On the July 10, 2025, an elderly couple in Eonam-dong, Jung-gu, Daejeon, who finished their field work, cooled off by sitting on a bench in the yard near the water tap. (Photo by Shin Hyeon-jong)

Wearing hats and dancing to Sodapop. As the popularity of “K-Pop Demon Hunters (K-Pop Demon Hunters)” spreads around the world, foreign tourists wearing hats and dancing to the K-Pop Demon Hunters song “Sodapop” are seen in Gwanghwamun, Seoul on the afternoon of the August 29, 2025. (Photo by Park Seong-won)

On the November 24, 2025, children are making human faces by collecting fallen leaves in the forest in front of the Yuseong-gu Office in Daejeon. (Photo by Shin Hyeon-jong)

Japanese Yuuka Hasumi, 17, and Ibuki Ito, 17, also from Japan, who want to become K-pop stars, perform at an Acopia School party in Seoul, South Korea, March 16, 2019. Acopia is a prep school offering young Japanese a shot at K-pop stardom, teaching them the dance moves, the songs and also the language. (Photo by Kim Hong-Ji/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)

A soldier walks on the bank of the river in central Pyongyang, North Korea on April 16, 2017. (Photo by Damir Sagolj/Reuters)

Kang Na-ra, a North Korean defector who is now a beauty YouTuber, points at her lips after putting on a lipstick made by North Korea, in Seoul, South Korea, June 11, 2019. (Photo by Kim Hong-Ji/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)