

Instagrams from North Korea - ekurutepe
http://justsomething.co/41-uncensored-instagrams-from-north-korea-by-david-guttenfelder/

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intopieces
These are fascinating, but please keep in mind that this is Pyongyang, not
North Korea proper. The city itself is managed to look as modern as possible;
a more interesting look would be into the villages, where they use horse-drawn
carts and have barely a television in each home.

People who live in Pyongyang are selected, usually because of their connection
to politicians. The rest of the country resides either in primitive villages
or labor camps in the north, where they are barely clothed and fed during the
harsh winters.

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TallGuyShort
Unable to log in to post this comment, but there is discussion in the comments
about how nobody is smiling. One observer points out that although people in
the US and Europe rarely smile on streets, nobody was even smiling in the
wedding photo. I'd like to point that if you look at wedding photos from a lot
of hispanic cultures from more than a few years ago, you won't see many people
smiling either. "Say cheese" may be very ingrained in western / European
culture, but it's absence is not necessarily a sign of oppression. I'm sure
there are plenty of sinister goings-on in North Korea, but I think it's easy
to overlook some key cultural differences and see all sorts of signs that
aren't there.

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brianshaler
I photo bombed a wedding photo in that same spot. Apparently most Pyongyang
weddings include a family photo there, several a day. They were not smiling in
their photos, and I don't think the bride smiled at all (the dress and makeup
didn't look entirely comfortable). However, there was plenty of smiling in
between photos, mostly caused by the awkwardness of our inability to
communicate.

That reminds me, I read somewhere that people in North Korea tend to smile
when uncomfortable.

In an amusement park, at a bowling alley, at dancing events, in the park, and
playing in streams, it seemed like people smiled about as much as you would
expect them to anywhere else. I encountered some who wouldn't stop smiling.

What always tends to happen with photos and conversations of certain things
(e.g. DPRK) people tend to see what they want to see and manifest their own
narrative. Tend to.

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egonschiele
The site keeps failing to load or shows me a facebook banner with no close
button. So I mirrored the photos and captions:
[http://imgur.com/a/JdZ7A](http://imgur.com/a/JdZ7A)

I'm very interested in North Korea and this is a fascinating album.

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fennecfoxen
So just in case the site goes down again (because when I went there, it
appeared to be down, and then recovered):

* [http://instagram.com/dguttenfelder](http://instagram.com/dguttenfelder) (n.b. more recent photos are Philippines, not NK)

* [http://davidguttenfelder.com/](http://davidguttenfelder.com/)

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dominotw
I was expecting pictures that the govt doesn't want you to see. Not the usual
censored stuff. Why is this interesting?

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timje1
The last photo is very interesting. Why does the plot of Madagascar need to be
explained beforehand? Is it noteworthy that they omitted that the initial
setting is New York?

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nashashmi
Not really telling from the photo that they missed the initial setting was new
york

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btbuildem
Grand People's Study House is apparently unheated..

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oftenwrong
On this page the author notes that none of the buildings she visited in the
DPRK were heated, even during the freezing cold winter:

[https://sites.google.com/site/sophieinnorthkorea/home](https://sites.google.com/site/sophieinnorthkorea/home)

Maybe it is to save on energy costs? I imagine most citizens are used to it.
Furthermore, if they have never experienced indoor heating, they would not see
anything odd about it being so cold indoors.

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blue11
Everything looks like Eastern Europe in the 80s, except that, as many people
noted already, nobody is smiling.

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glogla
I saw some photos from Easter Europe before the Soviet Union fell, and the
most striking difference to the West was lack of advertisements on every
corner.

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ehm_may
How about this site go fuck itself with its "log in with facebook" banner that
won't go away

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ne0phyte
Just use a social media blocking browser extension. You should do that
anyways.

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goggles99
Looks like a nice place to visit. Too bad this is the "Elysium" (Pyongyang) of
North Korea. Where are all the pictures of the political camps and people
literally starving to death (including children) and living in complete filth
and sub-animal conditions.

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shubb
You can see the outlines of the camps on google maps. They are fairly huge.
Surrounding them is a strip of short grass between two fences, which is very
visible on satellite photos.

You can see similar strips in the west around secure areas, for instance
nuclear power plants or particular buildings in secure sites. Sometimes these
are dog areas, or contain mines.

I suspect the inmates don't have android phones though.

