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Photograph by David Guttenfelder
A traffic guard goes through the motions in the capital of Pyongyang, where streets are almost empty of cars.
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Photograph by David Guttenfelder
Members of one of the world’s largest militaries, over a million strong, pack a stadium in Pyongyang in 2012 during celebrations honoring North Korea’s first leader, Kim Il Sung.
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Photograph by David Guttenfelder
A singer weeps after performing a song praising her new leader, Kim Jong Un, at a 2012 rally in Pyongyang. Only citizens deemed loyal are allowed to live in the capital.
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Photograph by David Guttenfelder
There’s nothing to fear, North Korean officials said, as they unveiled to foreign reporters what they insisted was a nonmilitary satellite. Launched in April 2012, it ended up crashing into the sea. That December the government had better results: A rocket sent a satellite into orbit despite protests from the U.S., South Korea, and Japan.
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Photograph by David Guttenfelder
Pyongyang style! At a 2008 mass performance children costumed as chickens and eggs dance in a skit devoted to the glories of agricultural self-reliance.
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Photograph by David Guttenfelder
Faces light up during a 2012 fireworks display in Pyongyang, on the 100th anniversary of the birth of “Great Leader” Kim Il Sung. After his death in 1994, Kim was awarded the title of eternal president.
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Photograph by David Guttenfelder
Morning light shines on a worker and a goldfish tank at the Korean Central News Agency in Pyongyang.
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Photograph by David Guttenfelder
Children mobilized for the annual mass games in Pyongyang act as pixels to portray a happy patriot in uniform.
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Photograph by David Guttenfelder
The curtain rises in Pyongyang’s Mansudae Art Theater before a 2008 concert by the New York Philharmonic. The orchestra was the first major American cultural group to visit secretive North Korea.
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Photograph by David Guttenfelder
At dawn, portraits of Kim Il Sung and his son Kim Jong Il are still lit up in Pyongyang. Even during the city’s blackouts, electricity is reserved to light the flame atop Juche Tower.
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Photograph by David Guttenfelder
A tour guide in traditional dress shyly allows her photograph to be taken atop Juche Tower. Western visitors to the reclusive country number only several thousand a year, and their movements are tightly restricted. South Koreans are not welcome.
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Photograph by David Guttenfelder
A man tends to his bicycle outside a housing complex in Kaesong, not far from the border with South Korea. An exclamation point at the end of an emphatic propaganda slogan punctuates the scene.
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Photograph by David Guttenfelder
View from a train window: In fields near the Chinese border, farming depends more on human and animal muscle than on machines. Chronic food shortages in North Korea—caused by floods, droughts, inefficiencies—have led to widespread malnutrition.
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Photograph by David Guttenfelder
A military guide leads a tour to the mystical Mount Paektu. It was here, official lore says, that Kim Il Sung fought for independence from Japanese occupiers in the 1930s.
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