About the Author
Fyodor Tertitskiy
Fyodor Tertitskiy is a lecturer at Seoul’s Korea University. He is the author of "Accidental Tyrant: The Life of Kim Il-sung" and several other books on North Korean history and military.
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Analysis A North Korean lesson in photoeditingRemoving people, images, from photos helps dictators solve inconvenient narratives Handling history is an uneasy thing for any dictatorship. The past contains many things which contradict the state’s ideology and official myths. So, it is quite logical that many authoritarian regimes have tried to erase undesirable facts from their history. One of the most vivid examples is the editing of historical photos. The Soviet Union under Stalin was notorious for this, as is well-documented in David King’s study The Commissar Vanishes: The Falsification of Photographs and Art in Stalin’s Russia. North Korea, being initially the creation of the USSR, adopted this practice as well. © Korea Risk Group. All rights reserved. |