THE PEOPLE UNITED: MUSIC FOR ’S ‘GREAT LEADER’ AND ‘DEAR LEADER’

Keith Howard Senior Lecturer, SOAS, and Director, AHRB Research Centre for Cross-Cultural Music and Dance Performance

1. Introduction 1 2. Ideology and music 3 3. Thinking as one 8 4. Popular music: out with the new? 11 5. Concluding remarks 13

1. Introduction

A recalcitrant Stalinist anachronism? This is the common perception of the Democratic People’s of Korea (North Korea) beyond its fortified and hermetically sealed borders. North Korea considers the bad image it has abroad as proof of a capitalist attempt to destroy it, and tends to restrict access further still whenever it encounters hostile press reports. Recent international attention has focused, critically, on North Korea’s nuclear ambitions, and this will likely make the regime even more wary of the outside world.

Pak Dong Tchoun, North Korea’s representative at UNESCO in Paris, in July 1995 noted how “extremely reticent” his country would remain to open its doors to journalists who “write horrible calumnies about our regime the minute they leave the country. We want journalists who show good will and want to promote friendship between peoples, not subvert our regime and sovereignty. The [Western] mass media must not write articles that are not encouraging”. Negative press, or TV serializations of ‘untruths’—and occasionally interviews with defectors—notably those published by public and private organs within its southern cousin, the Republic of Korea (), generally induce bellicose threats, as North Korea shouts it will kill the responsible reporters and bomb newspaper buildings.

Typing “North Korea+Censorship” on the Internet offers a fruitful search. North Korea, we read, is the only country in the world where people have neither the right nor the technical possibility to access the Internet; countering this, North Korea established a national intranet, the Kwang Myong Net, in 2001. Television and radio sets are preset before distribution to receive only North Korean channels; the import of videotapes, CDs, and foreign publications is strictly controlled. The press is routinely censored, we are told, because its function is “to explain, disseminate, advocate and help accomplish Kim Il Sung’s instructions and Kim Jong Il’s policies, and to further strengthen the Proletariat as well as to strengthen politico-ideological unity and solidarity among the people.” There is no freedom of expression in print; all publications must reflect the unitary policy (yuil sasang), a policy fostered by the fact that the leadership and the people are said to be in complete accord. From here we read that the mission of the press is to glorify the leadership, to advocate party policy, to generate popular agitation, and so on. Article 46 of the Penal Code does indeed dictate harsh penalties, from confiscation of property to the death penalty, for “reactionary propaganda and agitation”, the publication of materials overtly or implicitly criticising state or leadership. And, some reports claim as many as 250,000 North Koreans are imprisoned as ‘criminals’ guilty of “ideological transgressions” amongst the possibly two million held in an extensive gulag.

Other reports tell of hagiography surrounding the autocratic and monolithic leadership, seen best in the virtual deification of Kim Il Sung (1912-1994), in life the Great Wise President-for-life Dearly Beloved and Sagacious Leader, and in death the Eternal President. He is still president, although his son, the Dear Leader Kim Jong Il (b.1942), is de facto leader by virtue of his appointment as head of the Korean Workers Party. Kim Senior, we hear, effectively expelled the Japanese colonial power from the Korean peninsula in the 1940s and defeated the Americans in the Korean War; he single- handedly built the socialist paradise, overseeing industrial and agricultural reforms (based most notably on ‘models’ he developed at the Kangson steel mill and during 15 days spent with the farming community of Changsan Village). Histories are doctored to prove his paramount role. Inscriptions praising Kim cut into the bark of trees in the mountains

2 on the border between North Korea and are claimed to be the writings of 1930s guerillas—and are meticulously preserved under glass. Photographs are altered, removing those later found to be “enemies of the state” and moving Kim to the center; photographs of Kim himself are now subject to judicious use of an air brush to remove the unsightly growth on his neck present for the last two decades of his life. And visitors arriving in are today routinely presented with flowers. These are not a gift, for the first port of call for all visitors is a massive 20m-tall bronze statue of Kim where, in front of TV cameras we are expected to place the flowers, showing to all and sundry that we have come to pay our respects. North Korean promotion of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il, not surprisingly, feeds the cynicism of international observers.

