More than a thousand North Koreans were recruited to work on a large building project nearby Kaesong last month, recently obtained images from the area reveal.

The photos indicate that many Kaesong residents cycled to the area, located near the highway to the north of the city to begin the first stage of a construction project.

“(To the) northeast of Kaesong along the highway to Pyongyang, (there is) an all-mighty earthworks, with thousands of bicycles all racked up together, with the workers deployed all up the hill,” Robin Tudge, a freelance journalist and author who