Men standing on the side of a highway running through the North Korean countryside. 2009

“Starving North Korea Send out SOS for Food Aid” is one of the headlines that reads on the Daily Telegraph’s website this week. This week also marks the birthday of the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-Il. I have chosen to mark this day with a video that was released a few months ago on the Telegraph website, secretly recorded by North Koreans dissidents, in attempt to show some of the frightening conditions in the country. It’s disturbing to watch.

As readers of this blog will know, I travelled to North Korea in the autumn of 2009 on assignment for the Globe & Mail. We had a very limited view of the real North Korea. Our 5-day trip was state-controlled and we were whisked across the country from one official tourist destination to the next. When our private mini-bus passed though rural areas, we were expressly told not to take any photos. I, of course, tried to get some. One of which is below. It’s only a fleeting glance, however.

I had the opportunity to also travel to South Korea a number of times in 2010. The differences between the two countries are staggering. It troubles me when I read about North Korea and think of the conditions that the people of the country must live under. Having witnessed the modernity and prosperity of South Korea, I can only think, what if. What if North Koreans had a chance to be like their brothers and sisters in the South. North Korea is an enigma. Its leadership, a mystery.

N.B. If you are interested in learning more about North Korea, I highly recommend LA Times journalist, Barbara Demick’s book, ‘Nothing to Envy‘.

(Left) A CNN Newscast in a hotel room in Seoul, South Korea. (Right) An image of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il as a child appears on a television in a hotel in Pyongyang.

View gallery in full size

As anyone who has been watching the news in the past 24 hours will know, tensions on the Korean peninsula have been increasing very very quickly following the shelling of a small South Korean island, by the north Koreans yesterday. Tensions are nothing new, however after yesterday’s events it seems like attention is focused on the conflict more now than in many previous years.

(Left) A handgun from the Korean War in a museum on the South Korean side of the DMZ. (Right) A handgun is depicted during a dispaly at the Arirang Mass Games in Pyongyang, North Korea.

This seemed like a good time to release a short series that I have been playing with over the past few months, currently titled ‘Korean Reflections’. Readers of this blog and followers of my work will know that I have, relatively recently, had the chance to visit both North and South Korea. I travelled to North Korea in the autumn on 2009, as part of a 5-day undercover assignment for the Globe and Mail and this year I have visited South Korea three times, two times for corporate work and once for the Globe and Mail.

(Left) Two South Korean gentleman visit the DMZ on the South Korean side of the border. The DMZ serperates the two nations. (Right) On the opposite side of the DMZ, two North Korean soldiers.

During my trips and whilst spending time with my images, I started to see commonalities developing between the images from either side. At first, I notices small things, like a similarity between statues, or a flight of stairs. I then started to look for patterns further in the images and found quite a lot more. I have collected what I have found and placed the images which ‘reflect’ one another side-by-side, in order for you to see clearly the subtle similarities and stark differences between the two nations which are so close but at the same time, so far apart.

(Left) Two men waiting at a bus stop in Seoul, South Korea. (Right) People waiting at a bus stop in Pyongyang, North Korea.

Having been lucky enough to visit and photograph both of these countries, the differences between the two were the most striking aspect for me. South Korea is a modern and dynamic Asian country whilst North Korea seems to be stuck in what I can only think of as a time-warp. Both sides talk of reunification in the future however when seeing the incredible differences between the two nations, it is hard to imagine. Underneath the differences however both sides talk of being the same people. Inevitable similarities emerge from the images.

(Left) A man walks past a tree in central Seoul, South Korea. (Right) A man walks past a tree in the North Korean town of Kaesong.

I do not claim to be any kind of expert on Korea, or on the Korean people, history or politics. However, having had the opportunity to observe both, I hope the images can act as a small window into these two nations. View gallery in full size here.

Men watching the World Cup match between North Korea and Brazil in a bar in Seoul. 2010

It was about 2:00 a.m. as my taxi careered down the highway that leads from Incheon airport to downtown Seoul. Having just landed in the middle of a lightning storm, the rain was battering the taxi windshield and the GPS on the driver’s dashboard blinked indicating a breaking of the local speed limit. I was starting to wonder if it was really that essential that I make it to my 3:30 a.m. appointment on time.