North Korea, though, maintains that the reality is different. North Korea signed the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in 1981, submitting its first report in 1984 and the second in 2001, some 17 years later (and 12 years overdue: the covenant prescribes the submission of reports every five years). The 2001 report admitted to 30 cases in which publication was prohibited, 27 concerning encyclopaedias, maps and magazines, and three dealing with military matters. It reported two or three annual demonstrations, but matched these to 600 public rallies held in support of the state and its leadership. The suggestion is that little censorship needs to be practiced. And so, the North Korean ambassador to the United Nations, addressing the Human Rights Committee in July 2001, brushed aside all criticism with the comment that “The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea has developed a Korean style of human rights which reflects the desires of the people”.

2. Ideology and music

What, then, is the truth? In artistic policy and practice, the problem and the solution are bound together by ideology. Ideology is a matter of control, imposed from the centre, but this, within a “revolutionary” spirit, is said to reflect the wishes and desires of the people. The centre controls access to training and work, and so requires people to conform. Many reports fail to notice, though, that ideology shifts over time (although, of course, the regime does not admit to this). I will start my discussion of ideology with quotations from

3 Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il, as is customary and compulsory in North Korean publications. Here, though, I offer annotations that would be missing from official publications. Kim Jong Il, then:

We are making a revolution, and we should inspire the people to the revolutionary struggle by means of songs.

Here is our cue, taken from socialist realism, but now a Korean ideological policy influenced not just by Maxim Gorky and Andrei Zhdanov, but also by Mao Zedong’s ‘Talks at the Yan’an Forum on Literature and Art’. A problem soon emerged with this ideology, though, as the artists-turned-ideologues who were part of the Korean communist faction at Yan’an, most prominently the established literary scholar Kim Yubong, represented a challenge to the autocratic rule of one leader, namely, Kim Il Sung. They were purged during or shortly after the Korean War. Power was consolidated as Kim built his base alongside those who had been active on North Korean territory through the last years of Japanese rule, who were made up preponderantly of the illiterate and the indigent. This was an unfortunate beginning for North Korean art, literature, and music.

Revolution required something new to Kim Il Sung:

It is unthinkable that songs which the aristocrats of old days used to sing while drinking could also suit the emotions of our youth who are building socialism.

Musical genres associated with any élites of the past must go. Instruments associated with the aristocratic literati, notably the six-stringed long zither, the kŏmun’go, despite its historical importance as the only distinctly Korean instrument developed on territory now belonging to North Korea, had to be abandoned. But artistic production, by its very nature and because of the requirement for high levels of skill, is élitist. In Korea, this extends to art genres with roots amongst the folk, and p’ansori, the celebrated one-person vocal form mixing song (sori), narrative (aniri) and dramatic action (pallim) quickly suffered, after Kim Il Sung announced it was “…ridiculous to imagine soldiers rushing to battle inspired by p’ansori”.

4 Music must serve the revolution, but such a view has a number of unavoidable implications. First, artists must suffer. Those in Korea had trained in élitist institutions, often in Japan or elsewhere abroad, and their families would have had to have money, either because they were aristocrats or landowners of some standing, or because they had worked for the hated Japanese colonialists who had ruled Korea until 1945. Filtering socialist realism through Mao, Kim Il Sung in 1951 gave his ‘Talks with Writers and Artists’. Artists, he said, were “engineers of the human soul,” whose works should serve the people as a “powerful weapon and great inspiration.” They had, though, “lost touch with life” and lagged “behind our rapidly advancing reality”. Artists must “learn from the lofty spirit of ordinary people,” since they “should know that the genuine creator of great art is always the people.” Purges began.

In 1945, the centre of Korean artistic production was . But the 1945 division of the peninsula left a capitalist-leaning South Korea sponsored by America and a communist-leaning North Korea sponsored by the Soviet Union. The politics of many artists are left of centre, so not surprisingly many moved from Seoul to Pyongyang in the years following the division. What awaited them? The experience of the composer Kim Sunnam (1917-1986) indicates the fate that befell many. Kim had an impressive record. He had written nationalist music and set up left-wing associations for musicians, and had attracted unwanted attention from the police in Seoul. In the North he started well, being appointed as head of composition at the Pyongyang National Music School in 1948. But in 1952 he was purged, forbidden to compose, and sent to Shinp’o, an isolated port on the east coast in South Hamgyŏng province. He was rehabilitated in late 1964, and for three years some of his works were heard and published in the capital. By 1970, he had again been sent to Shinp’o; little is known about the last period of his life. Again the most prominent Korean dancer of the mid-20th century, Ch’oe Sŭnghŭi (1911-?), known internationally under her Japanese name of Sai Shoki, also settled in Pyongyang. She set up a school and was given a number of official posts, and until 1964 she appeared in lists of dancers. Then she abruptly disappeared. It is known that her husband fell out of favour, and it is assumed that both were executed together with their daughter. Too little information exists to show what happened to each and every artist, but many of those who moved northward after 1945 seem to have found it difficult to adjust.

