North Korean soldiers keep watch at the bank of the Yalu River, near the North Korean town of Sinuiju, opposite Dandong in China's Liaoning province, September 10, 2016. (Photo by Thomas Peter/Reuters)

North Koreans wave as Hughes MD-500 helicopters fly past during an aerial display on Saturday, September 24, 2016, in Wonsan, North Korea. North Korea on Saturday opened an air festival featuring sky diving, demonstrations by its air force and lots of beer to promote a newly renovated and upgraded commercial airport in the coastal city of Wonsan that it hopes will draw for foreign tourists. (Photo by Wong Maye-E/AP Photo)

North Korean soldiers participate in a mass military parade at Kim Il-Sung square in Pyongyang on October 10, 2015. North Korea was marking the 70th anniversary of its ruling Workers' Party. (Photo by Ed Jones/AFP Photo)

In this June 17, 2014 photo, a North Korean man takes shelter in the rain next to long propaganda billboards in the town of Samjiyon in North Korea's Ryanggang province. The Associated Press was granted to embark on a weeklong road trip across North Korea to the country’s spiritual summit Mount Paektu. The trip was on North Korea's terms. An AP reporter and photographer couldn't interview ordinary people or wander off course, and government “minders” accompanied them the entire way. (Photo by David Guttenfelder/AP Photo)

North Korean soldiers wave along the Yalu River, near the North Korean town of Sinuiju, opposite to the Chinese border city of Dandong October 7, 2014. (Photo by Jacky Chen/Reuters)

An African immigrant tries to jump a fence into a ferry terminal in the western Greek town of Patras April 28, 2015. Afghan, Iranian and Sudanese immigrants, living precariously in abandoned factories in Patras, southwest Greece, try to stow away on nearby ferries to Italy as they seek a better life in Europe beyond crisis-hit Greece. (Photo by Yannis Behrakis/Reuters)

A woman travels on a train stopping at a subway station visited by foreign reporters in central Pyongyang, North Korea on April 14, 2017. (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)