
In North Korea you will never be very far from an image of one of the Dear Leaders.

At home, in the office or the factory, at school, in the hospitals, everywhere there are the Big Brother-like images of Kim Il-Sung, the founder of the 'Democratic People's Republic of Korea' and his son and successor, Kim Jong-Il.

Kim Jong-Il's son, Kim Jong-Un, has been in charge of North Korea since his father's death in 2011 but his portrait is rarely seen, although he has a personality cult just as strong as his father and grandfather.

The two Kims - the Great Leader, and his son the Dear Leader - are omnipresent although the portraits change. Sometimes they are from the 1980s and show them both looking very serious, but often they are the 1990s version, where they appear smiling and avuncular.

Children in the dormitory of a school look curiously at the camera as the grinning faces of Kim Il-Sung and his son beam down from the wall. It was Kim Il-Sung who, in 1950, ordered his army to invade South Korea, triggering the Korean War

Couples receive the two portraits when they get married.

When you ask North Koreans if those portraits are a bit over-powering they say they venerate the dearly departed leaders and it is a pleasure to see them all day long and some also make comparisons with the crucifixes which are worn by devout Christians in the West.

There are no portraits in hotel rooms used by tourists, apparently because the authorities fear foreigners might steal them.

Kindergarten listen to their teacher beneath portraits of Kim Jong-Il (right) and a very young-looking Kim Il-Sung. When Kim Il-Sung died in 1994 many people believed the communist state would collapse but it has renewed itself by mixing Marxist ideology with a bizarre personality cult around the Kim family

The portraits on the wall have echoes of George Orwell's novel, 1984, in which the image of the revered dictator, Big Brother, is everywhere in the fictional nation of Oceania. The phrase Big Brother was later coined as a term to denote a society where everyone is permanently under surveillance

Big Brother is listening: North Korea has a strong secret police, the State Security Department, which taps phones and monitors individuals who are suspected of being disloyal to current leader Kim Jong-Un

Music is very popular in North Korea and its education is considered important. Korean folk music, using patriotic and ideological lyrics, combines to make taejung kayo, which helps to support the Kims' personality cult

Sometimes the two Kims are joined on the wall by Kim Jong-Suk. She was Kim Il-Sung's first wife and a former guerrilla who fought against the Japanese, dying mysteriously in 1949

Holy trinity: (Left to right) Kim Il-Sung, Kim Jong-Il and Kim Il-Sung, father, son and mother. Three years after Kim Jong-Suk's mysterious death Kim Il-Sung married Kim Sung-Ae, whose fate is unknown. She was last reported to have been locked up in a psychiatrica hospital in the 1990s

What a pear: A woman peels fruit (left) under the watchful eye of the Great Leader and the Dear Leader. Kim Jong-Un, who is only 33, has not yet been given an honorific title but it is only a matter of time

A woman in an office peers out from under the portraits. There are two versions used. Sometimes they are smiling and sometimes they are stern

A teacher, in a rather peculiar uniform, teaches a class of children about the names of animals as the leaders look on. North Korea's ideology is communist but is also based on Juche (self-reliance), which teaches that the country must not rely on outside support. Analysts say in reality North Korea would collapse without support from neighbouring China

The same portraits are everywhere - in a subway train carriage (left) and in this woman's home (right)

The two portraits stare down at a group of students taking an exam. Personality cults are not limited to communist countries like China (Mao), Cuba (Castro) or the former Soviet Union (Stalin) but were prevalent in Nazi Germany (Hitler), fascist Italy (Mussolini) and in countries as varied as Argentina (Peron) and Kazakhstan (Nursultan Nazarbayev)

Everything is wonderful: One of the versions of the Kims' portrait has them both smiling and looking kindly. Official biographies of Kim Jong-Il (right) said his birth in a cabin on the slopes of Baekdu Mountain in 1942 was foretold by a swallow and heralded by a double rainbow and when he was born a new star appeared in the night sky

Perhaps because of the obsessive personality cult in North Korea, South Koreans have always been wary of idolising politicians. South Korea's President Park Geun-Hye is currently facing calls to stand down after a corruption scandal

North Korea's economy somehow stumbles on, despite sanctions imposed by the United Nations, and the country is also able to fund a nuclear weapons programme