newsjean

Jean Lee

I write about North Korea. Opened AP's news bureau in Pyongyang in 2012, and now a Seoul-based Global Fellow with the Wilson Center. www.twitter.com/newsjean

400 posts
107k followers
496 following

Here’s what those Kim portraits look like on the wall of an actual #Pyongyang home. In prime position in the living room. The Kims typically were portrayed with sober expressions when they were alive. After death, they were portrayed more ‘beatifically.’ This is a newer home, hence the newer portraits. Latergram from #Pyongyang #NorthKorea #DPRK #조선 #북한 #propaganda

Every home in North Korea has the portraits of the two late Kims on the wall. Except this one. One of the challenges of recreating a Pyongyang apartment in Seoul includes conforming to South Korea’s National Security Law, which prohibits the dissemination of North Korean propaganda. The curators of this exhibition got creative. #SeoulBiennale #PyongyangSallim #pysl #ddp #Pyongyang #NorthKorea #Seoul #architecture #propaganda

Picnics and hiking are a part of life in #NorthKorea. So is #soju. So it was only a matter of time before North Koreans found a way to package a picnic/hike-friendly soju (liquor): in plastic bags. This product is part of the growing development of consumer goods and light industry in #NorthKorea, part of leader Kim Jong Un’s campaign to keep the people happy with more creature comforts even as he spends more on building nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles. Take a closer look at North Korea's portable soju at the Pyongyang room of the @SeoulBiennale at @DDP_Seoul, opening today through early November. #PyongyangSallim #pysl #SeoulBiennale #Pyongyang #NorthKorea #liquor #soju

Just about every apartment balcony in #Pyongyang is lined with flowers, which are seen as a tribute to the late leaders Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il — and are a way to brighten up the home. And nowadays, many also have private solar panels to make up for the persistent power shortages #NorthKorea still endures. Most South Koreans will never get to visit Pyongyang, much less get inside a North Korean home. So the architects Dongwoo Lim of @praud_arch and @Calvin.Chua have recreated a #Pyongyang apartment for #Seoul as part of the @SeoulBiennale at @DDP_Seoul, which opens today and goes on through early November. #seoulbiennale #architecture #NorthKorea #DPRK #PyongyangSallim #pysl

Taking a break from the propaganda to show you what North Korean kindergartners, all dressed up for my visit, look like. Like kindergartners everywhere, they are fidgety. Latergram from #Pyongyang, #NorthKorea #조선 #북한 #유치원 #kindergarten

One of the most disquieting things about visiting a North Korean kindergarten is seeing all the violence, all of it directed toward Americans (their Korean War foe) and the Japanese (who colonized Korea from 1910-1945). Rifles, bayonets, missiles: These are the toys they play with. Posting a latergram of a poster on the wall at Kyongsang Kindergarten in Pyongyang, North Korea. The title: "Excited by military games: attacking and capturing American bastards" (my clumsy translation) #NorthKorea #DPRK #조선 #북한

In a recent op-ed for the New York Times, I recounted a popular children’s book I came across at a Pyongyang kindergarten:
SEOUL, South Korea — A few years ago, when I was a reporter working in Pyongyang, North Korea’s capital, I went to visit a kindergarten. While I was there, I picked up a children’s book called “A Hedgehog Defeats the Tiger.” It was a tale, a North Korean told me, about a feisty little hedgehog that bests a much larger and fiendishly ravenous tiger using the only weapons at its disposal: the small but sharp quills on its back. The tiny but clever hedgehog pounces on the big nose of the blundering tiger, blinding him into submission. “Do you know who the tiger is?” the North Korean asked me, an American, with a slight smirk.

Read more about his parable and how it helps us understand how the North Koreans see their fight against the U.S. in the Aug. 13, 2017, edition of the New York Times’ Sunday Review: https://nyti.ms/2uOL8Io

#NorthKorea #DPRK #hedgehogs #조선 #북한

“While Kim stares down his enemies abroad, it's easy to forget that he's also fighting a battle from within his own borders: to survive at all costs. Like any autocratic leader, he's under constant pressure to maintain order and allegiance. But his youth and inexperience make staying in power that much more of a challenge, which in turn requires absolute control. Opposition must be eliminated. No one is safe, not even his own family.” Read more from my feature story on the Kingdom of the Kims in the September issue of Esquire magazine, online now. With @dasl_yoon #NorthKorea #DPRK #KimJongUn

Time for a water park break in steamy, sultry South Korea. Like everything here, there is an unwritten code for how to come equipped for the water park: surf wear, aqua shoes, baseball cap and the all-important waterproof case with lanyard for those water slide selfies. (We did not get the memo, and turned up in nothing but swimsuits. Quelle horreur!) A latergram from Vivaldi resort. #summer #waterpark #오션월드 #SouthKorea

The adorable North Korean schoolchildren who spend their art class drawing pictures of the Korean People’s Army’s 105th armored tank division, the famed unit that invaded Seoul in 1950 to trigger the Korean War. An Armistice Day anniversary latergram from Pyongyang, North Korea, taken in 2013. #KoreanWar #schoolchildren #Pyongyang #DPRK #NorthKorea #조선 #북한 #평양

Sixty-four years ago today, after three years of bloody battles that killed millions, representatives of the U.S.-led UN Command, North Korea and China gathered in this room to sign a truce to stop the bloodshed of the Korean War. This room in what was a hastily constructed structure in 1953 is now a museum on the North Korean side of the DMZ, a stark and chilly reminder that a cease-fire that was meant to be temporary has persisted for decades without a peace treaty to formally end the Korean War. A latergram slice of history. #KoreanWar #NorthKorea #DPRK #dmz

Doesn’t this look like the dining room of a chic, Nordic cabin in the woods? Actually, it’s North Korea. This is the small meeting room in the village of Panmunjom where cease-fire negotiations were held in the 1950s to end the fighting in the Korean War. Latergram from the North Korean side of the DMZ. #KoreanWar #NorthKorea #DPRK #DMZ

Instagram

Download it for free.