That appointment was to watch and photograph the World Cup game between Brazil and North Korea. An odd appointment to be trying to keep you may think, especially for an Englishman based in Beijing. This however was the first part of a shoot I was assigned to for the Canadian newspaper the Globe & Mail which involved spending last week in South Korea.

Globe & Mail Website Screenshot

As many readers of this blog will know, last year I travelled undercover with the Globe & Mail’s Mark MacKinnon into North Korea to report on this isolated nation. During a fascinating 5 day trip I witnessed a country of such uniqueness, that I am quite confident I will never see anything quite like it again. This time however, I was heading south of the DMZ to try to gauge the reactions of locals in Seoul to the arrival of the neighbour on the World Cup scene.

In the build up to the game, nobody really knew anything about this team. Some people mocked them, expecting Brazil to embarrass the lowest-ranked team in the competition. Most people drew a blank when asked about them, in a similar way as if you asked them about the country in general.

At 3:30 a.m. we found ourselves in downtown Seoul searching for bars that were showing the game. It wasn’t easy at first. The few bars that had big screens seemed to be showing music videos rather than football. At that time of the night, young Koreans were packing the bars and some spilling out, making there way home at the end of a night out.

Hur Sung-Hun (centre), a restaurant owner in Seoul, watches the World Cup match between North Korea and Brazil. 2010

Eventually, we found a bar showing the game although interest didn’t appear to be high as only a smattering of people were paying attention. As I photographed and Mark spoke to people, it was clear that I was not going to get the crowd-reaction shot I was looking for. Instead I had to settle for quieter photos of the few supporters who were watching the game. After having talked to these people, it appeared there was support for the North Koreans although they were reluctant to express it too much, but it was definitely there.

Nothing To Envy | Barbara Demick

Amazingly, the North Koreans held out without any goals until half-time. As Brazil eased into a 2-0 lead however in the 2nd half, dropping heads reluctantly started to admit an onslaught might be imminent. It never came though. Conversely, North Korea scored, albeit in the 89th minute. A ripple of applause and delighted screams lept up from other bars near us proving that there were a lot of people who really did care about the North Korean team, even at 5:00 a.m. in the morning. By the end of the game, the North Koreans had battled valiantly and shocked the sporting world.

After visiting North Korea, I still don’t understand the country and having visited South Korea I am even more perplexed at how these two nations have evolved as polar opposites of oneanother. In an effort to try and understand more, I am currently reading Barbara Demick’s excellent book ‘Nothing to Envy‘, a look into the lives of people in North Korea told through the voices of ordinary citizens. So far (and I expect it to continue to be so) it is a really excellent read. To hear the voices of ordinary people in North Korea, is really quite extraordinary and is something we never were allowed to hear on our trip last year.

If you have an inkling of interest in North Korea, this should be one of the books you read first. We need more like this to start to truly understand this country and what has happened to her in the past decades.

YouTube

I haven’t announced this officially but I now have a YouTube channel! As I have started to produce more video work and multimedia over the past few months, I obviously want to get this work out to as many people as possible and YouTube seems to be the perfect venue as it is possible to upload multimedia content, even without video.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iN4gKiD9JyY[/youtube]

I currently have 5 entries on the channel; ‘Inside North Korea Parts 1, 2 and 3′, ‘China’s Growing Sands’ for the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting and ‘China’s 60th Anniversary Preparation in Hangzhou’, for the Globe and Mail. By far the most popular video so far has been Part 1 of Inside North Korea which has nearly 1,000 views. A modest amount.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BHVnG3m7BU[/youtube]

I have embedded a couple of the videos here on this blog entry but please go to the channel here to subscribe and have a look at some of the videos and spread the word to others who you feel may be interested in the work I am doing.

The Digitial Journalist

In case you missed it earlier this week, the Digital Journalist published a dispatch of mine in their October 2009 edition. The dispatch is titled “Inside North Korea” and recounts some of the experience that I had when I was shooting in North Korea. You can read the dispatch on their website here, or just scroll down to read the text below.

