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.

Such editing of photos started