The photos that appear in North Korean state media — whether of mass gatherings, scenes from everyday life or the Supreme Leader himself — provide one of the only windows into what’s happening in the DPRK, particularly during the pandemic. And by examining metadata from these images, it becomes apparent that the country’s photojournalists sport some serious hardware to support their work.

In 2021, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) published more than 2,500 images, most with exchangeable image file format (EXIF) data that provides insights into the types of cameras used, attached lenses, snapshot settings, location data and