This isn’t the first time I have contributed dispatches to the Digital Journalist, having two other dispatches published for them in the past year. The first was published in December 2008, on the subject of homeless communities in Mongolia. You can view that story here. The second story on “Abandoned Cities” was published in June 2009, as part of my work for the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting earlier this year. To read that dispatch, please go here.

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Last month, I got a call from the Globe & Mail‘s Asia correspondent, Mark MacKinnon, asking me if I was free in early September for a shoot. “Sure,” I said. I had been working with Mark a lot recently and was keen to work with him again. “I’m thinking of going to North Korea,” he said. “North Korea? Okay, I’m in,” I nonchalantly replied.

As our bus trundled across the bridge over the Yalu River that separates China and North Korea, my initial nonchalance had well and truly disappeared as we slowly approached the most closed nation on earth.

I was nervous because both Mark and I were posing as tourists, entering a country that was not exactly friendly to the foreign press. Immediately after the well-publicized rescue by former U.S. President Bill Clinton of journalists Euna Lee and Laura Ling, who had been caught illegally entering the country, this was maybe not the best time to be trying to sneak into North Korea. With Mark’s passport indicating his journalist credentials hidden (replaced by one with no such indications) and my camera broken up into as many parts as possible and spread around my person, we actually didn’t raise too many eyebrows as we quietly slipped onto a bus packed with Chinese tourists.

I didn’t know what to expect before I entered the country. I had done my research, reading articles and looking at previously taken images; however, there was so little information available that I decided to just be as open as possible to what I saw, found and felt while in the country.

For the whole time we were there, our tour guide and government minder, both assigned to watch over us, accompanied Mark and me. I was initially very cautious about taking photos and capturing video footage of this little-seen place. As soon as we crossed the border, I started to reassemble my camera and tried to look as much like an inquisitive tourist as possible.

Our first stop was Sinuiju city, just across the border from China, where we visited a statue of the “eternal leader,” Kim Il-Sung (this was to be the first of many). As I took my first few tentative shots of the statue, all appeared well. No one was watching me and no one was telling me to stop. The pedestrians walking nearby, beyond the pristine park in which the statue was located, quickly caught my attention. As I turned to photograph them, I managed to take a few frames before my minder appeared from nowhere and firmly cautioned me to “please, only photograph the statue.”

That afternoon we took the train from the border to the capital, Pyongyang. I again got into a little trouble when I photographed a train station attendant, a no-no apparently, and when I tried to photograph outside the window of our moving train. Both times, I was sternly but politely reminded that it was not me who dictated who or what could be photographed.

I began to become paranoid that they would find out what Mark and I were doing there. Rumors from guidebooks and fellow travelers hinted that our hotel rooms were almost certainly bugged, although there was no way to tell for sure.

As we traveled around the country, our minder and guide constantly quizzed us, both obviously “assigned” to find out a little more about who we were and why we were visiting, searching for any holes they could find in our stories. A slip could have gotten us into serious trouble.

One day, we visited the International Friendship Exhibition, a huge exhibition of gifts including armored cars, various decorative guns, a polar bear skin and a stuffed crocodile. The international community had given them all to Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-Il as presents.

As we approached the small cabinet that held gifts from Britain, our museum guide turned to me and pointed out a decorative plate with a picture of London’s Tower Bridge on the front. “What do you think of this plate?” she casually asked. “It’s … er … very nice. That bridge is very famous in our country,” I replied. “When was it built?” she said suddenly. Her change in tone and fixing of eyes with mine quickly turned this situation into an obvious spot quiz. I started to regret dropping history classes at the earliest possible opportunity at school. “About a hundred years ago?” I haphazardly guessed, obviously not knowing the answer. “You don’t know!” she scoffed. “How can you not know? You just said it was very famous in your country!” I had failed the test miserably and to top it all off I was told later that I “didn’t even look British.” I was becoming more and more paranoid by the second.

Later, however, I seemed to redeem myself after I casually mentioned I liked science. This provided another spot-quiz opportunity for our guide. “What’s a vacuum?” she randomly blurted out. “I beg you pardon?” I asked, thinking I had misheard. “What’s a vacuum?” she repeated, slightly more seriously. “It’s a an area of space, with no air or matter in it.” A disappointed “hmph” was the only reply I heard to that question. Suspicion (of what exactly is unknown, in this circumstance) was relieved temporarily.

