Photographer Mark Edward Harris has had rare access to one of the most reclusive countries on the planet. On two visits to the country and numerous trips along the northern border and the DMZ (demilitarised zone) dividing North from South Korea, he's captured images that give insights to the often strange public face North Korea presents to the world as well as fascinating and revealing unscripted moments.
These include:
- The country's phenomenal Mass Games – military precise pageants involving 100,000 performers.
- The amazing Stalinist architecture and empty streets of the capital, Pyongyang.
- The delirious cult of personality surronding the Kims (current leader Kim Jong Il and his father, Kim Il Sung).
- The North Korea Feature Film Studio, which produces peasant dramas that double as propaganda films.
- The U.S.S. Pueblo, a Korean War era U.S. spy ship captured by the North Koreans and now on display in the capital.
The book is accompanied by substantial text in the form of introductions providing context and history to each of the areas he visited, and well as illuminating extended captions to the photographs themselves (to most, some are more simply captioned). He gives special emphasis to the highly charged area of the DMZ, and succeeded in getting access to one of two villages (one south, one north) allowed to actually exist INSIDE the DMZ – he got into the southern one.
