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North Korea / The Lies and Truth of Kim Jong Un / How People Live

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A Russian vlogger slips past the state minders to show what North Korea doesn’t want the world to see.

Anton Lyadov, the Russian journalist and video blogger behind the channel “The People” (also published under “Anton is here”), released his first dispatch from inside the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea on December 4, 2019. Titled “North Korea / The Lies and Truth of Kim Jong Un / How People Live,” the video is part of Lyadov’s ongoing travel series built around a simple premise: skip the staged tourist routes and film what ordinary life actually looks like in countries most outsiders never get to see. For North Korea, that means documenting the country’s border checkpoints, its surveillance apparatus, and the material shortages state media rarely acknowledges.

• Travelers entering North Korea must remove or cover any visible American brand labels and hand over every electronic device — phones, laptops, storage drives — for security personnel to inspect files, browser history, and photos.
• North Korean law imposes severe penalties, including life imprisonment, for damaging or removing propaganda slogans or showing disrespect toward images of the Kim leadership.
• Rural North Koreans still rely on wood gas-powered vehicles amid chronic shortages, while older citizens Lyadov met expressed nostalgia for East Germany and Czechoslovakia — socialist states that collapsed more than three decades earlier.

The Border Is the First Test

Before Lyadov even reaches Pyongyang, the documentary makes clear that entering North Korea is its own ordeal. Customs officials require visitors to strip away or hide any clothing bearing American brand names, then confiscate phones, laptops, and drives for a full digital search — files, browsing history, and stored photos all get reviewed before anyone is cleared to proceed. It’s a screening process designed less to stop contraband than to control the narrative a foreigner might carry in, or take back out.

Minders, Surveillance, and the Price of a Mistake

Once inside, Lyadov shows how tightly movement is managed. Foreign visitors aren’t permitted to wander without an official state minder present, and the vlog lays out just how unforgiving the legal system is toward perceived slights against the regime. Defacing a propaganda slogan painted on a wall, or showing disrespect toward a portrait of Kim Jong Un, can carry a life sentence — a level of consequence that frames every interaction Lyadov has on camera.

Damage a propaganda slogan on a wall in North Korea, and the law on the books calls for life imprisonment.

State Media’s Supernatural Kim

The documentary contrasts that surveillance state with the mythology built around its leader. Lyadov points to state media coverage that credits Kim Jong Un with feats bordering on the supernatural, including the ability to predict the weather — propaganda designed to project infallibility even as the country’s own economy visibly stalls around it.

Wood Gas Cars and a Longing for a Vanished Bloc

Away from Pyongyang’s showcase streets, Lyadov’s camera catches the texture of daily scarcity: villagers driving vehicles converted to run on wood gas, a workaround born of fuel shortages rather than novelty. Older North Koreans he encounters bring up East Germany and Czechoslovakia unprompted, curious about and nostalgic for socialist states that stopped existing more than 30 years ago — a small but telling detail about how frozen in time information inside the country can be. It’s the same instinct that draws viewers to other outsider-eye travelogues into restricted or high-risk places, whether that’s a walk through a single day as a tourist in Somalia or a trip taken despite official State Department warnings, like flying into Lebanon against the U.S. government’s advice.

Lyadov’s video was his first entry from North Korea in the “How People Live” series, and by design it raises more questions than it answers — that’s the format. What it does deliver, minder-supervised or not, is footage of wood gas trucks, confiscated phones, and a border search that most travel channels never get close enough to film.