PHOTOS BY JAMIE-JAMES MEDINA
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| These girls were also at the school. You go in and they have four-year-olds playing classical guitar and eight-year-old girls playing accordion and piano. They want you to be impressed by how talented everyone is, but it’s pretty unnerving because you sit there thinking, “Jesus, this kid must play piano for the state 12 hours a day to be that good.” |
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| There are around 800 statues of Great Leader Kim Il-sung in North Korea. This bronze beauty stands 22 meters high above the city, marking Pyongyang’s highest point, Mansu Hill. Visitors are made to buy flowers made of cloth, then lay them at the Great Leader’s feet and bow in honor. The flowers are then collected and resold to the next set of visitors. As we were taking photos there, a small commotion happened when a set of birds flew by and almost landed on the statue’s arm. Apparently that would have been a disaster. Our guides insisted that we film or photograph only the entire figure. No cropping him, like shooting just the head. We were using film instead of digital, so they couldn’t tell that we were doing whatever we wanted. |
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| Outside of government officials, party members, police, guides, and translators, North Koreans are essentially banned from talking to foreigners. Every time we tried to take a photo of this group as they worshipped the statue, they would turn their backs or cover their faces. When they finally got up to leave, we could see that some of them were crying at the sight of Kim Il-sung. |
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INSIDE PYONGYANG | 1 | 2 | 3 |
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