About the Author

Colin Zwirko
Colin Zwirko is a Senior Analytic Correspondent for NK News based in Seoul. Follow him on Twitter @ColinZwirko.
North Korea is known for corralling artists to make iconic propaganda that relays the government’s core messages — and now, state media has unveiled a new postage stamp that’s certainly a sign of the times.
Pyongyang released a stamp featuring an anti-epidemic sanitation worker wearing full personal protective equipment (PPE), adding to a recent trend of including COVID-19 imagery in the country’s “socialist-realist” artwork. (As one expert put it, this type of art “attempts to show reality by expressing the subtlety of human’s inner emotions.”)