9, things were finally changing in North Korea. Or were they?

My excuse to visit the country was to witness the regime's jewel in the crown, the opening night of the Arirang Games in the May Day stadium.

Featuring 100,000 gymnasts, acrobats, martial arts experts and sword-wielding military babes in khaki-coloured uniforms, the ceremony is a kitsch, emotional interpretation of Korean history infused with adulation of the DPRK's ruling family.

Before my trip, I had been struck by the dissonance in the images published by professional photographers and the blossoming number of tourist snaps of North Korea available on image-sharing sites such as Flickr.

The pros tend to reinforce the traditional image of a rigidly standardised society and focus their

lenses on empty boulevards and gargantuan social realist public art. Visitors' pictures tell another story, however. They document chaotic rush-hour crowds, streetside stalls flogging goods (the first stirrings of a capitalist economy) and awkwardly composed but evocative snaps of themselves posing alongside ordinary people.

I travelled to Pyongyang intent on capturing images of North Koreans that would shatter the stereotype of a dour and disciplined people inhabiting a Stalinist Sparta. I was full of confidence that North Korea would prove as misrepresented a rogue state as Syria or Iran.

On the bus into town from the airport, I passed hundreds of people streaming home along wide sidewalks in the evening sunlight, hesitating outside restaurants to light cigarettes and catch up with friends. The only oddity was