On the road in North Korea

"We had been granted unprecedented access to see North Korea and travel through places that, we were told, no foreign journalists and few foreigners had been allowed to see before. We would drive 2,150 kilometers (1,336 miles) in a country that has barely 25,000 kilometers of road, and only 724 kilometers of those paved. By the time we returned to the capital a week later, our Chinese-made Great Wall SUV had a few new scratches and one less hubcap...."

Possibly more than any other populated place on the globe, North Korea is terra incognita. "If you wander off into China, you will be shot," the AP photojournalists were told before travelled through the land that evokes so much curiosity.

These exclusive pictures from their journey are brought to you by AP PHOTO.