With their matching uniforms and perfectly synchronised dancing, the North Korean cheerleading team are one of the most incredible sights of the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang.
CHECK OUT THE NORTH KOREAN CHEERLEADERS IN ACTION BELOW:
Credit: Twitter / Thomas Schuurman
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The cheerleading squad - made up of 230 women supporting the nation's 22 athletes - won over audiences with their colourful, catchy routine as they cheered on the unified Korean ice hockey team earlier this week. Not bad, considering North Korea only agreed to participate in the games at the last minute.
But some observers think that the image of the smiling cheerleaders is covering up the true reality of the brutal North Korean regime, calling them a 'charm offensive'. Others even think the cheerleaders aren't as cheery as they appear due to the conditions imposed on them.
The cheerleaders have very little autonomy as they are monitored 24/7 by older male minders - apparently even when they're eating or going to the toilet, the Metro has reported. They also cannot be alone - at least one North Korean teammate and a South Korean government monitor must be with them at all times.
Their entry and exit into the Games' arenas is also a precision operation. The cheerleaders are discouraged from interacting with strangers at the games and they are escorted by police to and from their accommodation, located an hour and a half from the Games' main stadiums. No hanging out in Pyeongchang for them.
Kim Tae-eun, a spokesperson for the Inje Speedium where the cheerleaders are staying, has confirmed that most of the cheerleaders are sharing rooms in pairs, in the 108 apartments they are occupying.
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The cheerleaders must also eat at the hotel next door, a two-minute walk away from their accommodation, in staggered groups of about 30 people accompanied by their chaperones. As they do in public, the cheerleaders even enter and leave the dining room in double-file lines.
That sounds more like army drills than cheerleading, and South Korean spectators at the Winter Olympics have been inclined to agree, not particularly wanting to reunify with their North Korean counterparts.
"They don't speak," said Yoo Hong-sik, 31, who travelled to the games from the city of Daejeon. "I think they received orders not to and that's disappointing because I would like to interact with them."
"They are like the military, I pity them," added Lee Min-woo, 20, a student from Seoul, who was speaking with the South China Morning Post. "I haven't given any thought to reunification."
However lively they were at the hockey this past Monday, on other occasions the North Korean cheerleaders have described as weirdly detached from what's going on around them - ignoring a wedding proposal on the arena's video board to carry on singing.
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A North Korean defector to the South, former cheerleader Han Seo-Hee suggested that they would have been hand-picked by North Korean authorities and would go unpaid for the trip.
"Those who are well assimilated to the North Korean regime, those who are exemplars of working collectively, those who are from the right families, and of course those who meet the height and age standards' would have been picked," Han said.
All of which paints a fairly grim portrait of life for the cheerleaders, with precious little in the way of freedom. Is it worth all this, just to go to the Olympic Games?
Featured Image Credit: PATopics: SPORT, News, North Korea