[6][7] Its foreign commercial division is known as the Mansudae Overseas Project Group of Companies, which as of 2014 has created monuments for 18 African and Asian nations.

[1] The studio consists of around 4,000 workers, approximately 1,000 of whom are artists aged from their mid-20s to mid-60s and selected from the best academies in the country, especially from Pyongyang University of Fine Arts.

[1] The campus-like studio includes a soccer stadium, sauna, medical clinic, paper mill, kindergarten, and even a gift shop.

[9] The Mansudae Art Studio was established in Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea, on November 17, 1959, six years after the end of the Korean War.

[11][12] The museum's entrance is marked by a smaller version of Pyongyang's Chollima Statue sitting on top of a beige pedestal over six meters tall.

[11] Mansudae had its first overseas exhibition in London in July and August 2007 at La Galaria in Pall Mall curated by David Heather The then Ambassador attended the opening and it ran for six weeks.

Although only one of the fifteen pieces was socialist-realist, the Australian government denied the artists exceptions from a visa ban on North Korea because they came "from Pyongyang's propaganda machine and... are not welcome.

However, according to Klaus Klemp, the deputy director of Frankfurt's Museum of Applied Art, Mansudae artists can "produce kitschy knockoffs of several foreign genres" that are likely sold internationally.

[3] Jewel paintings are unique to North Korea and are made by grinding gems[17] into powders that are put on a canvas by hand and never lose their strong shine.

[19] Built in 1961,[19] the Chollima statue, which has a replica at the Mansudae Art Museum in Beijing,[11] is a depiction of a legendary winged horse that could fly a thousand li (about 300 miles) a day.

The horse has a male worker and a female peasant riding on its back, "symbolizing the heroic spirit of the Korean People"[11] and heading into North Korea's future.

[5] According to Pier Luigi Cecioni, the success of this small cottage industry is due to Mansudae's "competence and experience to realize such huge projects, and it can send large teams of artists and workers to foreign countries for a long time.

Klemp convinced Frankfurt's officials to hire the Mansudae Overseas Project Group to reconstruct Fairy Tale Fountain [de], an "art nouveau relic from 1910 that had been melted down for its metal during World War II" for which the original blueprints had gone missing.

Unveiled in 2010, it stands at 50 meters, which is taller than the Statue of Liberty and Rio de Janeiro's Christ the Redeemer,[5] and depicts a half-nude African family of three in a socialist-realist pose.

Senegalese unions protested about the foreign labour due to the 50 per cent unemployment rate at the time, the Muslim majority of the population was offended by the exposed breast of the mother figure, and Wade had to have the heads redone as they looked Korean rather than African.

The studio is extremely important in North Korea as it employs the best artists and is the only organization "officially sanctioned to portray the Kim family dynasty.