People attend the New Year's eve gala of youth and students at Kim Il Sung Square in Pyongyang, North Korea Sunday, December 31, 2023. (Photo by Jon Chol Jin/AP Photo)

In this November 3, 2015 file photo, Afghan Taliban fighters listen to Mullah Mohammed Rasool, the newly-elected leader of a breakaway faction of the Taliban, in Farah province, Afghanistan. Despite US President Donald Trump’s pronouncement that there would be no talks with the Taliban following a series of deadly attacks in Kabul, officials say talks continue, but neither side trusts the other and neither believes the other negotiates independently. (Photo by AP Photo/Stringer)

In this Thursday, February 14, 2019, photo, a Transformer's Bumblebee mascot helps a woman carries paper bags at a shopping mall in Handan in north China's Hebei province. U.S. and Chinese envoys are holding a second day of trade talks after the top economic adviser to President Donald Trump said he has yet to decide whether to go ahead with a March 2 tariff increase on imports from China. (Photo by Chinatopix via AP Photo)

In this April 20, 2018, file aerial photo released by China's Xinhua News Agency, advection fog drifts across skyscrapers on the waterfront in Qingdao in eastern China's Shandong Province. Chinese leaders have long been sensitive about their communist country’s international image. Now, they are battling back, investing in diplomacy and a courtship of hearts and minds, just as the United States digs in on the Trump administration’s “America First” mindset. (Photo by Lu Hui/Xinhua via AP Photo/File)

The music group, Boyfriend, performs at the Gentilly Stage at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival in New Orleans, Thursday, April 25, 2019. (Photo by Doug Parker/AP Photo}

This picture taken on October 22, 2024 shows South Korean shooter Kim Ye-ji posing for a photo during an interview with AFP at a shooting range in Seoul. Kim, 32, won silver in the women's 10m air pistol at this summer's Paris Olympics and captured the internet's attention with her nonchalant cool. But she told AFP that she fell into her sport by accident. (Photo by Jung Yeon-je/AFP Photo)

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)

In a photo taken on July 6, 2017 soldiers of the Korean People' s Army (KPA) watch a fireworks display as part of celebrations marking the July 4 launch of the Hwasong-14 intercontinental ballistic missile, in Pyongyang Fireworks lit up the sky over Pyongyang' s Juche Tower as North Korea celebrated its launch of intercontinental ballistic missile, a milestone in its decades- long weapons drive. On July 4 – the United States' Independence Day – it launched a Hwasong-14 rocket that analysts and overseas officials said had a range of up to 8,000 kilometres, which would put Alaska and Hawaii within reach. (Photo by Kim Won-Jin/AFP Photo)