Citizens are enjoying the festival by shooting hot spring water guns at the Yuseong Hot Spring Festival held on Oncheon-ro in Yuseong-gu, Daejeon in the first decade of May 2025. (Photo by Shin Hyeon-jong)

At this year’s Venice Bienniale in Italy, the Korean pavilion has a curious exhibit called “Commissions for Utopia”. It includes renderings from North Korea’s top architects and artists (all anonymous), many of whom studied at the Paekho Institute of Architecture, North Korea’s state-run architectural college, and none of whom have ever left the country. They were asked to create a vision of North Korea’s future sustainable architecture for its expanding tourism industry. Their final products are a glimpse into what it would be like to envision the future after being entirely cut off from the present for almost 70 years. (Photo by Nick Bonner/Kyle Vanhemert/Venice Architecture Biennale)

People pose for photos among a field of cosmos flowers in a car park before high-rise apartment buildings in Goyang, west of Seoul on September 22, 2020. (Photo by Ed Jones/AFP Photo)

In a photo taken on October 7, 2020 a woman holds two dogs as she waits for a train in Suncheon. (Photo by Ed Jones/AFP Photo)

South Korean tightrope walker Nam Chang-dong performs “Jultage” or Tightrope walking during the traditional festival “Dano” at Namsan Hanok village in Seoul, South Korea, 14 June 2021. The festival falls on the fifth day of the fifth month of the lunar calendar. Only 30 audience members were allowed to attend the performance amid the coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic. (Photo by Jeon Heon-Kyun/EPA/EFE)

Dinosaur mockups are installed in Danghangpo, Goseong, some 466km southeast of Seoul, South Korea, 06 September 2021, 25 days ahead of the Gyeongnam Goseong Dinosaur World Expo 2021 set for 01 October until 07 November. Goseong is one of the world's three largest fossilized dinosaur footprint sites, along with Colorado in the United States and the west coast of Argentina. (Photo by Yonhap/EPA/EFE)

Visitors outside the venue for Seoul fashion week in Seoul, South Korea on September 3, 2024. (Photo by Lee Jin-man/AP Photo)

People take a walk among cherry blossoms at a park in Seoul, South Korea on April 6, 2022. (Photo by Kim Hong-Ji/Reuters)