Globalist PhotoGallery: Inside North Korea by Nicolas Righetti

The Globalist PhotoGallery

Globalist PhotoGallery: Inside North Korea

Photographs by Nicolas Righetti. Text by Orville Schell

Published by Umbrage Editions

128 pages. 70 color images. Dimensions (in inches): 0.73 x 7.60 x 9.40

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Last Paradise: North Korea

Nearly 60 years after the armistice established two separate nations on the Korean Peninsula, North Korea remains a mystery to most of the world.

Secretive, paranoid and unrepentantly militant, North Korea has incubated its own peculiar mix of communist utopianism and personality cult.

Nicolas Righetti's photographs in "The Last Paradise" offer a visual guided tour through this chilling landscape — the paradoxes of an earthly paradise and the tragic outcome of an unattainable ideal.

Mr. Righetti is one of the few Western artists allowed to photograph Pyongyang's "New Order of Happiness." For nine years, he waited for permission to document the self-proclaimed paradise — home of the late "Dear Leader" Kim Jong II, the "perfect brain" who inherited the regime from his father.

Contemporary North Korea

Forbidden from photographing or speaking directly to individuals, Mr. Righetti documented intricate interior details, public murals and mass pageants.

He made careful note of the slogans in the streets and of those regularly volunteered by his ever-present guide. "We are Happy," insists an airport sign greeting visitors. "We are in Heaven," reads another sign at a crossroads.

And who could doubt such sentiments in the midst of this bright urban landscape dotted with paper flowers, curvaceous neo-constructive architecture and synchronized folk dancing?

Any telltale signs to the contrary remain embedded in the absurd juxtaposition of details, such as huge guns hidden in the traditional landscape wall paintings, looming portraits of the late Great Leader and his son, empty shelves at Paradise Food Shop — and Big Brother exhortations proclaiming nirvana achievable through "iron discipline."

About Nicolas Righetti

Nicolas Righetti was born in Geneva, Switzerland, and he studied at the Institut d'Etude Sociales and the Ecole Superieure d`Audio Visuel, both in Geneva.

Mr. Righetti has traveled, photographed and filmed extensively throughout Asia. He has worked as a still photographer on the set of various feature films in Hong Kong, Beijing and Paris.

His photographs have appeared in numerous publications worldwide.

About Orville Schell

Orville Schell is one of the world's leading Asia experts. He is currently the Arthus Ross Director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society in New York.

Mr. Schell is a frequent contributor to The New Yorker, Harper's, Newsweek, Atlantic Monthly and The New York Times Magazine — and has also worked as a network correspondent for ABC, CBS, NBC and CNN.

YEAR 91 (June 29, 2001) Two North Korean gunboats escorting fishing boats cross into South Korean territorial waters.

YEAR 34 (October 9, 1945) Kim Il Sung, now a major in the Soviet army, returns to Korea from Siberia and is given accolades as a heroic leader of the resistance against the Japanese.

YEAR 84 (June 9, 1995) North Korea falls prey to "natural disasters" and a deteriorating national economy, and makes its first appeal for international aid. The country is particularly in need of food.

YEAR 83 (October 21, 1994) North Korea and South Korea enter into the "Agreed Framework," which establishes that both countries will work toward a nuclear weapons-free Korean peninsula in exchange for heavy fuel oil for heating and electricity production.

YEAR 1 (April 15, 1912) Kim Il Sung is born as Kim Song Ju in Mangyongdae, near Pyongyang. Kim Il Sung was born during a time of colonization and repression of Korean culture by the Japanese. Japan had annexed Korea in 1910, replacing the Korean Emperor with a Japanese "resident-general." Japanese culture, language and religion were imposed on the Korean people. In 1925, Kim

YEAR 63 (August 15, 1974) A North Korean agent attempts to assassinate South Korean President Chung Hee Park, a former general and veteran of the Japanese Imperial Army, who seized power in a military coup. The assassination fails, but the first lady is killed during the attempt. YEAR 76 (November 29, 1987). Under orders to "throw a wrench into the two-Korea policy and preparations for the Olympics," North Korean agents plant a bomb on a Korean Airlines flight, killing all 115 on board.