northkorea

A photographer flew his drone into North Korea and captured fascinating images of the secretive country.

A North Korean uranium mine used to help make nuclear bombs has partially collapsed with satellite photos showing the extent of the damage.

A new report that looked at the EXIF data from the North Korean state media photos has given some insight into what equipment photographers in the country are using. Nikon was the most favored last year, specifically the 2014 D750 DSLR.

North Korea's official state media has released a set of photos captured from space that it says were taken from a camera mounted on one of its missiles designed to deliver a nuclear warhead.

Joerg Daiber of LittleBigWorld traveled to Pyongyang, North Korea, and created this 5-minute time-lapse that uses a tilt-shift effect to make the hermit kingdom's capital city look like a tiny diorama.

'Joseon' -- this is how the inhabitants refer to their country. In Korean it means "Country of morning freshness." Outside its borders it is known as North Korea.

North Korean dictator Kim Jung-un is in Singapore this week for Tuesday's summit with President Trump, and of all the photos that have emerged of his visit so far, there's a curious one that has captured the world's attention today: Kim Jung-un's very first selfie.

Alexander Khimushin is a Queensland, Australia-based photographer who has been on the road for 9 years. During that span, he visited 84 countries. 10 months out of a year he's on the road shooting photos in remote places. He's currently working on a series titled "The World in Faces."

Guess what fancy camera technology North Korea uses for its spy drone program? Sony's A-mount SLT cameras. One of these cameras was recently found by South Korean authorities in a North Korean spy drone that was found crashed in a forest.

There's no Google Street View in North Korea, but here's the next best thing: Singaporean photographer Aram Pan of DPRK 360 shot an interactive 360-degree video while driving around the streets of the capital city of Pyongyang.

Photographer Éric Lafforgue has spent years traveling the world to shoot documentary photos for well-known publications. He was even given rare access to North Korea, where he shot thousands of photos showing citizens and government officials going about their daily lives.

After his 6th trip to the country in September 2012, however, Lafforgue was banned by the government for the photos he was sharing online.

Singapore-based photographer Aram Pan of DPRK 360 has spent the past few years creating groundbreaking images inside the borders of North Korea. His latest feat: becoming the first foreigners to fly over Pyongyang in a North Korea-built light airplane.

The 15-minute video above is Pan's documentation of this pioneering aerial photo shoot.

For over two years now, Romanian photographer Mihaela Noroc has been traveling around the world with a camera in hand and shooting portraits of women in their environment for a project titled "The Atlas of Beauty," which we featured back in February.

The latest country Noroc traveled to in her journey was the hermit kingdom of North Korea.

Want to experience what it’s like to travel into North Korea? Photographer Aram …

North Korea has reportedly blocked access to Instagram, a service that has been widely used by journalists and tourists to share glimpses of life inside the secretive hermit kingdom.

About a year ago, we linked out to what we then believed to be the first 360-degree interactive panorama ever made of Pyongyang, North Korea. That interactive image was shot by photographer Aram Pan, but it was only the beginning.

Since then he's expanded in a big way, shooting over 40 interactive 360-degree panoramas all over the mysterious country for the DPRK 360 website and Facebook page.

The 'Enter Pyongyang' flow-motion hyperlapse by JT Singh and Rob Whitworth debuted to the public two hours ago as of this writing, and already it has over 3,500 upvotes on Reddit and almost half a million views... ON VIMEO!

But one look at the hyperlapse and you'll understand why. Done in the same style as Whitworth's jaw-dropping Barcelona time-lapse this is these are the kind of status quo-shattering creations that genres like time-lapse ache for.

This week is full of firsts from North Korea. Yesterday we shared what may be the first Google Glass coverage from inside the country, and today we have what is quite possibly the world’s first state-sanctioned city tour of Pyongyang, filmed using a GoPro Hero 3 camera.

While Google Glass user Kenny Zhu was in North Korea this past April, he took advantage of the small and comparatively inconspicuous size of the device on his head to snap what appear to be the first images taken in North Korea using the wearable tech.

The difference between the two Koreas is well-known. We understand that one country is almost entirely closed off from the rest of the world, while the other is modern and plugged in. We've even seen images from space that show how literally dark North Korea is.

And yet, it takes a compelling photo series/book like German architecture photographer Dieter Leistner's Korea--Korea to truly drive home the differences between these two pieces of the same peninsula.

A new photo released by NASA and taken from the International Space Station shows just how dark North Korea really is, and we don't mean figuratively. Taken on the night of January 30th as the ISS was passing over the Korean Peninsula, a nearly completely blacked-out North Korea jumps out at you, surrounded by its well-lit neighbors.

