Fascinating Vintage Photos of North Korea Industries in 1972

Mark Gayn, a veteran Asia correspondent for The Toronto Star, was one of four reporters granted entry to North Korea in June 1972. Gayn detailed the country’s political landscape under Kim Il Sung and its people in four lengthy features published in ‘The Star’ in July 1972.

Gayn took many photos of his journeys across the country. He focused on the various industries of North Korea. Gayn writes that at the time, his North Korean hosts, the Union of Journalists, were trying to make the case that North Korea was “a sort of Asian Belgium, industrialized, sophisticated, well-off,” and that Kim Il Sung abolished manual labor in the countryside.

If this is a modern industrial state, its way of life and its daily idiom are unfamiliar to a man from the West. It is also clear that Kim’s North Korea is a welfare state to make most Communist states seem bourgeois.

#1 Medical facility, Pyongyang, North Korea, June 1972

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#2 Automated shoe factory, Pyongyang, North Korea, June 1972

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#3 Textile mill, Pyongyang, North Korea, 1972

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#4 “Modern” industrial printing factory, North Korea, 1972

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#5 Large kindergarten for taking care of women laborers’ and office workers’ children, North Korea, 1972

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#6 Hungsan military supplies co-operative farm dispensary, Hamhung, North Korea, 1972

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#7 Medical equipment factory, North Korea, June 1972

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#8 Pharmaceutical factory, North Korea, June 1972

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#9 Clerks selling canned strawberry, watermelon, vegetables, bottles of juice, Pyongyang, North Korea, June 1972

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#10 Trains made by Kim Jong Tae Electric Locomotive Factory, Pyongyang, North Korea, June 1972

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#11 Fertilizer plant, Hamhung, North Korea, June 1972

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#12 Fertilizer plant, Hamhung, North Korea, June 1972

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