This was one of those "So what? ...oh." moments.

How did the NK government manage to get a (legitimate?) copy of Windows past embargos, and how did the photographer manage to sneak in a camera?

I'm guessing the government purchased from a distributor without NK trade sanctions.

Ha! When I did a visa run to Burma last week they were all running Windows Vista- if it weren't for the pissed off looking guy with a sub-machine gun leaning against the wall I would've taken a picture :)

Well of course they use Windows... all the good software for monitoring/censoring net activity is written for Windows.