Rare aerial footage of North Korea’s capital, Pyongyang, has revealed that while it’s filled with skyscrapers, the vast city appears to be empty of people.
The footage was filmed by Singaporean Aram Pan as he rode in a Piper Matrix PA-46 circling Pyongyang.
Pan is part of the DPRK360, a project aiming to showcase North Korea through images and film. He was given permission to film by the country’s government.
Footage shows colourful buildings and skyscrapers as well as modern highways, overpasses and bridges.
Footage of the North Korean capital was filmed by Singaporean Aram Pan as he rode in a Piper Matrix PA-46 circling Pyongyang. He was given permission to film by the country’s government
Pan, who works with an organization working to showcase North Korea through film and images, was given permission to film by the country’s government.
Another region of the city shows vast rolling hills with small houses in rows. The region sits just outside the metropolis city.
But one noteworthy aspect of the video, however, is that the roads and pavement are mostly empty of people and cars.
Pyongyang, the largest city in North Korea, is believed to have a population of 2.58million.
The country has been shut off from the rest of the world for nearly 70 years, after the Korean peninsula was cut into two countries.
Pan has been documenting life inside North Korea for several years, and is one of the rare foreigners allowed to do so.
North Korea allows foreign tourists to visit but their travel is strictly limited. Hundreds of Americans were among the roughly 4,000 to 5,000 Western tourists who visit North Korea each year before the the travel ban to the country was initiated at the beginning of September.
The travel ban was imposed following the death of student Otto Warmbier in June, a few days after the 22-year-old was sent home in a mysterious coma following more than a year in prison in the North.
Footage shows colourful buildings and skyscrapers as well as modern highways, overpasses and bridges
Another region of the city shows vast rolling hills with small houses in rows. The region sits just outside the metropolis city
He had been convicted of offenses against the state for trying to steal a propaganda poster from a Pyongyang hotel and sentenced to 15 years’ hard labor, with President Donald Trump blaming Pyongyang’s ‘brutal regime’ for his plight.
On its website the State Department said it took the decision due to ‘the serious and mounting risk of arrest and long-term detention of US citizens’.
Three Americans accused of various crimes against the state are behind bars in the North, which is engaged in a tense standoff with the Trump administration over its banned missile and nuclear weapons programs.
The vast majority of tourists visiting the country are Chinese, and North Korean tourism development officials have said the ban will not affect the economy
Other curious foreigners still travel to the North, and an art symposium in Pyongyang this week saw foreign artists, most of them European, working together with North Koreans.
President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that military action against North Korea was not the ‘first choice’ of his administration, edging away from his most bellicose threats against the Pyongyang regime.
After a phone call with Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping about how to deal with Kim Jong-Un’s threatening nuclear and ballistic missile programs, Trump did not rule out military strikes if necessary.
One noteworthy aspect of the video, however, is that the roads and pavement are mostly empty of people and cars
Pyongyang, the largest city in North Korea, is believed to have a population of 2.58million. North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un is pictured above
But, he indicated, other avenues for pressure would come before military action.
‘Certainly that’s not our first choice, but we will see what happens,’ Trump said as he boarded Marine One at the White House.
Trump has previously warned of ‘fire and fury’ if North Korea continued tests and warned its few international partners that trade with the United States could come to an end.
So far those threats have gone unheeded in Pyongyang which recently detonated an apparent thermonuclear bomb.
That and a litany of other tests appear aimed at marrying missile and nuclear technology in a way that could put the United States within striking distance.
Trump has accused China in particular of not doing enough to tighten economic pressure on its smaller neighbor. But on Wednesday Trump sounded more conciliatory.
‘I believe that President Xi agrees with me 100 percent. He doesn’t want to see what’s happening there, either. We had a very, very frank and very strong phone call.’
After years of incrementally tougher sanctions against North Korea, the United Nations is currently weighing additional steps.
Those could include an squeezing oil supplies or restricting North Korea’s ability to collect remittances from workers abroad.