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)

Noriko Takatory of Japan shares a moment with her groom Moon Byung-nam of South Korea during an opening ceremony for upcoming mass wedding ceremony of the Unification Church at Cheongshim Peace World Centre in Gapyeong, South Korea, February 19, 2016. (Photo by Kim Hong-Ji/Reuters)

Women in costumes walk as they participate in Halloween celebrations in the downtown of Seoul, South Korea, October 31, 2015. (Photo by Kim Hong-Ji/Reuters)

Young Korean women wearing hanbok (Korean traditional dress) walk inside Gyeongbok Palace on March 27, 2016 in Seoul, South Korea. There has been a trend in recent years for the young Koreans to wear the traditional Korean dress, Hanbok. Wearing the traditional dress, they will walk around downtown Seoul on weekends taking selfies, and share their memories with friends on social media, and also to promote their traditional dress to foreign visitors. (Photo by Jean Chung/Getty Images)

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

B-boy Amin Drillz of Austria (front) competes during the 2022 World Breaking Championship at the Olympic Park in Seoul on October 21, 2022. (Photo by Anthony Wallace/AFP Photo)

A woman uses a phone near the scene where many people died and were injured in a stampede during a Halloween festival in Seoul, South Korea on October 30, 2022. (Photo by Kim Hong-ji/Reuters)