-stepping caricatures in thrall to a family of crazy dictators. We are told the country is populated by starving peasants and enslaved masses. But contrary to opinion, you can go and it is safe! And when you do, you will see the REAL North Korea! There are people there, and they are just like us!"
For a case in point, see Dick Simon. Simon has spent a decade or more going to out-of-the-way places, including conflict zones, and bringing back photos and personal stories. In his photo essay on North Korea, he mixes the truly cliched--the Arirang games, the Metro, public dancing, the Joint Security Area--with some smartly-captured images: a few boys buying candy at a private shop; some of the new high rise apartment buildings in Pyongyang; a mothballed refinery from the Soviet era; a back alley and a garment factory in Rason (of interest because it suggests increasing offshore activity there); and students at the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology who do, indeed, look like students anywhere. It's worth a quick look. We run these essays from time to time because they do sometimes bring back stories and images of interest, whether its just for entertainment or a small glimpse of something off the marked trail.
