Kijong-dong is a village located next to the South Korea border. It is one of the two villages permitted to be in the Korean Demilitarized Zone, that was established after the Korean war in 1953.
Here, a waitress is working at a restaurant but she isn’t what this photo is about. On the TV screen, you can see an
of one of North Korea’s national leaders. It is actually one of the propaganda messages that are played on the TV 24⁄7.
The workers and the customers have no choice but to listen. It is their background music.
Without a lot of government funding, most of the roads are left unpaved. In fact, if you travel through North Korea, you will only see less than 3% of their roads finished. That is, out of the 120,538 square kilometers of roads, only about 2.83% are paved.
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All the roads in North Korea (if they were finished) could circle Pluto 3.5 times while the 450 miles of paved ones would barely make the distance from New York to Cleveland.
When photographer Michal Huniewicz first started his trip, he needed to get a North Korea custom declaration form. He had to list all of his belongings while also getting searched for anything illegal. You aren’t allowed to bring in pornography, Korean films, books about North Korea (even guide books), and GPS.
If you had any of those with you, they will be confiscated. Luckily, the photographer didn’t get his camera taken away!
Now here is something pleasant to look at! The Sino-Korean Friendship Bridge connects Dandong with the city of Sinuiju, North Korea. It is pretty much the last brightly colored lights you will see before entering North Korea.
As you can probably guess, the dark area on the left is the beginning of North Korea. Kind of depressing, right?
