From the Chinese border, Pedro Pardo, AFP photographer, recently captured rare images of North Korea, one of the most isolated and repressive countries on the planet.
Agence France-Presse (AFP) photographer for China and Mongolia, Pedro Pardo produced a photographic report on North Korea, between February 26 and March 1, 2024, from the border between the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) and China.
To compose this portfolio of 26 images from which our selection is based, the Mexican photojournalist traveled with an AFP team to the Chinese province of Jilin, an area which had become practically inaccessible to the media after the restrictions linked to Covid- 19.
Pedro Pardo’s images constitute a rare insight into the daily lives of the 26 million North Koreans, who have lived under the influence of Kim Jong-un’s totalitarian regime since 2011.
Near the North Korean village of Hyesan, soldiers monitor the border. North Korean soldiers observe China which is on the other side of the Yalu River, frozen at this time of year. They sometimes come down from their imposing watchtower to patrol along paths bristling with barbed wire and sharpened stakes which mark the border. It is one of several checkpoints that line the 1,400 km of a difficult-to-control border that separates North Korea and China.
Between the rusty factories and the residential blocks with peeling paint, the daily life of North Korean civilians who earn their living by working in the fields or that of soldiers requisitioned to transport wood after pruning and cleaning work is revealed. vegetation maintenance. Note that in North Korea, a significant part of the army’s personnel is assigned to construction projects.
A sign of a slight recovery in cross-border trade, vital for Pyongyang’s moribund economy, two goods trucks wait patiently in Hyesan, on a bridge that leads to China, on March 1, 2024.
Since the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, the North Korean government has largely closed its border with China and imposed excessive and unnecessary quarantines and restrictions on freedom of movement and trade, which has exacerbated the humanitarian situation and already serious human rights situation in the country, indicated a report by the NGO Human Rights Watch, published in March 2024.
North Korea has been hit by famine several times and hundreds of thousands of people, some estimates put it in the millions, died by the mid-1990s.
During the pandemic, North Korea’s recurring food shortages have worsened as the North Korean government led by Kim Jong-un has used this pretext to seal off its northern border to prevent the escape of North Korean citizens. Koreans to its vast and rich Chinese neighbor.
Just over 30,000 North Koreans are estimated to have fled their country to South Korea since the end of the Korean War in 1953, but most choose to travel by land to neighboring China.
Subject only to government media and censorship, the 26 million North Koreans live largely isolated from the rest of the world in an austere communist state which forbids them from going abroad without authorization from the regime.
In a society stifled by increased control, the regime’s propaganda continues its work of recruiting the country’s inhabitants, through the omnipresence of giant billboards extolling the regime’s socialist ideology.
Furthermore, this propaganda is anchored on the personality cult of the Kim dynasty.
She exalts and celebrates its greatness through monumental patriotic frescoes which feature in turn the current leader, Kim Jong-un, in power since 2011, his father Kim Jong-il but also his grandfather, Kim Il-sung, founder and first leader of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) in 1948.