Images of Pyongyang emerged quickly, notable for their variety – glimpses to North Korea almost in real time, which showed its leader, Kim Jong Un, smiling and greeting Russian President Vladimir Putin and showing him the capital of one of the least accessible nations in the world.
For those who follow the events of the government of three generations of the Kim family, coverage of the Kim-Putin meeting this week – images released only by each government’s respective propaganda arms – represented an extraordinary outpouring of opinion about a nation where images that appear even remotely improvised, unexamined and edited ad nauseam are rare.
The duo marched on the red carpet at Kim Il Sung Square, in honor of the grandfather of the current leader and founder of the nation. They looked out over a sea of children carrying balloons. They reviewed a military parade and observed a crowd waving pompoms. They saw — but were not shown interacting with — groups of North Korean citizens, who, if the past is any indication, were meticulously vetted before coming near the site.
These images were vivid and plentiful, but they represented the predictable outcome of an experienced propaganda apparatus.
Much more impressive were the in-between moments that managed to peek through – also carefully calibrated, but revealing a little more about the North and its leader than most of the images. Drawing on photographs and videos taken by Russian and North Korean state media (independent journalists did not have access to cover Putin’s visit), the images were many and varied.
Here was Kim showing Putin a bust he had made of the Russian leader as a gift. Here were the two leaders hugging each other, looking at horses and Korean Pungsan dogs, leaning in for informal conversations, laughing at a “gala concert.” And here were cuts to the state dinner set — complete with camera carts, rooms before the leaders’ entrance, and other exterior-style shots that appear less frequently in local footage of North Korea.
One of the most striking sequences came from the Kremlin swimming pool video, filmed shortly before Putin’s arrival in Pyongyang. It showed Kim on the tarmac with his hands behind his back, silhouetted against the airport gate and a scarlet welcome sign behind him, pacing back and forth and awaiting his counterpart’s presence. It was easy to imagine that Kim Jong Un was not, for a moment, the lulled leader of an authoritarian government, but a tired man waiting for a plane after dark.
Perhaps most notable was the feeling that all of this was reaching the world almost in real time – mainly through images of Russian swimming pools. The North Korean government’s own images often present its leader and his nation as stilted, rigid and slightly out of sync – and the photos often emerge well after an event has occurred.
Also at play: images from the North’s main propaganda body, the Korean Central News Agency, have occasionally been digitally manipulated before being broadcast; strict verification is required before it can be used.
Part of what made this week’s images so compelling was the occasional appearance of spontaneity. The overwhelming majority of images coming from North Korea appear staged – because most of them are. Strange and respectful people usually surround Kim, as they did with her father and grandfather. And Kim himself often seems strange.
But in these frames and footage, amid the fast-paced nature of the week’s events, that sense of setting sometimes seemed absent. And it made North Korea look more like other places, rather than reinforcing the “hermit kingdom” image.
Photos and videos can distance us. They can bring us closer. They can humanize. They can show many people places that few see. And sometimes, collectively, they can offer some small epiphanies about a place, its people, even its leader.
Seeing this week’s photos and videos from Pyongyang is knowing a little more about what motivates North Korea – even if that wasn’t the main intention of the propagandists who created them.
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Ted Anthony, director of new storytelling and newsroom innovation at The Associated Press, was AP’s Asia-Pacific news director from 2014 to 2018 and visited North Korea several times in that role. Follow him on
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