North Korea News Podcast by NK News - Elizabeth Campbell: Behind the scenes of North Korea’s Hollywood dreams

Episode Date: November 20, 2025

Dr. Elizabeth Campbell, a visiting scholar at Korea University’s Research Institute of Korean Studies, joins the podcast to discuss all things North Korean film — from former leader Kim Jong Il’s love of foreign cinema to what is arguably the country’s most famous movie, “The Flower Girl.” She sheds light on the second Kim leader’s […]

You're listening to an exclusive episode of the NK News podcast, available only to subscribers. You can listen to this and other episodes from your preferred podcast player by accessing the private podcast feed. For more detailed instructions, please see the step-by-step guide on the NKNews website at nknews.org slash private-feed. Hello listeners and welcome to the NK News podcast. I'm your host, Jack O'Switzit, and today it is Friday the 26th of September 2025, and I'm joined here in the studio by Dr. Elizabeth Campbell. She holds a PhD in North Korean Studies from Korea University with previous degrees in history, philosophy, and cultural studies. Her work examines North Korean propaganda, media and culture, including personality cults and representations of North Koreans. Elizabeth is currently a visiting scholar at Korea University's Research Institute of Korean Studies.

Welcome on the show, Elizabeth. Hi, good afternoon. Thanks for coming, and today we're going to be discussing three of your recent papers. lights camera juche, the cinema revolution of Kim Jong-il, son of my father, a semiotic analysis of Kim Jong-un's personal image creation and emulation of Kim Il-sung, that's a mouthful, and first ladies of the DPRK, categorizing the roles of Kim family women throughout North Korean history. All right, so let's start with leader number two, Kim Jong-il, the late Kim Jong-il.

There's this book that came out of 1973 under his name, On the Art of the Cinema. It's a big book, it's a hefty tome. Yeah, I think the English translation is approximately 500 pages. Right. Did he really write that 1973 book, or is it more like a sort of an authorised by or, you know, ghost written by somebody else? I think it's difficult to say exactly. Just in terms of common sense, if you look at the number of books and essays and poems and all of that that are attributed to him, it's pretty much impossible for one person to have written all of those. And running a country at the same time. Exactly. It's just like there's not enough time in the day. then you add on like all of the guidance tours and all of the books that he is said to have

read and the movies he is said to have watched. I do think he had a close hand in the writing of the book, even if it is not his exact words. So if we were to sit in on the making of that book, would we see Kim Jong-un giving line by line quotes or setting goals or just sort of watching, nodding and then signing off at the end? I can't say exactly because I haven't looked that closely into the writing of the book, but I would say it's probably a combination of conversations with whoever it is that wrote it and Kim Jong-il and him signing off on the final version. Okay, now given that, as you say, there's so much of his output is so prolific, couldn't really have done all of it. What's the best hard evidence for his direct input in the filmmaking genre?

Best hard evidence, I think, is witness testimony, I guess you would call it. A lot of people who worked in film in North Korea have talked about their specific interactions with him, conversations with him, In addition to, like, photos and videos of him on set, behind cameras, all of these things. So he would turn up on the set and he would say things. There's a very famous photo of him kind of standing behind a camera and smiling. And I believe that was taken on an actual film set. Okay, interesting. Because he wasn't known for public speeches.

No, but there's also, I'm going to, I hope I get this information correct. Because it is just coming from memory. So if you hear this and I'm wrong, I apologize for upsetting you. but I believe he visited the movie studio in Pyongyang multiple times and they have written records of all of the things that he said and they made very detailed notes of his feedback. Right. So he definitely was very actively involved.

Interesting. Okay, so for a case study, let's take a very famous North Korean film, The Flower Girl. What's one filmic decision that really screams Kim Jong-il's notes? They say that he helped to cast the star of that movie. I don't know that we can verify that that is true, but she later said that he gave her tips on her performance and that she really internalized those and they helped them with her performance.

