"The Pyongyang subway is small but it runs deep. You ride these seemingly endless escalators down into the tunnels. All I could think of was that someone probably dug all this by hand They don't exactly have a lot of construction machinery even now."
"A North Korean military police woman. Pretty much everyone is a soldier and wears a uniform, but the yellow epaulets identify her as belonging to a police unit."
"These are members of a work group, perhaps from a farm a couple miles away or a factory, who knows. The trip to this waterfall was their reward for work well done."
"National Day activities in a park in Pyongyang. The whole country has off on this day and they are tailgating and shootin' airsoft guns just like Americans."
"National Day activities in a park in Pyongyang… Admit it, you'd like his BBQ, too."
"Not only are cellphones available, they often get cute shells, like anywhere in Asia. Only difference: In North Korea, they are very expensive status symbols and they're fairly useless without the actual internet. Our tour guides said some people have cellphones on their belt that have no SIM cards because that's all they could afford. So looking richer than you are is a thing even in this supposedly egalitarian place."
"Schoolboys outside the mausoleum of Kim Jong-Il and Kim Il-sung."
"These kids are learning english. They were all screaming the same sentence they were learning at that moment: "ENGLISH IS VERY INTERESTING!" … They were shy but able to respond to simple yes/no questions."
"Music library in the big central Pyongyang study hall — a library. You can check out supposedly 'any' music you want to learn about. I did see Michael Jackson's Thriller in a corner."
"Pretty much all farming is done by hand. You'll see at most one tiny tractor for every 50 people working and ox-drawn carts are much more common."
"Computer lab in a school… The principals were able to see all classes in their office via CCTV cameras."
"Kids practicing soccer at an elementary school in Kaechon. They were really good. No grass anywhere though, so they had to play on dirt."
"Busts of North Korean heroes at the Taesongsan Revolutionary Martyrs' Cemetery. Most are from the '60s and '70s, both men and women."
"A retiree pedestrian in Pyongyang."
"National Day in Pyongyang. This girl is wearing the same traditional-style dress as adult women at the Mass Dance. And she knows she's outclassing everyone around her."