Photographer Pedro Pardo captured rare images of daily life in North Korea. He accessed a remote part of the country’s border with China in Jilin province to get the photos. The images he took between February 26 and March 1 offer a bleak yet fascinating look at life in a country shrouded in secrecy.
North Korea was founded in 1948 as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), inspired by strict Marxist-Leninist principles. Its population of roughly 26 million people lives largely in isolation from the rest of the world, barred from going abroad without permission from the government and subjected to state-run media that blare propaganda praising the nation and its supreme leader, Kim Jong Un.
The country’s self-imposed isolation is largely due to its guiding principle of “juche,” or “self-reliance” – the idea that it should be able to function completely independently and remain separate from the rest of the world. In practice, this has achieved little other than to stifle the country’s economy and trade, and many of its citizens face high poverty levels and severe food shortages. The CIA says North Korea “remains one of the World’s most isolated and one of Asia’s poorest.” Since the 1950s, it is estimated that around 31,000 North Koreans have sought to escape and defected to South Korea, The Guardian reported in January. That number surged last year amid what the unification ministry in Seoul called “worsening conditions in North Korea.”
Pardo’s photos present a unique look into those conditions and life in one of the world’s last communist states.
