[legal-advicer]

I think I've seen that documentary a few years ago, weren't most people cured by The Great Leader rather than a surgeon?

But indeed, although they usually gladly let you take pictures of those statues, it's always very serious business. Apart from taking funny pictures, you're not allowed to leave parts of the statue out of the picture, so forget about making a close-up of just the face. But it also depends on the guides, mostly on how much they trust the group. During my first two visits, it was no problem at all to take a picture from the distance, with some other monuments covering up part of the statue. And it was also OK to take a picture from behind the statue, as long as you managed to cram the whole thing in the picture. The last time I went, last April a few days after they unveiled the statue of Kim Jong-Il and the renewed statue of Kim Il-Sung, the rules where much more strict. And if they only had the slightest clue that you broke the rules, they demanded to see the pictures and would delete any "disrespectful" picture.

Like I said, you don't really have to follow the rules all the time, as long as you act respectful, there's some flexibility. But when they explicitly tell you not to do some thing, you simply have to play it by the rules. They might indeed throw you out of the country. But if you went that far, assume the worst for the guides. They will at least lose their jobs (and as a result their access to hard currency), maybe even the privilege to live in Pyongyang. But far worse things might happen to them. That's what you always have to keep in mind when visiting the country.