Rare images have shown what life is like in North Korea.
North Korea, run by Kim Jong-un, is a notoriously private country and people are seldom lucky enough to snap images of what it's like to live there.
North Korea closed its borders in January 2020, but prior to doing so there were already heavy restrictions on photography there.
Officially known as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), those who were once fortunate enough to get into the country before it closed its borders weren't able to take snaps of anything but public tourist sights.
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Anything outside of that was illegal.
But, four years on from Kim Jong-un making the country even more private, photographer Pedro Pardo managed to take some images that portray life on the other side of the Chinese and North Korean border.
He managed to get access to a remote part of North Korea's border with China in the latter's Jilin province to take the snaps, which date between February 26 and March 1 of this year.
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One photograph by Pardo is of a government building in Namyang, while another snap was of North Korean soldiers working on the border, as seen from Tumen in China.
Pardo's photos also included an image of the town of Chunggang, which boasts dozens of identical-looking houses.
There's also a large sign up on the hill of the town that translates to 'My country is the best'.
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Elsewhere there was a photo of a watchtower in Hyesan on the border.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, North Korea has been using 'expanded fences, guard posts, strict enforcement, and new rules, including a standing order for border guards to shoot on sight', a bleak new report from the Human Rights Watch (HRW) revealed earlier this month.
Released on March 7, the report was titled 'A Sense of Terror, Stronger than a Bullet: The Closing of North Korea 2018–2023'.
HRW analyzed satellite images of the country's borders and found that between 2020 and 2023, North Korea had built a total 482km of new fencing in the areas and enhanced another 260km of primary fencing that had existed before, Independent reports.
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As of the images taken in April 2023, there were still some fences being erected.
While North Korea is making it increasingly more difficult to enter or leave the country, it was found that the number of people that escaped from North to South Korea tripled last year, as per The Guardian.
The news outlet reported that almost 200 people managed to flee to the neighboring country.
Topics: North Korea, Kim Jong-un, Photography, China