Students participate in a commemorative march near the Arch of Triumph in Pyongyang on April 25, 2025, to mark the 93rd anniversary of the Korean People's Revolutionary Army. (Photo by Kim Won Jin/AFP Photo)

This picture taken in late December 2022 and released from North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on January 2, 2023 shows North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un meeting with representatives who participated in the 9th meeting of the Korean Boy Scouts during a commemorative photo session in Pyongyang. (Photo by KCNA via KNS/AFP Photo)

This photo provided by the North Korean government shows North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, center, is surrounded by performers during a celebration marking the nation's 74th anniversary in Pyongyang, North Korea, on September 8, 2022. (Photo by Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service via AP Photo)

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)

Staff of a boat restaurant on the Taedong River line up at the entrance as they wait to greet customers Sunday, June 18, 2017, in Pyongyang, North Korea. The boat is berthed along the river, which is the fifth longest river on the Korean Peninsula and runs through the country's capital, Pyongyang. (Photo by Wong Maye-E/AP Photo)

In this picture taken on January 5, 2022, people take part in a demonstration march after the Pyongyang City rally to carry out the decision of the 4th Plenary Meeting of the 8th Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea, at Kim Il Sung Square in Pyongyang. (Photo by Kim Won Jin/AFP Photo)

This picture taken on April 25, 2022 and released from North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on April 26 shows a military parade to celebrate the 90th anniversary of the founding of the Korean People's Revolutionary Army at Kim Il Sung Square in Pyongyang. (Photo by KCNA via KNS/AFP Photo)