North Korea: Beyond the ‘hermit state’

Western journalists visiting Pyongyang delight in isolating the myriad little weirdnesses that make North Korea live up to its Hermit State moniker. The coloured badges the citizens wear just over their heart depicting Great Leader Kim Il Sung (dead since 1994 but still lauded as the Eternal President), the automated curfew that switches off all apartment lights at night, the air-raid sirens and operatic arias that wake the populace promptly at 7am... the Democratic People's Republic of Korea proves repeatedly to be neither democratic nor of the people.

North Koreans live in a totalitarian dictatorship skilfully incorporating the submissiveness of Confucianism into a state-mandated devotion to a Communism-espousing royal family. In order to keep this up, the country is subjected to unprecedented international isolation. North Koreans are not allowed to travel abroad, nor are foreign visitors free to move inside the DPRK.

As a photographer, I wanted to get beyond the uniformity and capture the human beings behind the propaganda. The people are not automatons, one of the few European businessmen based in Pyongyang assured me. "They're very intelligent, thinking people," he said. "They are all independent thinkers. But they're also split personalities, they compartmentalise their thoughts."

I also hoped to capture the first signs of Westernisation - the introduction of MP3s, laptops, cellphone and internet access. Only this year, the Egyptian entrepreneur Naguib Sawiris had signed a deal to bring cellphone technology to the country through his corporation Orascum. With the state due to mark its 60th anniversary on September 9, things were finally changing in North Korea. Or were they?

My excuse to visit the country was to witness the regime's jewel in the crown, the opening night of the Arirang Games in the May Day stadium.

Featuring 100,000 gymnasts, acrobats, martial arts experts and sword-wielding military babes in khaki-coloured uniforms, the ceremony is a kitsch, emotional interpretation of Korean history infused with adulation of the DPRK's ruling family.

Before my trip, I had been struck by the dissonance in the images published by professional photographers and the blossoming number of tourist snaps of North Korea available on image-sharing sites such as Flickr.

The pros tend to reinforce the traditional image of a rigidly standardised society and focus their lenses on empty boulevards and gargantuan social realist public art. Visitors' pictures tell another story, however. They document chaotic rush-hour crowds, streetside stalls flogging goods (the first stirrings of a capitalist economy) and awkwardly composed but evocative snaps of themselves posing alongside ordinary people.

I travelled to Pyongyang intent on capturing images of North Koreans that would shatter the stereotype of a dour and disciplined people inhabiting a Stalinist Sparta. I was full of confidence that North Korea would prove as misrepresented a rogue state as Syria or Iran.

On the bus into town from the airport, I passed hundreds of people streaming home along wide sidewalks in the evening sunlight, hesitating outside restaurants to light cigarettes and catch up with friends. The only oddity was implicit in omission: the scarcity of items taken for granted in the West.

There were few cars, mainly bikes, none of which appeared to have been made before the 1960s. Among ordinary people, there was no sign of the new imports I had heard about - no mobile phones, no iPods, no sign of electronic goods of any kind. On the walls, the only sign of public advertisements were bright red and yellow Korean characters advertising the Juche state ideology of self-reliance instead of consumer products.

Arriving at the hotel, I wandered the verdant grounds and peeked over the fence at a golf course. Dusk crept over a concrete barricade of tall buildings. In the draining light, the streets teemed with hundreds of people. Standing in a room blazing with electric light, a moment passed before my niggling unease resolved itself. Not a single lamp was switched on in any street or apartment block, a feature of chronic electricity shortages.

My hotel was on an island, so I could not easily go for a stroll in Pyongyang. But from my 31st floor bedroom I could just make out details on the opposite bank. Ranks of labourers shouldering spades walked in single file in the streets at the end of their work-day. Clusters of gender-segregated groups squatted on the verge, being lectured by erect orators. Others huddled against corners, face to the wall, urinating.

There were no glass panes in the windows of the decrepit, Soviet-style blocks. If this was a showpiece city, the mind boggled at what the countryside must look like.

The minders were happy to show me monuments to the regime but downright uncooperative when I tried to photograph ordinary people. Nevertheless, in highly monitored 10-minute bursts, I was able to visit shops, a fairground, even the seaside.

On the beach I met and photographed North Koreans privileged enough to afford leisure time and happy to interact with a foreigner, despite the language divide. One group were using a karoake machine. Some had digital cameras. But they were hardly representative of the six million North Koreans teetering on the edge of starvation whose country is the world's largest recipient of foreign aid.

One of the more soul-afflicting constants of life in North Korea is the utter, unchanging tedium of life there. Segregated into inminban, or workers' groups, North Koreans are assigned the same task day after day in a long continuum stretching away into a predictable future.

On my last evening in Pyongyang, I sat in an air-conditioned bus, navigating potholed and automotive-less streets. A city bus had broken down at a traffic light. Some ten passengers put their shoulders against its rear and pushed. The other commuters sat or stood inside, seemingly oblivious to the idea of getting off to lighten the load.

I caught the eye of a young man in a window seat. Instead of smiling or looking away, he held my gaze with a look mixing resolve with resignation. Across a cultural chasm, his liquid eyes seemed to convey the sheer acquiescence with which a citizen of the DPRK must confront his ever-unchanging world, day by monotonous day. ·