For the majority of our time in the country, Mark and I were separated from other travelers and even given our own 15-seater minivan that whisked us from site to site. After the first day or two, things started to change in our guides’ attitudes towards me photographing. Trying to pose as much like a tourist seemed to be paying off as they relaxed and rarely stopped me. I sat at the back of our minivan out of their vision and snapped away at the countryside that had been previously forbidden on the train. I seized upon their new attitude and boldly photographed away.

From our four days within the country, it was almost impossible to get close to the people to photograph. As much as I would have liked to, getting close to the everyday person proved to be almost impossible. Hence, my photographs from this journey have a sense of isolation about them. It is an isolation probably born from my own feelings while being there. People are dwarfed against the mighty, imposing communist-era architecture, small and insignificant against the overbearing size of the buildings.

For me, my images from this trip have raised more questions than answers. This isn’t a problem for me, but it does not help as much as I would like it to in offering answers in a photojournalistic sense. I hope that reading between the lines and peering through the cracks of these images, they will offer brief glimpses of life in this mysterious place and conjure clues for the viewer.

Traveling to North Korea was like stepping back in time to the Cold War. It’s a time that just doesn’t exist anywhere else on earth anymore. How long it will remain like this is truly an unknown.

© Sean Gallagher

Sean Gallagher is a British photographer currently based in China. Graduating in Zoology from the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne in England in 2002, he subsequently changed career direction into photography. To date he has lived and worked across the world. His most recent work has specialized on social and environmental issues in Asia, with specific emphasis on China. This approach has resulted in receiving a travel grant from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting (2009), being the first recipient of the David Alan Harvey Fund for Emerging Photographers (2008) and during 2004-2005 he was selected to undertake a one-year paid internship at the prestigious photojournalism agency Magnum Photos. His work has been published internationally in print and online and exhibited worldwide.

Contact Sean Gallagher and see more of his work at: http://www.gallagher-photo.com/main.php
Read updates on his blog at http://www.gallagher-photo.com/blog

Sean Gallagher’s previous dispatches:
http://www.digitaljournalist.org/issue0812/gallagher-bp.html
www.digitaljournalist.org/issue0906/gallagher-bp.html

The above video is one that I produced for the Globe and Mail newspaper, along with the Asia Bureau Chief Mark Mackinnon and his assistant Yu Mei, a couple of weeks ago. The video centers on the preparations for the country’s 60th anniversary that passed on October 1st, focusing on the city of Hangzhou which lies to the west of Shanghai.

Yu Hua

One of the highlights of the video process was meeting and filming the author Yu Hua. Originating from Hangzhou, Yu Hua is one of China’s most famous and controversial novelists. In 1992 he released the book ‘To Live’ which was adapted into a movie by the well-known Chinese director Zhang Yimou, starring Gong Li. His feelings (and that of others we interviewed) about the way China has developed over the past 60 years were particularly interesting and refreshing, especially considering the propagandistic view presented constantly here in China recently.

Needless to say, witnessing the change China is going through at the moment is a special experience. Hearing the voices of people who have witnessed this change first-hand over the past 60 years is even more special and constantly eye-opening. I hope you enjoy the video.

My Image on the front page of Canada's national newspaper yesterday.

I got a surprise yesterday evening when I got a text from a colleague telling me that one of my photos had run on the front page of Canada’s national newspaper, the Globe and Mail. Regular readers of this blog will know that I have been contributing the visuals from China quite a lot to the Globe and Mail recently. They are a great team to work with and I was delighted to see that they had decided to run my photo of Mao Zedong’s personal photographer Hou Bo, taken at her home in Beijing, as part of the coverage of China’s 60th birthday.

If you missed my last post about this assignment and meeting this remarkable photographer, please head here to read it.

Hangzhou. Flags fly in the city. 2009

Today marks the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China. Here in Beijing, Tiananmen Square has become awash with parades, both military and civilian, as the populace celebrates Mao Zedong’s founding declaration, exactly 60 years ago here in China’s capital.

