An interview with the photographer who smuggled photos of the world’s most secretive nation (photos)

BY: ROB HOFFMAN

North Korea is infamous for strange tourist stories. Visitors of Pyongyang return convinced that their entire experience—perhaps the entire city—is staged. The buildings, streets, restaurants and homes are mostly vacant, save the actors hired to impress the few tourists that make it into the country. Yet according to the tour guides, North Korea only seems staged because foreigners aren’t used to perfection.

“When asked about its gay population, the guides told us how the country had no need to ban homosexuality, since homosexuality did not even exist in North Korea, as if the phenomenon had been invented in the US in the 1980s.” Photographer Michal Huniewicz tells me, who recently took a trip to North Korea to capture and smuggle back photos of the country’s questionable practices. “Upon hearing ‘we need no prisons or courts, as there is no crime’, who would not be sceptical?”

Yalu River

“In Dandong, a statue of Mao stands, helplessly witnessing the transition to capitalism all around him, as he keeps pointing with desperation.”

One of Huniewicz’s most notable experiences involved pulling into the train station to see a bustling scene of immaculately clad North Korean “upper-class” rushing around the train station. The problem was, his arriving train was the only one scheduled all day. North Korea’s Orwellian subtleties may be lost on certain tourists, but Huniewicz grew up in Poland where state surveillance and despotism have long jaded the nation. “This might be an arrogant thing to say, but perhaps due to my background (born in a Communist country, father was a member of anti-Communist opposition), I was less gullible to the propaganda we were fed on a daily basis throughout our stay, especially when quite a lot of it had a familiar ring to it. And I am more interested in truth than in political correctness.” Huniewicz tells me. According to Huniewicz, it’s impossible to go anywhere in North Korea without a tour guide breathing down your neck. They tell you when to go to sleep, when to wake up, and even when to put your cameras away and sleep on the bus to avoid making eyes at their passing military sector.

Huniewicz smuggled photos out of the country, an offence worthy of prison, by rigging his camera settings to bury pictures in obscure areas of his phone’s memory, rather than delete them. On his website, Huniewicz offers advice to future photographers visiting the region, including “Attach your least conspicuous and least professional looking lens (ideally a Sigma, ha ha) to your camera to avoid any impression you’re a pro” and “Change the menu language to something other than English to confuse them and slow them down.”

Sino-Korean Friendship Bridge

Ecologically, North Korea is stunning and unique, if underdeveloped. Most citizens get around by foot or on bikes, the roads being mostly void of cars. But Huniewicz warns me not to waste my time on a silver lining. He returned to Poland conceding that most North Korean myths, unfortunately, are true. In his experience, you can discern much from a nation by the way its children treat you: are they curious and lively, or sheepish and suspicious? “In North Korea, it wasn’t just the children that were shy and scared, it was virtually everyone.” This likely has something to do with the daunting permanence of North Korean citizenship. Attempted escapees are imprisoned, tortured or sold into slavery. Huniewicz cites the book Dear Leader, by Jang Jin-sung, a former high-ranking North Korean official. “He was a senior propagandist of the regime…In his book, he claims that North Korean men who manage to escape across the border to China, are often caught by the Chinese, and returned to North Korea, where they end up spending a few months in a concentration camp, as long as the reason for their escape was poverty. If the reason is more serious, more grave consequences await” Huniewicz tells me, who assures these practices are mild compared to their female counterparts. “The women, though, are referred to as pigs, and rated depending on how attractive they are. They are then sold to Chinese men. Grade 1 women are sold for 200,000 won, and at least could live in a decent place, but those less fortunate may end up chained to the wall and bearing children to a disabled farmer somewhere in rural China.”

Though there is much we will likely never know about North Korea, Huniewicz’s photographs pry the door open ever so slightly to offer a glimpse at the strange and disturbing world of what is perhaps the most secretive nation on Earth. The grim reality of Huniewicz’s experience suggests, perhaps, the door is better left closed and padlocked.