Civilian Drone Captures Haunting Images of Life in North Korea

Video and pictures from a civilian drone flight over North Korea are resurfacing months after they were posted to the internet, giving the world a seldom-seen view of the Hermit Kingdom.

Reddit user XiaoHao2 posted the recordings in March of this year, but the images and videos are experiencing a second viral moment in recent weeks.

The recordings show the North Korean border city of Sinuiju, and the situation there becomes disturbingly clear when the images are compared to what’s happening in a nation just a stone’s throw away.

“Drone pics of North Korea, I was in China, my drone flew across the border,” XiaoHao2 wrote on March 26. The images have recently been reposted across the web and gained tens of millions of views.

According to The Korea Times, a South Korean English-language newspaper, the pictures and videos were taken in 2020.

An account on the social media platform X posted just four of the pictures on Oct. 12, racking up over 42 million views in a matter of days.

This guy flew his drone into North Korea from China and took these photos 😳 pic.twitter.com/pxPfXt2TUV

— non aesthetic things (@PicturesFoIder) October 12, 2024

Video from XiaoHao2 was also reposted to YouTube and other platforms, showing the virtually deserted streets of Sinuiju.

The pictures and videos show the dream of Korean socialism for what it truly is: A complete nightmare.

While the images and videos were taken in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, the lifeless streets are the rule, not the exception for North Korea.

According to Radio Free Asia, the U.S.-funded news service, rules and regulations on private transportation (as well as the average North Korean citizen’s ability to afford such a luxury) largely restrict it to such a degree that only elites and the wealthy are able to participate.

The citizenry, meanwhile, is expected to contribute material and labor to maintain the lightly used roadways.

Pyongyang also used the cover of the novel coronavirus’ spread to openly test weaponry that would be used against the people of the south.

The failure of the North’s political system is often highlighted by comparing the struggling nation to its southern neighbor South Korea, a democratic nation that has seen massive economic success since the peak of the peninsula’s war.

Business has prospered in the south, with companies like Hyundai, Samsung and LG Electronics becoming households names around the world by bringing a host of innovative and advanced products to market.

In contrast, most people would struggle to name a single product to come out of the isolated north — besides missiles.

It’s not just North Korea’s southern neighbor putting it to shame — across the border from Sinuiju, a minor Chinese city shows magnitudes more activity than its Korean counterpart.

Across the Yalu River, the body of water that demarcates much of the Sino-Korean border, the Chinese city of Dandong appears downright futuristic compared to the bland buildings and dusty streets of Sinuiju.

Mandarin-language video from the city of Dandong shows a bustling metro with heavy traffic, plenty of commerce, and advanced public works on display.

Drone flights are capable of revealing the truth about North Korea, and Pyongyang is well aware of the existential threat this truth poses to the regime of the Kim dynasty, currently headed by North Korea’s supreme leader Kim Jong Un.

The Kim regime has blamed South Korea for more recent drone flights over the country and threatened to retaliate against further flights with force.

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