Instagramming North Korea
Three North Korean boys gaze attentively into the camera lens, their
portrait surrounded by selfies and shots of fancy food. Nearby, a female
soldier smiles as she salutes, and a woman runs a snack shack in the
North Korean countryside.
They are the subjects of the trailblazing Instagram account of an
American teacher in Pyongyang, the North Korean capital and perhaps one
of the least understood places on Earth.
Drew Kelly, 24, is one of the few foreigners posting photos of North Korea.
Known as the Hermit Kingdom, North Korea is renown for its government's
secrecy and strict control on the flow of information. The country's
authorities and its reclusive leader, Kim Jong Un, severely limit what
state media report and the access that foreigners, and especially
journalists, have to the country.
Stills and videos of snacks, schoolchildren, public transport and
billboards now pop up on the few Instagram users in the North, denoted
by hashtags like #pyongyang, #thiskoreanlife and #livefromnorthkorea.
David Guttenfelder, AP's chief Asia photographer, has gained nearly
200,000 followers since he began posting photos from North Korea on
Instagram. He is the sole Western photojournalist to have been in and
out of the country regularly since AP in January 2012 became the first
international news organization to open a permanent bureau there.
While Guttenfelder uses his professional cameras for most of his
journalistic work, he'll often grab his iPhone from his back pocket and
also snap "caption-less moments that aren't really
newsworthy"—photographs of still life and little details that wouldn't
make the AP wire, he told ABC News.
He posts those pictures on Instagram."They're sort of more personal.
They're things that you would notice, that you'd tell your friends
about," he said.
Reporters had previously been prevented from bringing their own
cellphones into the country, but that changed this year. In February,
faster 3G cellular service arrived in North Korea—and around that time,
authorities began letting foreign journalist use their own
phones—allowing visiting Western journalists and others to post online
in real time.
Kelly, who has taught English at a university in Pyongyang for two
years, started posting on Instagram from North Korea in July 2012. He
said he has a free rein to move about and interact with locals on his
school's campus, which has wifi, but he's more limited when he is away
from the university.
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