So I don't think that's something that she would have just made up. Yeah. So he could get quite granular. I mean, you know, from the top, the casting decisions to the bottom to how you actually say, you know, portraying. this role. Yes, and if you read on the art of the cinema, there's very specific notes that he gives about scenes in other movies, like Sea of Blood. I'm trying to remember the first North Korean movie. There's two English translations of the title, either my home village or my

hometown. And that movie came out in 1949. It was produced in 1948. And, you know, in North Korean media, there's a lot of stories about Kim Jong-il. And there is a story. And there is a story. that at seven years old, he saw, I believe was an early screening of that movie, and he said, you need to reshoot this scene where there's snow falling on the soldiers' heads, because you can tell it's not real snow, you can tell it's just cotton. Gee. Which obviously, I mean, he's a seven-year-old. I don't think that's a true story, but it's just an example of the way that he was at least

credited with giving very detailed feedback. And I know in On the Art of the Cinema, he gives specific feedback about a scene in a movie that shows, I believe it's an American military base, and he makes a point about the uniforms look too luxurious. You have to be careful about not spreading misinformation about the Americans being very wealthy and having nice military uniforms. That's the point he was making in the book, at least. Sort of zooming out a little bit, is there, I'm going to test your memory here, is there a passage or a chapter in the book that most clearly shaped sort of overall practice on the set in

in terms of filmmaking, and an example of that in a movie or in a scene. Can you repeat the question? So it's a specific example of feedback that he gave in on the art of the cinema that was then put to use in a film. Yeah. Or in a whole bunch of films. Maybe there was some sort of practice that he sort of said, you know, you've got to do it this way.

And then next time you say, oh, there's a whole lot more jump cuts or there's a whole lot more looking down from above or close ups from below or something like that. I guess it's a little bit more general, but in the art of the cinema, he really pushes that they need to make Juche cinema and Juche film and really incorporate Juche theory. And he specifically points out that there are five great revolutionary operas. And he says it's really important for us to adapt all of these operas. And there's another chapter in the book where he talks about the importance of music in these films. And my understanding of opera is that opera is sung throughout, whereas a musical, typically there's breaks in between conversations and people sing.

So I don't quite know why the decision was made when adapting these operas to make them more like musicals or even just regular films because in the Flower Girl that we mentioned, it's not a traditional musical in the sense that there are breaks where the characters sing. It's more that there is someone singing over the scenes and narrating what is going on and talking about what's going on in the scene. I think that's why it's classified as a musical. I still wouldn't call it an opera. But anyway, that's just an example of a film that he really pushed to be adapted. He really wanted that specific revolutionary opera and all of the others to be adapted to film. Because he said it was very important for the ideological education of the people, for them to see these operas adapted.

Interesting. Now, is there a scene from any movie that you might play for a newcomer to North Korean film that really shows here's the rules of the on the art of the cinema in action and what to watch or listen for? I think there's a really interesting scene. I think it's around the first 20 minutes of the flower girl, and it's a scene that is set in a village in colonial Korea. And there's some interesting little conversations happening. So the flower girl, Napa, the main character, is called that because she sells flowers on the street to try and help her family to survive because they're so oppressed and they're living in extreme poverty.

and her father is dead, her brother is in prison, her little sister is blind. There's all of these tragic circumstances that have both fallen her family before the movie starts. And in the scene, you hear snippets of conversations from other people in the village. So there's a specific conversation where a young woman approaches the butcher, and she's placing an order for bacon. And she specifically says it's for, I can't remember if it translates to priest or minister. But she says it's for the local minister or the local pastor, so clearly a Christian. And the butcher makes a comment about like, oh, he eats a lot of bacon, right?

So it's kind of implying like that the Christians are greedy and gluttonous and they're eating all of this very fattening, like, I guess in some considerations, poor quality, but really high taste food. And then there's another scene later where Nopun is trying to sell flowers and a man and two women come out of what is implied to be like a music hall or a bar. And the women are dressed in, I'm not great with Japanese fashion. but it's either yukata or kimonos. And they're very disrespectful. They plug their noses and like call her dirty and laugh at her and make fun of her. And I think that they are supposed to be Koreans who adapted to Japanese culture and Japanese society instead of respecting their Korean roots.

