UN report sharpens scrutiny as Western influencers cast a rosy light on North Korea

A United Nations report released this week portrays North Korea as a population living under unprecedented repression, even as a growing cohort of Western travel and lifestyle influencers publish upbeat, carefully curated footage from Pyongyang and beyond. The juxtaposition highlights a widening gap between the regime’s official hospitality push and the lived reality of many North Koreans, a discrepancy that is now drawing renewed scrutiny from human-rights advocates and defectors alike.

The UN review details expanded surveillance, harsher punishments for civilians, and the introduction of a death penalty for watching or sharing foreign dramas. It notes that over the past decade the government has tightened its grip on information, movement and daily life, leaving little room for dissent or independent reporting. The report cautions that the reality of public executions, forced labor and systematic electronic surveillance is often omitted from the picture-perfect shots seen on social media. It underscores how the regime uses propaganda to convey a narrative of stability and progress while activities such as mass gatherings, choreographed performances and heavy censorship remain the norm for most citizens.

Among those amplifying a brighter image of the country is Zoe Stephens, a 31-year-old tour guide originally from Liverpool who now markets herself to roughly 67,000 Instagram followers under the handle “Zoe Discovers.” Her posts commonly show a version of North Korea far from the grim headlines: laughing with uniformed men, visiting rural Kaesong where grandparents operate a folklore park, and strolling Pyongyang’s streets during a marathon. Stephens insists she is not an undercover spy for Kim Jong Un’s regime but a tour guide seeking to “rehumanise the North Korea narrative,” a claim she reiterates when confronted with accusations of propaganda.

Her employer, Koryo Tours, has long positioned itself as a bridge to a country that has kept most outsiders at bay since the Covid-19 outbreak. Stephens has traveled to North Korea more than 30 times, a routine that she says aims to show “the human interactions” she encounters while self-censoring her content to avoid politics. Still, critics argue that the faces she highlights—cheerful officials, staged conversations and almost carnival-like public events—offer a skewed impression of life inside a nation where access to information is tightly controlled and the state’s surveillance apparatus looms large.

The trend is not limited to Stephens. A wave of influencers—Instagrammers, YouTubers and TikTokers—has embraced a narrative that challenges the West’s critical stance on the hermit state. Among them is Harry Jaggard, a YouTuber with more than two million subscribers, who documented the Pyongyang International Marathon and described the city as clean, grand and unexpectedly peaceful. “Pyongyang was nothing like I expected,” he wrote in a post about the event, praising the warmth of the tour guides and the smiles of locals while suggesting Western depictions of the country have been overly punitive.

Another participant, George Devedlaka, who runs the channel GeorgeGoesFar, offered a similar sentiment after the marathon: a surface-level glimpse of daily life paired with a caveat that what viewers see is not necessarily the full picture. In a social-media exchange, he defended his content as an attempt to present an open-minded, humanizing view of what he saw, arguing that money spent on tours supports local people and their livelihoods. A separate TikTok personality, Anna Pelova, has posted about the meals she enjoyed during her North Korean visit, asserting that by 2025 shops were well stocked and that the country defied outdated narratives of famine.

For critics, these feeds are a curated contrast to the harsh realities documented by defectors and international observers. North Korean exile Charles Ryu Woo, who fled as a teenager after growing up in the Changjin County amid poverty and food scarcity, has built a YouTube presence that seeks to expose the gulf between online gloss and the ground truth. He says the positivity shown by visiting influencers is not representative of the average North Korean experience. Ryu recalls his childhood under candlelight, his mother’s death from starvation, and the nine months he spent in a political labor camp when he was caught trying to escape to China. He frames Western content as a tool of propaganda that reinforces a leader-centric narrative designed to reassure Pyongyang’s citizens that their system works while real deprivation persists elsewhere.

Ryu also points to structural divides that persist outside Pyongyang’s carefully tended streets. The vast majority of North Koreans lack reliable access to the internet, with only a small class of elites permitted smartphones and access to a state-controlled intranet known as kwangmyong, which restricts users to government-sanctioned sites and email networks. He notes that the urban image of Pyongyang—home to roughly three million residents—often sits in stark contrast to the countryside, where basic services, clean water, and consistent electricity remain scarce. He argues that many of the mass spectacles, including the Pyongyang Marathon and other state-run celebrations, are staged with months or years of planning to create a sense of unity and triumph for the regime.

Travel and tourism have become a central feature of North Korea’s outreach, even as the state keeps a tight rein on movement. The government has long used border controls and the threat of punishment to deter unauthorized travel, and a system of border buffers on the Chinese and Russian frontiers, established in 2020, remains in force. Human Rights Watch has documented guards’ orders to “unconditionally shoot” anyone crossing without permission, underscoring the risk that international tourism can pose to ordinary North Koreans who yearn for contact with the outside world. Still, the regime has signaled a renewed interest in international tourism and has advertised new destinations such as the Wonsan Kalma Coastal Tourist Area along the east coast.

Wonsan Kalma, described by state media as a national treasure-level project, is marketed as a luxury resort that could accommodate up to 20,000 visitors. It features hotels, shopping malls and several kilometers of beach. So far, Russian travelers have been the primary foreign visitors allowed to tour the development, but North Korea’s leadership has signaled a broader reopening could occur in the future. Even as the complex invites more visitors, tour guides at the seaside resort have been instructed to avoid Western phrasing and to use local terms instead: hamburger becomes dajin-gogi gyeopppang, and ice cream is referred to as eseukimo. Karaoke machines are dubbed “on-screen accompaniment machines.” Such guidance is part of a broader effort to present a curated, family-friendly image, a reality noted by defectors and researchers who argue that the regime continues to police language, behavior and appearances to align with a controlled narrative.

Despite the promotional push, questions about the accuracy of online portrayals persist. Some observers argue that content creators are contributing to a broader soft-power strategy by funding guided tours and the cultural industry that sustains the regime’s messaging. Stephens has said that her aim is to promote tourism and to foster humanitarian engagement, insisting that she self-censors for the sake of accuracy and context. She told interviewers that her work is about promoting exchange and demonstrating that the human interactions she experiences can have value beyond political debate. Devedlaka echoed a similar sentiment, framing his coverage as a platform for open-minded storytelling that acknowledges both positive encounters and complex realities.

Defectors and researchers warn that such content can distort what life is like for most North Koreans and may inadvertently fund the regime’s priorities. Ryu emphasizes that the regime’s goal is not merely to enchant outsiders but to project an image of a contented citizenry under a benevolent leader who is advancing housing and other social programs. He notes that the idea of universal housing or a utopian economy as depicted by some leftist and pro-regime accounts fails to reflect independent assessments, including studies indicating limited housing availability outside Pyongyang and the selective distribution of benefits to celebrities and high-ranking officials. The UN report and independent scholars urge audiences to differentiate between staged events, official propaganda and the day-to-day realities of ordinary North Koreans.

As North Korea seeks to rebrand itself as a premier luxury destination, it remains a country where access to information, travel, and basic services is still highly constrained for many. The ongoing visibility of Western influencers in North Korea underscores a broader debate about how social media shapes international perceptions of regimes that are otherwise out of reach for most people. For now, observers say the dual narrative will persist: a state that curates experiences for foreign visitors and a population that endures the consequences of repression, scarcity and surveillance, often invisible behind the lens of a glossy travel vlog.