What made you want to go there?
General curiosity mostly. I suppose it's the same as people wanting to visit Cuba a few years ago. NK is trying to become a tourist destination so I wanted to see it before it changed too much. This is totally outing but I changed my username for this AMA so I guess it doesn't matter, but we were there for our honeymoon!
Did you see any children? Were they happy?
Loads! The children all wear a red scarf to signify their membership of the youth league (can't remember the actual name). We also visited an extra-curricula center which is where kids are pretty much hot-housed in all manner of talents. We saw tiny children paying flute with perfection, embroidering, dancing etc. They looked dedicated if anything, but kids on the street seemed happy.
Were you allowed to take pictures
Yes, it's much freer than you'd imagine. The only rules were: no photos of military people (the one exception to this is in the DMZ where they let you take 1 photo in a group); no photos of construction (they are weirdly embarrassed about things not being perfect); and finally, if you took a photo of the leaders (statues, photos, paintings etc) you had to have them all in frame. In reality no one checks what you're taking photos off so it's pretty easy to break those rules. We were also asked to put cameras down when we went through checkpoints on the way from Pyongyang to the DMZ.