And it's just an exemplification, in my opinion, of the way that these people were viewed. Of like you were not loyal to the people of Korea. You look down on the people of Korea. You sided with the oppressors. So I think that the specific scene in the village says a lot about how the, I guess, filmmakers wanted the viewers to perceive Christians, Japanese people, and people who sided with the Japanese during the colonial period. Race traders, yeah.

So what would be, can you think of something that helps to explain why film mattered so much in DPRK State Building in the mid to late 20th century? In other words, was there something that film could do, the news, papers or novels could not? There's a lot of reasons why film was so preferred, and some are a little more broad and political, and some are quite personal. So if you look back at the Soviet realism movement and Soviet arts in general, I don't know a lot about Soviet media and art production, but I do know that film was very important, and film was a tool that was used by them. And then Soviet filmmakers did help to, I guess, teach certain filmmaking methods to North Koreans in, I believe

the 1940s, 1950s, there were a couple of co-productions that were done between the North Koreans and the Soviets. And then, so that was a little bit more, I guess, influenced by the Soviets. And Kim Jong-il himself was very, very interested in film. And unfortunately, in North Korean studies, there's so much random information out there, and the source is basically, trust me. So when you read about Kim Jong-il and cinema, there are stories that he directed the flower girl. I don't think that is accurate, but he was very involved in the production.

There's also a lot of different numbers about how many movies he had in his personal film collection. You know, the numbers are just all over the place. But it is pretty established that he had a huge personal film collection. There's rumors that his favorite actress was Elizabeth Taylor and that his favorite movies were James Bond movies. There's also a rumor that he had a team that worked to take foreign films and put Korean subtitles under them so he could watch them. And there's a rumor that he watched every movie ever nominated for an Oscar. So obviously these things we don't know if these are true. But what we can say for sure is that he watched more movies and specifically more foreign

movies than pretty much anyone else in North Korea during this time period. So in terms of just general film education, he arguably knew more than most of the people involved in the film industry, I guess maybe not on the technical side of things, but in terms of foreign influences and inspiration. And that did lead to a very curious, I guess, period of North Korean film with Shin Sangok and Trey Unhi, who there's different versions of the story, but the way that they describe it, they were both brought from South Korea to North Korea against their will and forced to participate in the North Korean film industry. And they made, I believe it was eight movies.

it's a little bit unclear whether or not their last movie was actually released in North Korea because by that time they were able to leave North Korea and returned both of them to South Korea. So it's said that their last film was shelved because by the time it was ready to get out, they had to go out, excuse me, they had already left North Korea and at that point the decision was made that none of their films would be released. When I was there in, I think this was 2017 or 19, so in the last decade, but well after chair and Shin escaped and returned to South Korea. I was able to purchase a DVD of the emissaries unreturned

about the North Korean, or the Korean men who went to the Hague in 1907 to attend the Hague Peace Conference. And is that the one that has the famous scene with the train? Oh gosh, now you're testing my memory. I don't recall. Apparently it was filmed in Hungary, so it actually looks like it's in Europe because it was filmed in Europe. That's not that one then.

That's not that one. But the point is that the, so when I was there in the last decade, that DVD was still for sale, but Shinseng Ork's name had been scrubbed from the credits. His name was off it. Okay, I was going to say. So I think some of the films may still be around, but they just don't acknowledge any director anymore. And the fact that it was, you know, Shin Sung Ork productions, that's no longer there. Neither on the DVD case nor in the credits that roll at the end of the film or in the beginning of film. Of course.

He's removed, yeah. But, yeah, they didn't want to get rid of the film completely. Curious to hear the rest? Become an NKNews subscriber today for access to the full episode. Head to NKNews.org slash join for more information. If you're already a subscriber to NKNews, you can listen to full episodes from your preferred podcast player by accessing the private podcast feed.

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