5 Two émigrés who managed better were the noted 12-string zither (kayagŭm) players Chŏng Namhŭi (1913-84) and An Kiok (1905-74). Both recorded in Seoul in the 1930s, founding their own schools of the kayagŭm sanjo genre. From Pyongyang, Chŏng was sent to perform in Russia and China, and in 1952 was awarded the of “merit artist”; in 1959 he was recognised as a national artist and thereafter taught at the Pyongyang Music and Dance University. An moved to Pyongyang in 1946, and became a member of a state-supported ensemble. He travelled to Russia, then spent the war years in China developing a modernized zither with Chinese-Koreans in Yanji, before moving back to North Korea where, following his appointment as a national artist in 1956, he largely disappeared from view until his death. He died away from Pyongyang, in Hyesan in the northwest.

In the main, though, a new proletarian artist was required without links to the old world. This is exemplified in music in the celebrated composer Kim Wŏn’gyun (b.1917). In 1946, he was a farmer who wrote a particular song, the Song of General Kim Il Sung (Kim Ilsŏng changgŭn ŭi norae). Two years later he composed the DPRK’s national anthem (the Aegukka). The two have since featured prominently in every song anthology.

By 1960, Kim Il Sung’s ideologues were telling the people that all artistic production belonged to the masses, the inmin, who “could write rather better works than the professional writers who are confined to their offices”. This was not just a broadside aimed at “high” art, but also reflected a shift in policy. It was interpreted within a mass movement, the Ch’ŏllima undong, a movement normally glossed the “Galloping Horse Movement” announced in late 1957. Ch’ŏllima is a mythical horse of great strength said to be capable of taking its rider 1,000 li—about 100 miles—in a day. The movement resonates with Mao’s “100 Flowers” speech, given a year before in 1956. The latter reflected rivalries between Kruschev and Mao after the death of Stalin. Pyongyang instinctively wanted to side with Mao, but by 1957 was aware of the downside of Mao’s policy, the popular criticism that emerged once indigenous forms of art were allowed. North Korea followed Mao as it shifted from the new revolutionary forms of artistic production to encompass Korean indigenous forms, but it differed in seeking a marriage between the two while simultaneously strengthening control from the centre. It did so by allowing Kim Il Sung, alone to give detailed instructions to his people. He rationed

6 themes and materials, ensuring that correct political content replaced notions of style or personal creation, and this led to monochromatic cultural performances.

As with China, the vernacular was now considered the repository of the proper Korean spirit. So, folksongs must be allowed. Scholars were sent to the provinces to find singers who remembered the old. But, Kim Il Sung ruled that local traditions from the past needed to serve the revolution in the present:

It is our duty to recover and enrich all excellent folk art during our party’s era in which cultural art is blossoming and advancing.

For “enrich” read “add the correct political content”. Artists were instructed to avoid “nihilism”, a concept equated with “the denial of the brilliant heritage left to us by our ancestors”. Presentation must avoid “resurrectionism” and the “desire to resuscitate indiscriminately everything belonging to the past”. Lyrics were revised and approved, diatonic melodies replaced Korean modes, and vocal production was standardized to match the yuhanegga (Jap: enka) popular songs inherited from the early 20th century and the bel canto of Soviet models. Out went the nasal resonance typical of folksongs in the northwest; out went the emotional intensity of sorrowful folksongs. Out went “immoral” subjects, and in came sentiments of bountiful harvests, national rebuilding, and peace and happiness. Creativity has little place here.

In song composition, profundity is supposedly guaranteed because ideology is placed above but alongside mature individual talent. Yet artistic integrity, the mainstay of European artistic creation, must always be subservient to the leadership, since the leader is the sole arbiter. To Kim Jong Il, in his For the Further Development of of Juche Art:

Before good songs can be produced prettily-worded texts are necessary. The words should be poetic. But many [lyrics] are turned into prose...[so] no good songs can be produced... Our creators of music do not accept Party policy with sensitivity. I gave them the task of composing powerful songs capable of inspiring the masses...but as yet they have failed to produce a good song about grand construction. We not only need lyrical songs, but also many militant songs.

