Eric Lafforgue's North Korea Photos Minders Asked Him to Delete

Originally published 2016-05-31.

French photographer Eric Lafforgue travelled to North Korea several times, always accompanied by government guides who checked his camera and told him which pictures to erase. He kept many of those frames anyway, reportedly by hiding memory cards, and later published them online. According to PetaPixel, which reported his story in 2016, the authorities banned him from the country after his sixth trip in September 2012.

The pictures are not dramatic war photos. They show ordinary moments that the state prefers foreigners never to see: soldiers smoking or dozing, children doing farm work, a power cut in a showcase building, a broom left at the foot of a leader's statue. Taken together, they are a rare look at the gap between North Korea's carefully staged image and daily life.

One correction to versions of this story that went viral: it was guides and officials, not Kim Jong Un himself, who demanded the deletions, as far as any published account shows. Lafforgue collected many of the images in a photo set on his own website. The captions below draw on his descriptions and on background facts about the country.

Soldiers off-script

The Korean People's Army is one of the largest armed forces in the world, and photographing it without permission is strictly off-limits for visitors. Lafforgue's pictures show the army not on parade but in its everyday, very human state.

A young woman in a pink traditional dress stands alone in a sea of olive-green uniforms and peaked caps. Pictures of troops are among the first things guides ask tourists to delete. The contrast between her outfit and the uniform crowd makes it one of the most striking images in the set.

Off-duty soldiers chat while one draws on a cigarette. The state's propaganda shows soldiers marching in perfect formation, so relaxed, informal scenes like this are considered off-message. Lafforgue says images of troops at rest were explicitly forbidden.

A soldier carries long wooden poles across a field of flowers. North Korea's military is regularly used as a labour force on farms, building sites and roads. Seeing troops doing heavy manual work undercuts the image of a purely fearsome fighting force.

On an almost empty highway, a soldier waves to flag down a passing vehicle. Private cars are rare, public transport between cities is limited, and ordinary citizens have long needed official permission to travel between regions. Hitchhiking is a common way for soldiers to get around.

Rows of uniformed spectators fill the stands at a Pyongyang dolphin show while a dolphin leaps from the pool. Lafforgue was free to photograph the animals but not the audience, which by his estimate was almost entirely made up of soldiers. Trips to such attractions are often organised outings rather than private leisure.

A soldier lies asleep in the grass beside a row of white posts. Lafforgue has said that this frame in particular counted against him with the authorities. A tired conscript is a universal sight, but in a state built on an image of constant vigilance, it was treated as an insult.

Work, hardship and hunger

North Korea suffered a devastating famine in the 1990s, and United Nations agencies have repeatedly reported chronic food insecurity since then. Guides steer visitors away from anything that hints at this.

Two children carry heavy loads across a dry, dusty field. Lafforgue says officials objected whenever he photographed signs of poverty, even after he pointed out that poor people exist in his own country too. To the minders, the problem was not the poverty itself but foreigners showing it.

Small figures bend over neat rows of young plants on a terraced field. Children and students are regularly mobilised to help collective farms during planting and harvest seasons. The scene is calm and orderly, yet it shows how much of the country's agriculture still depends on hand labour.

Two women sit behind a tiny roadside stall selling cigarettes, sweets and drinks. Private trade was long banned and punished, but informal markets spread after the famine years and became a lifeline for many families. Small sellers like these occupy a grey zone between tolerated and illegal.

Workers dangle from ropes and makeshift platforms as they repair the facade of an apartment block, with no visible harnesses or scaffolding. It almost looks like a circus act, but this is ordinary construction work. Lafforgue's point is simple: safety standards are low, and the state does not like that to be seen.

In a shallow stream, a man bends over the water, apparently washing or collecting something, near a broken slab of concrete. Lafforgue describes scenes like this as common once you leave the cities. They are a reminder of how different the countryside is from the showcase capital.

In the home of a carefully selected rural family, a tiled bathroom has been turned into a water tank with a hand pump. Homes on the tourist route are chosen to impress, so a detail like this is revealing. It suggests that running water is unreliable even in households meant to be on display.

