North Korea is all but closed to outside visitors and influence, its public posture guarded and combative. Award-winning photographer Mark Edward Harris has had rare access to this reclusive country, traveling within its borders as well as documenting life along its northern border with China and the highly militarized DMZ dividing North and South Korea. His images are amazing: the monumental architecture and empty streets of the capital; tightly controlled zones of economic and tourist trade with South Korea; the mass games featuring 100,000 participants in precision performance; the South and North Korean villages allowed to exist within the DMZ itself. Short essays and extended captions offer context on the photographs, and an eye-opening foreword by noted North Korea expert Bruce Cumings further illuminates a fascinating, little-seen country increasingly at the center of international politics.

Inside the hermit kingdom