In this Thursday, April 11, 2013 photo, North Korean female soldiers stand watch on the river bank of the North Korean town of Sinuiju, opposite to the Chinese border city of Dandong. (Photo by AP Photo)

In this Friday, August. 17, 2018, photo, a North Korean waitress prepares to serve dinner to Chinese tourists at the Pegaebong hotel in Samjiyong in North Korea. Chinese businesspeople and tourists are once again flowing over the borders – several large tourist groups were in Samjiyon last week – and South Korean officials are seriously considering ways to help the North improve its roads and railways. (Photo by Ng Han Guan/AP Photo)

More than 400 people stripped off and ran into freezing waters to celebrate the autumn equinox – and raise money for charity at Druridge Bay, Britain, September 25, 2016. It was the largest turnout the North East Skinny Dip has ever seen in its five-year history, and it was also the first time it has ever rained on the morning of the event. Revellers gathered from 5.30am on Sunday at Druridge Bay, in Northumberland, before baring all in the North Sea. (Photo by David Charlton Photography)

A picture made available 27 November 2015 shows a handler putting his head between the gaping fangs of a crocodile during a show at the Samutprakarn Crocodile Farm and Zoo, Samutprakarn province, outside Bangkok, Thailand, 26 November 2015. The farm and zoo claims to be the world's largest crocodile farm with more than 80,000 freshwater and marine crocodiles, and offers shows such as crocodile wrestling to attract tourists. (Photo by Diego Azubel/EPA)

Schoolchildren play music to entertain and inspire people on their way home from work Tuesday, March 29, 2016 in Pyongyang, North Korea. North Korea has called a 70-day loyalty drive areas of a major congress of the ruling party scheduled for early May and everyone from students to coal miners have been mobilized nationwide to demonstrate their devotion to the leadership. (Photo by Eric Talmadge/AP Photo)

A bride and groom jump over a skipping rope as they pose during a wedding photo shoot at a park in Pyongyang on April 18, 2019. (Photo by Ed Jones/AFP Photo)

Two railway workers chat in front of a flower mural inside a subway station visited by foreign reporters during a government organised tour in Pyongyang, North Korea October 9, 2015. (Photo by Damir Sagolj/Reuters)

Associated Press photographer Wong Maye-E tries to get her North Korean subjects to open up as much as is possible in an authoritarian country with no tolerance for dissent and great distrust of foreigners. She has taken dozens of portraits of North Koreans over the past three years, often after breaking the ice by taking photos with an instant camera and sharing them. Her question for everyone she photographs: What is your motto? Their answers reflect both their varied lives and the government that looms incessantly over all of them. (Photo by Wong Maye-E/AP Photo)