The government has, unfortunately, not resumed TV commercials since then, part of a ploy by the same hard-liners who pushed for a disastrous currency devaluation in 2009. Yet it wasn’t a complete reversal of the new policy: the state didn’t clamp down on printed advertising, allowing PyongSu and other North Korean companies to continue distributing flyers and catalogues and advertising their products and services on the country’s intranet. TV advertising was perhaps perceived as too politically sensitive by the conservative old guard since foreign visitors as well as South Koreans could watch and observe it.
However, propaganda continues to be an everyday message blurted in front of the North Korean people. And it plays a significant role in their lives.
After Kim Jong Il died in December 2011, party mouthpieces shot off a new emergent ode called “Footsteps”—and it wasn’t the jazz standard performed by John Coltrane. The piece was written for Kim Jong Un, and its title signified that he was marching in the heroic footsteps of his deceased father. North Koreans attribute the song with son Kim’s emergent legacy. Of course, pretty much no beautiful melody on TV, radio, or in karaoke rooms is free from ideology and propaganda. Most of them appeal to patriots, the party, and the army. They often wax philosophical on the sufferings under the yoke of the Japanese colonialists or praise the leaders.
A PROPAGANDA STATE?
It is true that Bible-like allegories have a profound impact on how North Koreans see themselves and the world, as told to me by countless locals. Posters are also a potent venue: they are the regime’s most visible form of propaganda, painted with bright colors, meaningful symbols and images, and large fonts. Simple but commanding language is used.
Barbara Demick, the author of the widely acclaimed 2010 book Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea, mentioned that in his book 1984, “George Orwell wrote of a world where the only color to be found was in the propaganda posters. Such is the case in North Korea.”1 But her statement isn’t entirely true. Half a decade before she wrote this, we had already plastered our pharmaceutical factory with a green color, because it was a well-known pharmaceutical symbol in continental Europe.
Around the same time, other buildings were being repainted in Pyongyang in a wider variety of colors. People could be seen over the years with more colorful clothes, not only during holidays, as is tradition. More young students carried colorful Hello Kitty and other fancy school bags.
In her book, Demick also claims that “Gone with the Wind is a dangerous, banned book.”2 But I saw people reading the novel at the Grand People’s Study House in Pyongyang and in public libraries in provincial capitals. The gap between Barbara Demick’s Orwellian stereotypes and the reality on the ground is widening a little every year.
Still, the signs are hung up everywhere you go: in school buildings, hospitals, factories, and farms; in magazines, paintings, films, theaters, operas; on TV and radio and on public loudspeakers. It’s difficult to escape the gaze of a nationalistic worker or national leader peering down at you from his poster, urging absolute loyalty to the pure Korean race.
Posters are addressed to different groups of people. For farmers, they offer a resounding call to the fields, to boost food production amid chronic shortages. For industrial laborers, the placards urge no able body to sit idle in the withering factories, but rather encourage them to double their efforts for a strong and prosperous nation. Students are pushed to become skillful scientists who can develop sophisticated technologies and to propel the country into “a brilliant new era,” to quote a common catchphrase on the posters. Nobody is left out: other targets include grandchildren being urged to care for their grandparents and rascals being cautioned against doing something dangerous.
That’s not to say the propaganda is trite and childlike. Sometimes the party is clever in how it plays with imported foreign ideas. In response to George Bush’s declaration of the “axis of evil” in 2002, one North Korean poster launched subtle counterpropaganda: “The world turns with Korea as its axis.” Of course, not all North Koreans believed the world actually revolved around their country.
Even the newspapers play a prominent role in spreading state ideas. In North Korea, state-run publications do not compete to break the fastest and hardest-hitting news. The mass media’s purpose is spelled out in the Constitution: it defines the press as “strengthening the dictatorship of the proletariat, bolstering the political unity and ideological conformity of the people, and rallying them behind the party and the Great Leader in the cause of revolution.” North Korea’s media correspondingly carries strict proofreading procedures. Any journalist committing an ideological “error” is quite certain to be sent to a harsh wasteland to be thoroughly “revolutionized.”
Every administrative district in North Korea is home to a so-called immortality column, a reference to the immortal heroes of the revolution. Statues of Kim Il Sung adorn the special zones, usually found in provincial capitals and places of national significance. All of the effigies display the same tagline: “The Great Leader Comrade Kim Il Sung will be with us forever.”
SOME PROPAGANDA SLOGANS
Instilling a sense of loyalty in the Korean Workers’ Party (created in the 1980s, still fully valid):
“What the party decides, we do.”
Worshipping the best:
“Worship the Great Leader, General Kim Il Sung, like the eternal sun.”
“Let’s thoroughly arm more and more through the revolutionary ideas of the Great Leader Kim Il Sung.”
“The Great Leader Kim Il Sung will be with us forever.”
“Hurray for General Kim Jong Il, the sun of the twenty-first century.”
“Thank you to General Kim Jong Il, our loving father.”
“Let us become human bullets and bombs guarding the Great Leader General Kim Jong Il with our lives!”
“Let us defend the party Central Committee headed by the respected comrade Kim Jong Un, at the cost of our lives.”
“Let us become revolutionary soldiers boundlessly loyal to the party and Great Leader!”
“Let’s accept our party’s Songun (army first) revolution loyally.”
“Our [Leader/ideology/military/system] is the best.”
Calling to uphold Juche and Songun (army first) politics:
“Let’s stick to self-sufficiency and nationalism in revolutions and construction!”
“Our country’s socialism is the best!”
“Ideology, technology, and culture according to the demands of Juche!”
“Spread the ideological, fight, speed, and skill battles. [This is a literal translation from Korean, but it roughly means the battles fought everywhere such as against imperialist enemies and to build up the country.] Let’s use Juche Korea’s wisdom and bravery.”
“Let us complete the Juche revolutionary cause under the leadership of the respected comrade Kim Jung Un!”
“Living methods, fighting spirit, new ideas, all according to the needs of Songun.”
“Songun politics. The DPR Korea moves the world.”
Promoting Korean culture devoid of any impure foreign content:
“Let’s make the beautiful Korean clothes a way of life.”
“Let’s establish a social spirit for enjoying our people’s clothes.”
“Let’s actively promote our people’s traditional folk games.”
Parents and teachers being asked to make Korean children more intelligent and able than they already are:
“Let’s actively develop children’s intelligence.”
“Let’s learn how