What hedgehog spine toothpicks reveal about North Korea

The World
A North Korean soldier on Kim Il-sung Square in Pyongyang. The permanent markings on the street and square indicate marching steps for parades.

Photojournalist David Guttenfelder spent six days in North Korea to show the world what everyday life looks like.

Guttenfelder, National Geographic fellow for the New York Times, put up an Instagram series called “North Korean Artifacts,” photos of objects from daily life that he collected during his trip. A North Korean-produced roll of toilet paper, a bottle of mushroom alcohol, even hedgehog spine toothpicks.

North Korean artifact 175. A packet of hedgehog spine toothpicks.

A photo posted by David Guttenfelder (@dguttenfelder) on

“I go there as a photojournalist and I photograph pretty much everything; I mean it’s a totally unknown world for most people. So it’s the kind of place where I try to photograph everything around me. Every little photograph, everything that I see seems like it’s a piece of a puzzle explaining a country as mysterious as North Korea,” Guttenberg says.

And mysterious it is. The Korean Central News Agency, run by the government, makes and distributes most of the photographs of North Korea, giving the world a skewed view of country. "Propaganda is not a dirty word in North Korea," says Guttenfelder. "It's a North Korean journalist's job." Guttenfelder has had the opportunity to show a more nuanced view. In some 40 visits to North Korea in the past 15 years, Guttenfelder has witnessed, and photographed, the evolution of the country.

He says in recent years, as Kim Jong-un came into power, there have been significant changes in the capital, Pyongyang. Guttenfelder talks about seeing new restaurants, a dolphinarium, a waterpark and all sorts of recreational activities. But outside of the capital, the landscape can be a little different.

"There are still those classic, iconic places in the country that have this Stalinist architecture, these floral print carpets and plush muted colored furniture and chandeliers. That’s part of the visual language that I’ve photographed and a lot of people hit on when they go there.  At times it feels like it’s stuck in the past, but the country is certainly changing, it’s changing rapidly,” he says.

But it wasn’t always this way.

When Guttenfelder first went to North Korea in 2000 with former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, he wasn’t allowed to take any pictures.

“They asked me to keep the cameras in the bag, they drew the drapes on the bus so I couldn’t photograph through the bus windows, the windows of my hotel were covered in black plastic, and I had this feeling that because I couldn’t see anything, I had this feeling that nothing was real, it was just a façade,” Guttenfelder remembers.

Guttenfelder is still not allowed to travel alone in the country and needs permission to go places, but now he is able to get a better sense of what a North Korean life is.

“Over the years, I’ve been able to photograph all over the country and I’ve been able to learn that it’s not just some empty place. It’s a place, despite our differences or hostile relationship, it’s a place full of real people, with real lives, trying to get by,” he says.

Guttenfelder has also posted very short videos, showing a more kinetic view of North Korea.

“It’s like a quick journey through North Korea, what does it look like in the country, what does it feel like to be there, what does it feel like in the head of someone who’s inside North Korea. So it’s a bit of a trippy, quick flash through a country that is already quite surreal,” he says. 

Sign up for our daily newsletter

Sign up for The Top of the World, delivered to your inbox every weekday morning.