The First Instagram Photos from Inside North Korea

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Yesterday, Instagram announced that it had reached an impressive 100 million users, but the Instagram news making headlines today is only concerned with a select few of those.

That’s because those select few, including the AP’s David Guttenfelder and Jean Lee, have begun uploading the first ever Instagram photos from inside North Korea — giving us an intimate glimpse at daily life inside the very closed off country.

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Featured today on the Instagram blog, AP Chief Photographer for Asia David Guttenfelder is, in his own words, “opening a window into a place that would otherwise rarely be seen by outsiders.”

Although photographers have had access to North Korea before, this is the first we’re seeing real-time photos being uploaded to Instagram. Up until a few weeks ago, most foreigners weren’t even allowed to bring mobile phones into the country. And if you did somehow sneak your iPhone in, you more than likely had no access to wireless data.

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Now that both of those things have changed, AP photographers such as Guttenfelder and Lee have begun sharing the “curious, strangely beautiful, or melancholy details around us here.” Be sure to visit and follow Guttenfelder’s and Lee’s Instagram pages to browse through their photos and watch as more upload in real-time.

(via Doobybrain)


Update: As commenter Ubinam_Rosarium kindly pointed out, these are some of the first, but certainly not the first Instagram photos to be posted from North Korea. Instagram user Drew Kelly has been uploading photos for about a year now.

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