North Korea: Inside a Secret State - Photo Gallery - LIFE
The strictures — on movement, communication, what one can see and not see — that North Korea forces upon visitors are extraordinary, even for a modern autocracy. For instance, the photographers featured in this gallery — and virtually all Westerners visiting the DPRK — report being allowed to see only two subway stations, and always the same two subway stations, in the capital Pyongyang. “From the moment I arrived in North Korea, I had a very strong feeling that everything I witnessed was staged,” Yannis Kontos told LIFE recently. A freelance photographer based in Athens, Greece, who has covered major stories around the globe, Kontos has traveled to North Korea twice, once in May 2005 and again in August 2006. “The whole country seemed a staged event based on some propaganda scenario, with carefully chosen performers controlled by someone behind the scenes. Wherever we went — eating, riding a bus, taking the subway — it seemed people were acting. It was, literally, surreal from the very start.”
