A guard secures gates of a catfish farm visited by a group of foreign reporters in Pyongyang, North Korea April 17, 2017. (Photo by Damir Sagolj/Reuters)

A model showcases designs on the runway at MGPIN 2015 Mao Geping Makeup Trends Launch show during Mercedes-Benz China Fashion Week Spring/Summer 2015 at Beijing Hotel on October 27, 2014 in Beijing, China. (Photo by Feng Li/Getty Images)

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)

Young women wear kimonos to mark “Coming of Age Day” to honour people who turn 20 this year to signify adulthood, in Yokohama, Kanagawa prefecture on January 9, 2023. (Photo by Philip Fong/AFP Photo)

A couple joke as they walk on the beach on August 22, 2018 in Wonsan, North Korea. (Photo by Carl Court/Getty Images)

A newly-married couple takes a nap before their mass wedding ceremony at the CheongShim Peace World Center in Gapyeong, South Korea, Sunday, February 17, 2013. Some 3,500 South Korean and foreign couples exchanged or reaffirmed marriage vows in the Unification Church's mass wedding arranged by Hak Ja Han Moon, a wife of the late Rev. Sun Myung Moon, the controversial founder of the Unification Church. (Photo by Lee Jin-man/AP Photo)

In a photo taken on November 27, 2016 a female traffic police officer directs traffic on a road in Pyongyang. Believed to be hand-picked for their looks, Pyongyang's female traffic police are a familiar sight at intersections around the capital, where traffic volumes have noticeably increased in recent years. (Photo by Ed Jones/AFP Photo)

In a photo taken on September 11, 2019, North Korean students pose for photos in Chonji lake, or “Heaven lake”, as they visit the crater of Mount Paektu, near Samjiyon. Mount Paektu has long been considered the spiritual birthplace of the Korean nation and is a place of pilgrimage for tens of thousands of North Koreans every year, who are trained from birth to revere their leaders. (Photo by Ed Jones/AFP Photo)