7 Kim Jong Il’s criticism allowed no space for disagreement. Yet composers faced something of a dilemma, for he continued:

As I have constantly emphasised, creation should never be repetitive. In creation similarity and repetition mean death. We cannot call that which plagiarises melodies from other songs and assembles them creative work.

And:

Because our composers produce songs without doing any foundation work for creating melodies with specific features, there appear only complicated songs, and no masterpieces.

3. Thinking as one

The Galloping Horse Movement marks the time when yuil sasang, unitary policy, came to the fore: the leader and the people were said to think with one mind. Cue mass dances, song festivals, and games, developed, surely, from the mass youth events taken from Northern Europe in the early 20th century to Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Union. Elsewhere, I have written about the annual celebration by youth workers on Kim Il Sung’s birthday; in April 2000, this involved some 50,000 dancers on Kim Il Sung square (formerly Stalin Square) dancing in perfect synchronization. In 2002, this was subsumed into the Arirang Festival, a two-month spring festival that at its height, and as reported by the BBC, involved 150,000 dancers. Dancing functions as exercise as well as political statement, and press reports in 2002 told of weekly dance events at the Pyongyang Hall of Culture that attracted 600 or more people, each paying an entry fee of 5 won.

Marked by a gradual shift in ideology, yuil sasang matured as juche. This latter is the North Korean policy of self-reliance, although it is somewhat mischievously rendered as “bloody mindedness” by some foreign commentators. The politics of juche are chimerical: it is said to be new, emancipating, and scientific; in reality it is monolithic, anti-internationalist and anti-hegemonic, ascribing revolutionary responsibility to Kim Il Sung:

8 The beloved leader…discovered the truth of the Juche idea…and proclaimed it to the whole world…after verifying its correctness through practical struggle… The leader saw through the mistakes of the communists and nationalists…and took a road different from theirs… Drawing on serious lessons derived from such flunkeyism and dogmatism, the leader clarified the truth that a revolution should be carried out…in an independent and creative way.

In juche, the ideology was adjusted once more, squaring any remaining circles so that artists reflect the leader who reflects the people. To ensure this, and with one eye to the Cultural Revolution taking place across the border, two control filters were introduced. Seed theory (chŏngjaron), holds that the creative seed is both unique to a given artist and consistent with party orientation; collective art or collective creation (chipch’e yesul or chipch’e ch’angjak) echoes the collectivisations of agriculture and industry beloved in socialist states by removing the individual and imposing collectives of composers and performers.

The 1970s saw the emergence of “revolutionary operas” within a collectivised juche-ised genre known after the first as the Sea of Blood (P’i pada) style. These tell of supposedly “immortal” and “revolutionary” exploits. By the 1980s, they had been joined by “people’s operas” (minjok kagŭk), based on folktales, and again written by a collective of composers. Songs and themes from these were spun off to create symphonies (the first, again without any named composer on the score, was P’i pada, premiered in 1975) and instrumental pieces. Instruments were revamped, traditional instruments “improved” (kyeryang) so that they could play Western diatonic melodies; the claim is that the instruments now take the best from the Western orchestra and the best from Korea, although there is evidence of rethinks and reworkings to some. Film music began to be ascribed to committees. For example, the film Peasant Yun (Yun Sangmin), one part of the multifilm series Nation and Destiny (Minjok kwa unmyŏng), tells of the composer Isang Yun (1917-1995), his abduction from Germany by South Korean agents and imprisonment, and his composition of a symphony. Appearing in 1992, the film lists five composers in the credits: Ri Chongo, Sŏng Tongch’un, Chŏn Ch’angil, Ko Suyŏng and Kim Yŏngsŏn. Isang Yun, because he wrote in an avant garde, serialist manner, could not

9 be considered populist, to think with the unified voice of the people, and therefore had no music to offer the film company.

