North Korea has systematically isolated itself from the world and applied communist thinking to the upmost extreme. The Kim regime has vanquished any traces of capitalism, foreign imperialism, and the enemies--real and imagined--of the radical left. Even as communism collapsed elsewhere and over a million people died of starvation in the 1990s, the government did not waver from its course. The result is a paranoid militarized society, an astounding cult of personality, and the formal absence of any individualism.

VII Network photographer Tomas van Houtryve had unprecedented and exclusive access to a variety of locations in North Korea, many of which had never before been seen by a Western photographer.