Marianne Brauns jumping a breakwater on the beach, wearing a structured blue swimsuit with white trim. (Photo by Carl Sutton/Hulton Archive/Getty Images). Circa 1950

American soldiers leaping from an armoured personnel carrier during exercises in Korea, 17th March 1954. (Photo by Three Lions)

KARA perform on stage during their first solo concert KARASIA at Olympic gymnasium on February 18, 2012 in Seoul, South Korea. (Photo by Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images)

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 man pushes her daughter on a cart as they shop at a market in Seoul, South Korea, July 26, 2016. (Photo by Kim Hong-Ji/Reuters)

A woman sits in a train at a subway station in Pyongyang, North Korea on September 11, 2018. (Photo by Danish Siddiqui/Reuters)

A worker works at a plant of Hyundai Motor in Asan, South Korea, January 27, 2016. (Photo by Kim Hong-Ji/Reuters)

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)