The transition from the Galloping Horse Movement to juche marks the complete subordination of all musical activity into state bodies. Musicians, from cradle to grave, are trained and employed by state bodies. Still today, the overarching body to which all musicians must belong, is the General Federation of the Unions of Literature and Arts. Most recently directed by Paek Injun, the federation was founded in 1961 by merging three organisations for literature, music, and fine art set up at the end of the Korean War. The federation itself was sub-divided into leagues for literature, composition, fine arts, music, dance, film, and photography. Beneath the federation slot all performance art groups. Hence, amongst the primary arts groups we encounter the 300-strong National Art Troupe (Chosŏn yesultan), set up in 1947 as the Moranbong Art Troupe and until 1992 known as the Pyongyang Art Troupe (P’yŏngyang yesultan). Functioning within this is the Pyongyang People’s Music Ensemble (P’yŏngyang minjok ŭmaktan), the troupe responsible for performing works based on Korean tradition that is best known for its performances of an updated operatic version of the folktale Ch’unhyangjŏn (The Story of Ch’unhyang)—written, of course, by a collective of composers. The Mansudae Art Troupe (Mansudae yesultan) was established as the Pyongyang Song and Dance Company in 1946. Again with around 300 members, and most recently directed by Ri Hakpŏm and operating from the East Pyongyang Theatre, this troupe is more populist, interpreting folksongs and contemporary songs. Instrumentalists, vocalists and composers are also employed in the groups attached to the National Theatre, notably the Sea of Blood Opera Company. Inaugurated as the North Korean Opera Company in 1946 with a performance of Verdi’s La Traviata, the company changed its name in 1971 to perform the first indigenous “revolutionary opera”, and a year later received official recognition with the collective award of the Kim Il-sung Order. A National Symphony Orchestra, descending from the Central Symphony Orchestra established in 1946, features on many recordings, as does a Central Army Band. Film companies and the two Pyongyang circuses also have orchestras, and further employment for musicians is provided by the Maoist-style propaganda squads deployed throughout the countryside to encourage

10 “workers to greater successes through artistic agitation” in their ever-present “speed battles”.

Specialist instrumental and vocal teaching is given at children’s palaces (haksaeng sonyŏn kungjŏng), one per province and two in Pyongyang, including the flagship facility built in 1989 near the birthplace of Kim Il Sung, the Man’gyŏngdae Children’s Palace. The primary music academy, the Pyongyang Music and Dance College, trains musicians and dancers to professional levels. Founded on 1 March 1949, I was told by the then-director in 1992 that 1,500 students were enrolled in its five departments (for Western music, vocal music, Korean music, composition, and education). A more recent South Korean report estimated 800 students were enrolled. Each province also has an arts college. Institutes conduct specific research: the People’s Instrument Improvement Collective (Minjok akki kaeryang saŏpkwa), for example, has since the 1960s been responsible for modifying and updating traditional instruments, while the Pyongyang Dance Notation Study Institute (P’yŏngyang muyong p’yogibŏp yŏn’gushil) promotes a dance notation system; the People’s Music Study Institute (Minjok ŭmak yŏn’gushil) and Isang Yun Music Study Institute (Yun Isang ŭmak yŏn’guso) conduct musicological research, but research is conceived in a relatively broad and generally populist way.

4. Popular music: out with the new?

In keeping with Soviet practice, pop music is limited to two ensembles in North Korea, Wangjaesan Light Music Band (Wangjaesan kyŏng ŭmaktan), and Pochonbo Electronic Ensemble (Poch'ŏnbo kyŏng ŭmaktan). Each has a flexible membership but a standard stage grouping. As the conduit for song recordings, the output of each group is truly prodigious. Pochonbo recently released their 129th album, all on the ‘PEE’ label, but anything beyond volume 101 is difficulty to find. Wangjaesan issued their last album in 2000, by which time they had recorded 52 CDs on the ‘WJS’ label. All recordings are released by a single state company, KMC (Kwangmyŏng ŭmaksa), and two other series should be mentioned, one from the Mansudae Art Troupe numbering 44 CDs—largely transfers from old analogue recordings of the Sea of Blood opera genre—and one

11 typically featuring larger ensembles such as the Central Army Band, ‘Songs of Korea’ (Chosŏn ŭi norae), with 64 .

