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| Snapshots From Life in North Korea |
| In the North, nothing is straightforward |
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Cavit Erginsoy (javit)  |
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Published 2006-06-07 17:37 (KST) |
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Imagine the world's least known and least understood country. Imagine a place where everybody lives under the direct control and guidance of the government, a place where every individual is supposed to work for the gains of the collective.
 |  | |  Senior Captain and captor of USS Pueblo in 1968 | | | ©2006 Cavit Erginsoy | This description could perhaps be summarized as "Stalinist communism," but mind you, in North Korea, nothing is quite so straightforward.
When asked about North Korea, most people would use words such as "axis of evil," "weapons of mass destruction," "dictatorship," "starvation," "secretive" and sometimes even worse. Yet when pushed further, very few people could say any more than these words.
The truth is, most of us don't really know much about North Korea. We don't know how they live. We don't know their daily lives. At least I certainly didn't, so me and my camera were soon on a 1970s Russian-made plane heading for Pyongyang.
This photo-story does not have a political agenda, except to break the taboo deriving from the axis of evil concept. The photographs aim to capture snapshots from the ordinary lives of the people of North Korea. I would hope that my photographs provide a brief insight into this closed and alien world.
 | | | Photos of Kim-Il-Sung and Kim-Jong Il can be found in every room | | | ©2006 Javit Erginsoy | |
 | | | One of the few advertisements: Hwiparam, a car joint-venture between North and South | | | ©2006 Cavit Erginsoy | |
 | | | Kids playing basketball after school | | | ©2006 Cavit Erginsoy | |
 | | | People in a typically overcrowded bus in Pyongyang | | | ©2006 Cavit Erginsoy | |
 | | | Chinese language class in the Grand People's Study House | | | ©2006 Cavit Erginsoy | |
 | | | Traffic policewoman under the rain in Pyongyang | | | ©2006 Cavit Erginsoy | |
 | | | A typical propaganda poster | | | ©2006 Cavit Erginsoy | |
 | | | On the Pyongyang underground | | | ©2006 Cavit Erginsoy | |
 | | | Wide and empty street in Pyongyang | | | ©2006 Cavit Erginsoy | |
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These photographs were taken during the course of one week in March 2006.
Cavit Erginsoy is a Turkish photojournalist living in the U.K. His Web site is www.erginsoy.com. |
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©2006 OhmyNews
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