Propaganda in North Korea
[5] North Korean propaganda was crucial to the formation and promotion of the cult of personality centered around the founder of the DPRK, Kim Il Sung.
[9] Once relations with the Soviet Union were broken off, their role was expurgated, as were all other nationalists, until the claim was made that Kim founded the Communist Party in North Korea.
[21] In 2018, these rallies were cancelled in what the Associated Press called "another sign of detente following the summit between leader Kim Jong Un and U.S. President Donald Trump" that same year.
Meanwhile, relations with Russia remain cold and China was applying direct pressure on Pyongyang, thereby changing the dynamic of the long-standing relationship between the two erstwhile allies.
[31] Romance is often depicted in stories as being triggered solely by the person's model citizenship, as when a beautiful woman is unattractive until a man learns she volunteered to work at a potato farm.
The giant pyramid of the Ryugyong Hotel building, originally scheduled for completion in time for the 13th World Festival of Youth and Students in 1989, is 105 stories tall.
A twenty-meter bronze statue of Kim Il Sung, arm outstretched to encompass his city, sits atop Mansu Hill [ko].
Throughout the 1990's, Kim Jong Il had his late father's Kumsusan Palace extensively renovated to house the Great Leader's remains, hiring Russian specialists to embalm the corpse for permanent display.
Internet access in North Korea is restricted to a small section of government and business officials who have received state approval, and to foreigners living in Pyongyang.
[37] Mobile phone use was banned in 2004, but service was re-introduced in 2008, jointly operated by the Egyptian Orascom company and the state-owned Korea Post and Telecommunications Corporation.
[39] Women in representative propaganda productions, such as Sea of Blood and The Flower Girl, became not only the focal point of visual composition within the traditional family structure but also the agents of ideological awakening for the newly founded socialist state.
[40] Revolutionary operas and numerous other productions depicted as well as forged the new gender order within the structure of the imagined family, which gained supremacy over blood ties.
[41] The colonial experience under occupation by the Japanese, who were traditionally despised as "barbarians," propelled Koreans to evaluate their weakness vis-à-vis the concrete threat to their national sovereignty.
The practical social demand created the need for a female labor force and thus women's emancipation from the domestic sphere was legitimized under the pretext of achieving gender equality.
"[39] North Korea is a fashion-conscious nation where political leaders strive to dress its people through rigid regulations, imposing uniforms on various social sectors and systematically recommending certain designs to civilians.
Contrarily, North Korean fashion has continuously expressed degrees of femininity, contradicting the astringent revolutionary spirit often identified with masculinity.
[43] Every year, a state-owned publishing house, Gold Star Printing Press[44] releases several cartoons (called geurim-chaek (Korean: 그림책) in North Korea), many of which are smuggled across the Chinese border and, sometimes, end up in university libraries in the United States.
The books are designed to instill the Juche philosophy of Kim Il Sung (the "father" of North Korea)—radical self-reliance of the state.
The plots mostly feature scheming capitalists from the United States and Japan who create dilemmas for naïve North Korean characters.
[18] North Korean propaganda posters are very similar to the messages portrayed by socialist countries, focusing on military might, creating a utopian society, devotion to the state, and the leader's personality.
[49] The Flower Girl, a revolutionary opera allegedly penned by Kim Il Sung himself, was turned into a movie, the most popular one in North Korea.
[50] It depicts its heroine's sufferings in the colonial era until her partisan brother returns to exact vengeance on their oppressive landlord, at which point she pledges support for the revolution.
[51] The country's supreme leaders have had hymns dedicated to them that served as their signature tune and were repeatedly broadcast by the state media: The North Korean government also runs a film industry.
[64] The site includes articles entitled "South Korea's Pro-US/Japan Corporate Media: Endless Demonization Campaigns Against DPRK", "The Project for New American Century: The New World Order & The US's Continued CRIMES" and "Kim Jong-un Sends Musical Instruments to Children's Palaces".
[58] The page represents "the intentions of North and South Koreas and compatriots abroad, who wish for peace, prosperity, and unification of our homeland".
There were over 50 posts on Uriminzokkiri's wall, including links to reports that criticize South Korea and the U.S. as "warmongers", photos of picturesque North Korean landscapes and a YouTube video of a dance performance celebrating leader Kim Jong Il, "guardian of the homeland and creator of happiness".
[68] On 5 February 2013, a propaganda film that featured New York in flames was blocked and then taken down after Activision pointed out that the video used copyrighted footage from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.
The official position of the North Korean government is that the village contains a 200-family collective farm, serviced by a childcare center, kindergarten, primary and secondary schools, and a hospital.
However, observation from South Korea suggests that the town is an uninhabited Potemkin village built at great expense in the 1950s in a propaganda effort to encourage defections from South Korea and to house the DPRK soldiers manning the extensive network of artillery positions, fortifications and underground marshalling bunkers that abut the border zone.