Popular music, though, is closely related to ideology. On my first visit to North Korea, in 1992, many songs told about the glories of socialism, construction, and bountiful harvests; on my second visit, in 2000, the majority were about Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il. The shift occurred in the three years following Kim Il Sung’s death in 1994, a period marked by political power struggles and economic difficulties. A chimerical appearance of stability was initially favoured, hence popular music was required to be apolitical; Pochonbo albums focused on folksongs, foreign songs, and instrumental performances of old songs that stripped away explicit references to Kim Il Sung or bumper harvests (volumes 23, 28, 36, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42), while Wangjaesan offered dance music, music for gymnastics and folksongs (volumes 15, 16, 17, 21, 22). Then, as Kim Jong Il secured power, songs promoted him (Pochonbo 46-50 and Wangjaesan 18- 20). Pochonbo 46 proclaims undying loyalty to the army—the album title is “Let us sing of our People’s Army (Uri ŭi inmin kundae norae purŭja)”—and marks a time when rumours were rife that the elder guard of veterans opposed the junior Kim because of his lack of military service. The three subsequent albums give equal prominence to both Kim Senior and Kim Junior, embedding the dynastic inheritence, while Pochonbo 50, “The sound of a horse’s hooves on Paektu Mountain (Paektu ŭi malbalgup sori)” signals that the transfer is complete, since the lyrics describe Kim Junior’s official birthplace. A sequence of albums then cements the transfer by incorporating Kim Junior’s mother, Kim Jong Suk, the first wife of Kim Senior, into a triumvirate that effectively quashed family rivalry. Pochonbo 51 is titled “No motherland without you (Tangshini ŏpsŭmyŏn chogukto ŏpta)”, and Pochonbo 53 “The victorious parade (Sŭngni ŭi yŏlbyŏngshik)”; Wangjaesan 24 immortalises Kim Il Sung with “He is immortal (Yŏngsaeng ŭi mosŭp)” and Wangjaesan 25 has songs about artillery women, cavalry, heroic soldiers and victorious parades.

The remarkable volume 34 of the Songs of Korea series, issued in 1995, is titled, rather obliquely, as “Function Music”. It consists of a sequence of funerary pieces, suitably laboured and serene, and indisputably connecting Kim Il Sung both to global socialism and to the Korean state. Essentially, the album was designed for use at Kim’s

12 mausoleum, where his embalmed body is on show, and the sequence is timed to take visitors into and around this former palace. Visitors enter and walk through liquid disinfectant and past X-ray machines. Once on a moving walkway, moving along long corridors, it is prohibited to walk. The first song, ‘Song of General Kim Il Sung’ gives way to a second and third, ‘Song of Dear Comrade Kim Jong Il’ and ‘Long Life and Good Health to you Dear Leader’. Entering the palace proper, ‘Welcome Music’ and ‘Parade Music’ is piped through speakers, and as one queues outside the mausoleum proper, one hears a slow reprise of the ‘Song of General Kim Il Sung’. Entering, the sequence includes ‘Silent Prayer Music’, ‘Memorial Music’ and ‘Music for Laying Wreaths’ as one pauses in front of Kim’s corpse. Shuffling slowly out, the ‘Internationale’ precedes ‘Victorious Parade’, ‘March of the Guerilla Army’, and an instrumental version of ‘No Motherland Without You’.

Toay, songs can be heard everywhere, and, even where lyricists and composers are listed (as is normal in the case of Pochonbo and Wangjaesan), favoured numbers will appear in cover versions, played by military bands and sung by children. Tied to choreography, the same songs characterize festival presentations of dance, acrobatics, and precision marching. The message is repeatedly rammed home, and even if North Korea faces economic collapse, famine, or international condemnation, at home the lyrics remain jubilant. So, throughout 2002, the following song, giving Kim Il Sung—as the ‘sun’ of the nation—pride of place but linking to Arirang, the national folksong of both Koreas, was heard many times daily:

Arirang, the Sun’s Korea enjoys high prestige As it grows stronger. Arirang, the country of the Sun’s nation is good to live in, As it flourishes.

5. Concluding remarks

Observed from outside, it is difficult to find the gaps. Ideology maintains strict control, and there is no musical production possible in public or at any professional level outside state institutions. Local production is carefully monitored and manipulated, through the

13 slow-drip release of new songs by popular music ensembles, through state-controlled media, and through mass dancing to these same songs choreographed by state artistic agitators in each factory work cell, each farming village, and each university class. There is no space for dissent. No foreigner visiting North Korea has successfully broken through the rhetoric to discover what artists, writers, and musicians truly feel about their situation—if, indeed, they do harbour thoughts that run contrary to official ideology and practice. And, in a country where Article 46 of the Penal Code dictates harsh penalties for “reactionary propaganda and agitation”, it is doubtful we will ever be allowed to know.

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