Hi everyone,

I bought a Pentax K100D a while ago, and I had the opportunity to try it out during my short trip to North Korea in september 2010.
I made a beginners mistake by not checking the ISO (all photos in 1600), but that won't happen again.

Comments and tips are very welcome!

#1 The Rungrado May Day Stadium, the stadium where the Mass Games were held.


#2 Mass Games 2010


#3 Mass Games 2010


#4 On both sides of the Kim Il Sung monument are two stone replica's of the Korean flag and bronze statues of military and civilian figures.


#5 Group of students paying respects to the president Kim Il Sung.


#6 Students paying respects to Kim Il Sung.


#7 This escalator took us deep into the ground, to the trains.


#8 A schoolboy, waiting for the train to arrive.


#9 Just an ordinary citizen, most of the men wear military-like clothing.


#10 A guide who told us about the USS Pueblo. (the American spionage ship that was captured in 1968)

[Qualian]

I enjoyed this series too. How were you able to take photos in public without drawing attention from the uniformed officials? I thought they were careful about media or is that just a myth?

We couldn't take pictures of soldiers, but pictures of ordinary people were okay (if they didn't mind). The man in #9 is actually just an ordinary citizen, most of the clothes people are wearing are greenish, military-like. Taking pictures of guides was also fine.

They are carefull with sensitive things...like the gigantic unfinished hotel, or certain zones...if you take pictures of things that can carry a "good" image of them they won't complain. An aquaintance of mine went and they toured them and encouraged to bring back "the truth about their country".

Could you talk about the context of the fotos? (especially the first ones..)

I added some description.


Thanks for all the comments!

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Last edited by Qualian; 03-27-2011 at 08:10 PM.

[Dubesor]

I have a book of North Korea photography by a 'pro' and your images here are every bit as good. I really want to go shoot some film up there someday ...

And yeah, the K100D is one sweet camera even in low light. These pics make me miss mine, my first 'serious' camera (long since sold unfortunately).

[aliasant]

Very nice work!

My fav is #8
Thats a picture that tells so much....

#5 is incredibly nice too but also a bit .. well. Far from Sweden I guess Everything extremely clean and pure and that huge statue.. and then the uniforms and all that white. Amazing really.

#6 is very nice and even better with the crop. Would have liked it even more if iwas a wider pic somehow....

#9 looks almost like any normal western city. Not at all as NK is portraited in western media.
Any comments to that?


Very nice work!

[Nitrok]

Nice set - thanks for sharing these.

[pentaxpup]

Do you by any chance work for VBS? The shots look very similar to a segment VBS posted at one point. Excellent pictures.