About Postcards from Pyongyang
An imagined country. A real presence.
What if we could see a version of North Korea that doesn’t exist—yet somehow feels true? What if we could hear its people, not through news or ideology, but through ordinary voices: writing, longing, dreaming?
“Postcards from Pyongyang” is a fictional archive of a place we cannot truly reach. In a world where almost every corner has been mapped, captured, and made visible, North Korea remains a blind spot—a silent fragment of global imagination. This project doesn’t fill that void with facts, but with fiction. Not to explain the unknown, but to inhabit it.
Its means are poetic—not in verse, but in attitude: attentive, tentative, open to ambiguity. It isn’t about the big picture. It listens for the flicker between the lines. For what can be felt, even when it cannot be said.
Why this project exists
Because imagination is sometimes the only way to truly engage with what lies beyond our grasp. “Postcards from Pyongyang” isn’t about North Korea as it is—but about our desire for places that resist total visibility.
It harks back to a time when not knowing was part of discovery. When maps had edges, and stories began where certainty ended. Today, we arrive already knowing. This project offers a different kind of arrival—one that begins by listening.
It doesn’t meet the unknown with answers, but with empathy. It gives voice to invented characters who carefully, sometimes tenderly, step into a space we cannot access.
Not to claim truth, but to offer closeness. Not to reconstruct reality, but to make a possible world emotionally legible—through scenes that are quiet, absurd, sorrowful, and always, somehow, human.
Yes—this world is set in North Korea, a charged and politicized place. But the project does not exploit it.
North Korea here is not an object of depiction, but a quiet resonance chamber for what remains unseen.
From images to narratives to voices
It began with visuals—imagined scenes from lives we can’t observe. But images weren’t enough. They asked for stories. And the stories asked for voices.
Each of the 365 postcards reveals a fragment of imagined life: a surreal image, a short narrative, sometimes a voice recording. Together, they form emotional snapshots from a country that exists only in thought—yet speaks something gently true.
Characters return. Relationships unfold. Fates evolve. This is no random collection—it is a slow-burning, interconnected fictional world.
Artificial Intelligence as a counterpart, not an author
Artificial intelligence plays a vital role: it generates images, assists with writing, lends voices. But it is not the author. It listens. It responds. And sometimes, it even asks questions back.
It is guided by concept, by intuition—and, at times, by patience.
And when the human remains a counterpart—curious, critical, precise—what emerges is not a tool, but a space. A dialogue. A creative studio balanced between clarity and experiment, between structure and discovery. And sometimes, it becomes the place where you stumble into something you never meant to find.
About the creator
“Postcards from Pyongyang” was initiated by Stephen Obermeier – a creative director based in Stuttgart, with over 30 years of experience at the intersection of media, design, and digital culture.
Stephen works visually, conceptually, and across disciplines—shaped by a deep interest in the poetic potential of images and the structural clarity of narrative. He has long been drawn to emerging technologies—not for their most immediate uses, but for the possibilities they unlock through combination: extended contexts, new forms of storytelling, and unexpected connections.
“Postcards from Pyongyang” reflects this approach. It’s a project that lives between art and imagination, between analog emotion and algorithmic construction—a space for in-betweens.
You can reach out to Stephen Obermeier by mail to mail@postcards-from-pyongyang.com or via the instagram account mentioned below.
From digital to tangible
“Postcards from Pyongyang” is not just a screen-based experience. It will take form as a four-volume book and as a physical exhibition—where fiction becomes presence, and the imagined becomes something you can touch, read, and hear.
Folllow the project on instagram @postcards_from_pyongyang.
The project also provides a good old RSS-Feed.
Read here about project updates.