COVER | ONLINE RESOURCES | NORTH KOREAN POPULAR PROPAGANDA MUSIC

North Korean Popular Propaganda Music
Music and Song - Snaring the Populous

The control of music and song in North Korea is no different to other art forms in it being managed entirely by the regime’s propaganda machine. There is no spontaneous emergence of new or independent artists or performers, and musical groups and singers are either employed directly by the state or are members of the military.

With the founding of North Korea in 1948 anti-Japanese revolutionary song-writing traditions were channeled into support for the state, eventually becoming a style of patriotic song called taejung kayo in the 1980s. The style combines classical Western symphonic music and Korean traditional musical forms with songs generally sung by female performers with accompanying bands, orchestras, and choirs. North Korean music depicted Korea’s imperialistic enemies and concurrently locked-in the foundation of Kim Il Sung’s powerful personality cult. Music and song were used to feed the legend of the “great general” with persuasive lyrics and attractive melodies. To this day this unique North Korean style remains the most widely broadcast and performed. Songs always follow nationalist and patriotic themes with the promotion of the Kim family cult of personality being most frequent.


Kim Il Sung became fully aware of the power of music to motivate and unify disparate groups during his youthful experience in a church in Mangyongdae. As a child Kim Il Sung grew under the influence of Protestantism. His father, a church rector, and his mother, a Pentecostal deaconess, encouraged him to participate in the musical life of the church as an organist. Kim’s childhood experience as an organist solidified his belief in using music as propaganda. He noted that Christianity had become a successful social movement in Korea because it managed to snare even casual adherents into a web of enjoyable human activities and artistic associations. If his Korean Workers‘ Party were able to do the same, it would gain devotees and succeed. Music could build society and dictate a communist doctrine by attracting Koreans looking, quite simply, for something to do.

In Kim Il Sung's era, only ideologically correct musical styles were permitted. However many artists found a way around these restrictions by writing ideologically correct lyrics while taking liberties with the musical presentation. Unlike his father, Kim Jong Il actually encouraged the performance of revolutionary songs presented with contemporary styles, and the 1990’s saw the emergence of a regime led North Korean propaganda pop music revolution.



Still today the Kim Il Sung formula of musical propaganda continues. All radio in the country when not bellowing propaganda instruction or speeches it is playing the country’s only musical form; propaganda songs or instrumental pieces inspired by the greatness of the Kims. The same music is pumped into Pyongyang’s subways and other public areas. There are also songs that have specific purposes; for gymnastics exhibitions or as music for the elderly, however, there’s always a strong propaganda functional aspect to all music.

Attain the
Cutting Edge
(CNC Song)

Computer Numerical Control (CNC) was introduced as the heart of a science and ​technology propaganda campaign in the lead-up to 2012, the self-proclaimed marker year for North Korea becoming a “Great and Prosperous Nation.”

Computer Numerical Control is the use of computers to control machine tools so they can make cuts and boreholes more precisely than can humans. CNC is the foundation of all modern manufacturing worldwide; however North Korean propaganda presents it as a wondrous domestic technology. Since 2010 the citizens of North Korea have been exposed to a lengthy campaign extolling the virtues of CNC. There have been repeated hour-long broadcasts on North Korean television giving dry technical explanations of how the machines cut and drill. Why all this CNC mania? The technology is essential for producing components for nuclear weapons.

Pretty well every North Korean can party along with CNC mania. The technology is featured on postage stamps and is even celebrated with a hit pop song.

The regime’s propaganda music factory has produced a poppy ode to the Computer Numerical Control milling machines. Available on workplace karaoke machines across the country, the song is titled “breakthrough (attain) the cutting edge.” The lyrics include reminders that CNC is “an example of national self-reliance and strength” and that “the people's pride is high… so let's build a science and technology great power.

Tansume
(Without a Break)

2013 saw a “New Wave” of North Korean Pop Music sweeping through Pyongyang. Created at the initiative and under the direction of Kim Jong Un, the somewhat sexy all-female, short skirt wearing, Moranbong Band presents an audacious marriage between classical music and more contemporary styles.

The Moranbong Band song, Tansume (Without a Break), is often the backdrop to North Korean propaganda videos that depict the use of nuclear weapons against the enemies of North Korea. It’s a smash hit but not available outside of North Korea.