A thin young man in a work jacket and cap with a red star looks straight into the lens. Photographing visible signs of malnutrition is one of the clearest taboos for visitors. His face carries more information than any statistic in a report.

Cracks in the showcase

Some of Lafforgue's most telling pictures were taken in Pyongyang, the capital that most tourists see. These are moments when the stage set slipped.

A shiny black Mercedes with a special number plate is parked in a park where, Lafforgue says, its owners were enjoying a Sunday barbecue. Showing hardship is forbidden, but showing privilege is a taboo too, because the official story is one of equality. Cars like this belong to a small elite with connections to power.

At a funfair, a worn-out mother naps on a bench with her child stretched out beside her. Guides told Lafforgue to delete it because they feared he would present the pair as homeless. The episode shows how anxious minders are about any picture that could be read the wrong way abroad.

A giant bronze statue of Kim Il Sung, founder of the state, points into the distance at the Mansudae Grand Monument in Pyongyang. At its base, someone has left a broom and a dustpan. Visitors are expected to bow and lay flowers here, so even cleaning tools in the frame were seen as disrespectful.

Young people sit at desktop computers during a home visit arranged for foreigners. Guides encourage photos like this as proof of modern living standards. Lafforgue says they changed their minds once it became clear the electricity was not on.

Visitors stand in near-darkness in a Pyongyang art centre after the power failed. Lafforgue describes outages as a frequent event that guides blamed on American sanctions. Chronic electricity shortages are well documented in North Korea, and night-time satellite images show most of the country dark.

Commuters walk along a platform of the Pyongyang Metro as a train arrives. Opened in 1973, the system runs more than 100 metres underground and stations are designed to double as bomb shelters, with heavy blast doors. It is often called the deepest metro in the world; it is among the deepest, though other cities hold that record for individual stations. A passer-by told Lafforgue to delete this picture because the tunnel was visible.

A man in a suit dozes off on a pew in one of Pyongyang's few officially sanctioned churches. Officials are meant to appear alert and dignified at all times. The handful of churches in the capital are widely viewed by observers as showpieces for foreign visitors, as religious freedom is severely restricted.

Why North Korea controls every photograph

Tourism in North Korea works very differently from anywhere else. Visitors travel in organised groups with two or more state guides, follow a fixed itinerary and are told where they may and may not point a camera. Military sites and soldiers, construction work, poverty, and statues photographed from unflattering angles are all typical no-go subjects. Guides may check camera screens, and some travellers report border officials scrolling through memory cards on the way out.

The reason is image control. The government presents the country as prosperous, united and devoted to its leaders. A single photo of a hungry face or a sleeping soldier can contradict that message far more effectively than any foreign report. For guides, there is also personal risk, since they can be blamed if a visitor's pictures embarrass the state.

Reading these photos fairly

These pictures are powerful, but they are also a selection made under tight restrictions. Lafforgue could only photograph what he was allowed to visit, and he chose which forbidden moments to keep. They show real details of life in North Korea, not a complete portrait of every person's experience.

Viral headlines also exaggerated the story, claiming Kim Jong Un personally ordered the deletions. Accounts of the ban differ in detail too: some reports in 2014 linked it to a complaint by foreign visitors, while later reports tied it to the photos he refused to erase. What is clear is that Lafforgue chose to publish what he saw, and that his work remains one of the most widely shared outside views of daily life in the country.

If the subject interests you, look for his larger North Korea portfolio, and compare it with the work of other photographers who have visited, such as those published by news agencies with bureaux in Pyongyang. Seeing many perspectives gives a fuller picture than any single gallery.

Sources: Photographs by Eric Lafforgue; PetaPixel: These Photos Got a Photographer Banned from North Korea; Free Korea: N. Korea bans celebrated photographer Eric Lafforgue; Wikipedia: Eric Lafforgue; Wikipedia: Pyongyang Metro; first shared via Share Powered and Anon HQ.