In 2011, former AP president Tom Curly had the ambitious idea that the AP should establish a bureau in North Korea, and the photographer the agency ended up sending to the country is a man you should, by now, be very familiar with: David Guttenfelder.

Guttenfelder's images, both in newspapers and on Instagram, have given the whole world a peek behind North Korea's own Iron Curtain, and in the video above he explains the power of photography as if pertains to this secretive and isolated world.

If you're looking to make an argument for the inherent superiority of Western-style capitalism, consider how difficult it apparently is to find a competent Photoshop jockey in the Communist world.

The latest example comes from the Eastern provinces of China, where what was supposed to be a heartwarming record of regional officials honoring the elderly turned into an internationally recognized example of how not to doctor a photograph.

The image above, which was published by Pyongyang's official news agency KCNA, seems to show Kim Jung-un and some of his underlings touring the site of a children's hospital. However, like so many of the photos released by KCNA in the past, its authenticity is being called into question.

We've had precious few chances to get a glimpse into the secretive country of North Korea. With the exception of a few AP photographers working out of the DPRK who have taken to Instagram to share their work, photos of the people of North Korea are rare. It's not like your friends' Flickr streams often fill up with photos from their recent North Korean vacation.

That's exactly why Stockholm-based photographer Simon Röder wanted so badly to go there. And after some planning and a few obstacles, the street photographer was able to turn the trip into a reality, and come back with the photos to prove it.

Back in February, the AP's David Guttenfelder and Jean Lee were some of the first to begin uploading Instagram photos from inside the closed off country of North Korea. A rare look inside a normally very mysterious country, both of their Instagram accounts became the subject of many a headline.

Now, a few months later, the same two photographers are taking advantage of Instagram's new video capabilities to give us rare, unfiltered, 15-second glimpses of life inside Kim Jong-un's isolated country.

Korean-American Kenneth Bae made headlines back in November when he was arrested while leading a tour group though the Rason Special Economic Zone in North Korea. The reasons behind the arrest have never been properly confirmed, but it seems that his detainment had something to do with photos he was taking while he was spending time in the country.

No headway has been made in the case since he was taken into custody, but a recent report by the Korean Central News Agency claims that Bae has "admitted that he committed crimes aimed to topple the DPRK," and that he will now be tried in North Korean supreme court for those crimes, the maximum punishment for which is the death penalty.

Tensions are running high again on the Korean peninsula. As international observers watch closely for what move the North will play next, I thought it might be a good time to revisit some of my work from photographing in North Korea, undercover on-assignment, for the Globe & Mail in 2009.

This post is an extract from an article I contributed to the Digital Journalist the same year, recounting some of my experiences whilst photographing in this reclusive state. It was an experience I shall never forget…

Did you know North Korea had an official Flickr page? The country's account on the popular photo sharing service made headlines today after it was hacked and defaced by Anonymous.

In a recent Photoshop blunder, North Korea's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) was caught distributing the above doctored photo of a marine military exercise involving hovercraft. The photo, which was originally distributed to several news outlets, claimed to show the prowess of North Korea's marine force.

It didn't take long, however, for several news agencies to start pointing out some anomalies that all indicated the photo had been doctored.

Yesterday, Instagram announced that it had reached an impressive 100 million users, but the Instagram news making headlines today is only concerned with a select few of those.

That's because those select few, including the AP's David Guttenfelder and Jean Lee, have begun uploading the first ever Instagram photos from inside North Korea -- giving us an intimate glimpse at daily life inside the very closed off country.

Earlier this month, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt paid a visit to North Korea with former New Mexico governor Bill Richardson. Schmidt's daughter Sophie also tagged along, and was allowed to snap photographs of things they experienced during their stay.

An American tourist traveling from Beijing, China to Pyongyang, North Korea pointed his camera out the train window to …

News photo agencies EPA, AFP, and Reuters have all issued kill orders for a photo of Kim Jong-il's funeral procession released by the Korean Central News Agency, the state news agency of North Korea. The photo (above at bottom) raised red flags after a comparison with a Kyodo News photo taken just seconds earlier revealed that a number of people had vanished from the scene. The New York Times writes,

A side-by-side comparison of the full images does point to a possibly banal explanation: totalitarian aesthetics. With the men straggling around the sidelines, a certain martial perfection is lost. Without the men, the tight black bands of the crowd on either side look railroad straight.

Perhaps it was a simple matter of one person gilding the lily.

The North Korean government is the latest to get caught trying to feed a poorly Photoshopped photo …

When's the last time you saw some amateur video shot from inside North Korea? There's a good chance the answer is never, given how secretive the country is and how tight the policies are for what outsiders are allowed to do. Photojournalist Steve Gong, however, captured some really high quality video from inside the country using a Canon 5D Mark II.