Newsnight has made an official - and restricted - visit to North Korea, which coincided with celebrations to mark the birth of the country's Great Leader. Kim Il-sung died in 1994, but is still president and worshipped like a god.
Large crowds were mobilised in the capital, Pyongyang, to mark the important day, including hundreds - if not thousands - of Young Pioneers, pictured here outside the Kim Il-sung mausoleum.
The day is a public holiday and citizens are allowed to view Kim Il-sung's embalmed body, which lies in a clear sarcophagus. Newsnight's team were not allowed to view the body, but they did see the place where elaborate bouquets are given in homage.
The country's government follows an ideology of self-reliance, developed by Kim Il-sung to inspire national pride and identity.
Only the healthiest citizens and those with an untarnished political record are allowed to live in Pyongyang, a "city of the elite".
Away from the city, the team were taken to a model co-operative farm - its orderly streets and houses a stark contrast to the dilapidated villages and towns seen en route.
This banquet was laid out in one of the farm's "regular homes", but the country still cannot feed its people and is reliant on international food aid. More than a million people are thought to have died as a result of a famine in the 1990s.
On the "official programme" the Newsnight team's days were spent visiting factories like this one in Pyongyang which manufactures cables.
Evenings were spent at the theatre. This ballet told the story of the triumphant building of a hydroelectric dam.
They also visited the DMZ, the heavily-fortified 200-mile-long (322km) demilitarised zone, which acts as a buffer between North and South Korea - two countries which are technically still at war.
From a population of 23 million, North Korea draws a standing army of more than a million. One of them is Captain Choe Song-il, the officer in charge of the northern side of the demilitarised zone.
Back in Pyongyang the Newsnight team were taken to visit a school filled with well-heeled and well-fed children. But aid agencies warn that the country is again facing a major famine.
At the kindergarten, these children performed a song whose lyrics tell them that they have nothing to envy in the outside world and that they are the happiest people on Earth.
The Great Leader's birthday is rounded off with an extravagant fireworks display in Pyongyang, lighting up the sky of a city frequently plunged into darkness by power cuts.
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