The build up to this event has been quite something. Beijing has come to a standstill at regular intervals over the past couple of weeks as dry-runs of today’s celebrations have taken place. Tanks have once again graced the streets of Beijing, fighter jets have zipped above the city and and army of yellow-shirted volunteers have descended on every street corner throughout the city.

In the build-up to this anniversary, I have been on assignment for Canada’s Globe and Mail, covering various facets of the country’s preparations and photographing various people who have a close connection to what the country has gone through in the last 60 years.

Two weeks ago, myself and the Globe and Mail’s Mark Mackinnon headed to the city of Hangzhou, which lies just west of Shanghai. We visited this city as it has been deemed to be one of the city’s in China that has changed the most since Mao’s declaration in 1949. Hangzhou is a pleasant city, sitting next to the beautiful West Lake which dominates the center of the town. When we were there celebrations were in full swing. Chinese flags were everywhere, special ‘pillars’ has been erected next to roads to remind passing motorists of the anniversary, and people sported t-shirts with slogans celebrating the upcoming day.

Hangzhou. Father Bao Lu, in his church in central Hangzhou. 2009

Whilst witnessing the obvious fervor and excitement surrounding the 60th birthday party, we also spoke to people who offered us much more sobering accounts of where China had come from in the past six decades, offering us thoughts and memories that seem to have been ‘swept under the carpet’ for most. Bao Lu, for example, is a priest that we visited in Hangzhou. He recounted stories of how all religions were prohibited during the Cultural Revolution and how his church was commandeered by the local police to be turned into a temporary prison. Yu Hua, a controversial author who is openly critical of the country’s failings during its early development, spoke to us in Beijing and told us of his worries for China’s social future.

One of the most interesting people we met for me however, was an 85 year-old lady called Hou Bo. This remarkable lady was Mao Zedong’s personal photographer before and during his rise to power to lead China. She is famous most famous here because of an iconic image she took of Mao, announcing the founding of China to the masses on October 1st 1949. She recounted that standing just a couple of feet away from Mao, she cautiously snapped away with only 8 rolls of film in her pocket. When questioned about whether she remembered the exact moment taking the picture, she replied she was more worried about falling off the balcony she was on, as she was pressed against it in order to get the wide shot of Mao.

Photographer Hou Bo in her home in Beijing. 2009

Flicking through her book of black & white images, I was stunned to see that this lady had been by Mao’s side through everything. Through the long march, the continuous fighting with the nationalists, through the founding of China and beyond. I was looking at quite epic photography and I had previously never heard of her. At a time when Henri Cartier-Bresson was flitting the streets of Paris searching for his decisive moments and Robert Capa was on the beaches of Normandy, Hou Bo was creating equally amazing work in China. You can view more images on Hou Bo here.

Needless to say, this has been another eye-opening assignment. A unique chance to see what China has become (or is becoming) and to listen to the voices of some of the people who have experienced the change first hand. To see the video that Mark, Mark’s assistant Yu Mei and I produced on this story please go here to the Globe & Mail’s website.

This is the third and final installment of mine and Mark MacKinnon’s short videos from our trip in North Korea.

This third video focuses on the Chinese city of Dandong, which lies on the North Korea/China border and offers a startling contrast between the two sides of the Yalu river. Whilst the city of Dandong thrives, fuelled by the economic boom in many of China’s cities, the North Korean side is devoid of life, except for the odd fishing boat and abandoned building.

I hope you have enjoyed this set of three videos. In case you missed the other two, please find the first one “Inside North Korea” here and the second, “The Arirang Mass Games” here.

The above video is the second short-video by myself and the Globe & Mail’s Mark Mackinnon from our assignment in North Korea. The topic of this video is the Arirang Mass Games which are held in the May Day stadium in Pyongyang.

In case you don’t know, the Mass Games are a gymnastics, dance and song spectacular that showcase North Korean history and culture. Using hundreds of participants, mostly schoolchildren, the games are an imposing and impressive sight which symbolise the power of the masses working as one in North Korea.

Apart from the huge overtones of propaganda, the show is actually quite breathtaking. My personal favourite part of the event are the hundreds of schoolchildren who provide the backdrop to the whole spectacle. Holding up books containing pages with different colours, they all open and close the books in unison to create the unbelievable moving backdrop.

If you missed the first video, you can view it here.