Photographer captures photos of North Koreans' daily life in summertime - and it's bleak

With an authoritarian regime that lasted over seven decades, North Korea remains one of the most closed-off countries in the world.

It may soon become even more so as the Trump administration prepares to pass a ban on American travel to the country after North Korea detained a US student and returned him to his family in a coma with neurological trauma, which later took his life.

For the few visitors who made it to North Korea, the poverty, outdated infrastructure, and tight government control, largely shocked them.

But even in the strictest of government regimes, people still find ways to go through their lives. Here is how some North Koreans spent the last few days in July: