North Korea News Podcast by NK News - Peter Moody: North Korean pop propaganda, girl groups and lyric revisionism

Episode Date: June 6, 2024

When North Korea released a new song praising leader Kim Jong Un in April, the regime was likely not expecting it to go viral around the world.  DPRK historian Peter Moody joins the podcast to discuss Pyongyang’s latest hit, the popularity of North Korean girl bands and how they are influenced by K-pop, representative works […]

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recent PhD graduate of Columbia University and currently a research fellow at Song Kyung-hwan University here in Seoul. He is a recent PhD graduate of Columbia University and currently a research fellow at Songyongwan University here in Seoul. He's a North Korea historian with research interests in ideology and music diplomacy, and he also follows contemporary trends in culture and domestic politics. Welcome on the show, Peter. Thank you for having me today, Jacko. I've been listening to your podcast for quite some time now and also appreciate your own research on the North Korean comic books as well as the first North Korean who was charged in the US, right?

Right, right. Yeah, yeah. That was a story. Yeah. Yeah. So recently, North Korea launched a new song of praise about Kim Jong-un called Chin Gun Han Aboi,

meaning friendly father or friendly parent, if you like. And I've talked about this a few episodes back with one of my NK News colleagues Alana and so on and of course also my other colleague Joe Joe Smith on May 9th did a story about it for NK News called It Slaps How a Propaganda Song Praising Kim Jong-un Went Viral on TikTok so I'm going to assume that most of our listeners are familiar with the basics already seems to have become popular around the world. Is this a new phenomenon? Do you mean a North Korean song becoming popular around the world?

Yes. So before there was the song about the potato, the king potato that that young girl was singing, Dae-dong Dan Potato, I believe was the name of it. And that one did go viral, at least in South Korea. But I think the difference with this one, Friendly Father, is that in addition to people mocking it, as they mock the girl singing about the potato, people have expressed genuine music appreciation for the song.

I mean, not appreciation for the leader or North Korean ideology in any respect, but they've been interested in how it sounds. They've been curious about it. Right. To you, what's different about this song? Is there anything musically or lyrically different? I think it's fairly typical for North Korean songs that have been released recently. Well, North Korean songs have for quite some time been catchy. And ever since the 1980s, there has been some electronic influence mixed in. And it's just gradually grown more sophisticated over time in terms of the arrangement, the orchestration, and variety in the rhythm as well. But I think just the song itself is actually loosely based on a previous song about Kim Jong-il.

And that song... How loosely? Yeah, 진근한 이름. Kim Jong-il. And it sort of played a similar function. I mean, it was before Kim Il-sung passed away. It was in the early 90s. But it was just an attempt to plot out some way for Kim Jong-il to be appreciated, not just the legendary head of state and the legendary supreme leader of North Korea. Do you think it's fair to call it a song of praise as I did just then? Absolutely. I mean, it's a song of praise, but it's not only a song of praise. It's also what

I would call propaganda pop or a propaganda. Yeah. In the sense that it's incorporating stylistic elements from outside of the world and even capitalist music soundscape in some respect. But it's lyrically and in terms of its content, just purely for propaganda or the sake of propaganda. Does it have any, I mean, when we think about songs of praise, does it have any religious overtones or any overlap with songs of praise in the, CCM, in the sense that in order to meet the audience and the listener where they are, there's an attempt to incorporate music that's not propaganda or that's not religious into it and then as a way to get younger people excited about the content. excited about the content. And so it doesn't sound as much like a contemporary Christian music song as a previous North Korean song, We Will Go to Mount Paektu. I'm sure you know that song. Yeah. That one sounds very similar to a contemporary Christian song. This one, I think, is more long, and I said this in some interviews, more like ABBA in the sense that you have this orchestral score mixed with a very heavy

electronic beat. Right. Yeah, and very sing-songy as well. It is a bit of an earworm, isn't it? Yeah, and in terms of the vocals, you have a mixture of a solo singer and then also people backing up the solo singer as well, both men and women's voices singing. Now, in regard to its popularity on TikTok, is that just the normal people having fun on TikTok and not taking the song seriously and just engaging with it as a piece of music? Or are they appreciating the North Korean elements of it? How is that being perceived? I think that's an excellent question. I think it's more incidental that it got popular right at the time that the United States is, well, has already passed a bill to ban TikTok if the parent company of it

doesn't divest itself away from it. But in terms of its popularity, I think Joe Smith, one of the writers at North Korean News, I'm not sure if he traced it to, but one of the early videos was someone who did a K-pop dance to the North Korean News. I'm not sure if he traced it to, but one of the early videos was someone who did a K-pop dance to the North Korean song. So I think that people already had an interest in

South Korean music and they had some curiosity about how different North Korean music was. So when they saw that juxtaposed together, that made them very fascinated. And they thought, well, wait a minute here. This is not what I really expected of North Korea. I expected more of something like the early Soviet Union. Yeah, a lot of martial songs. And cantatas and marches and stuff like that. And so it's somewhat familiar, but also very unique in its own way. It's easy to imagine on the one hand that North Korea's leaders might not be

happy with a video that shows somebody doing a K-pop dance to a North Korean song. They might say that it's harming the supreme dignity of the great leader. But on the other hand, that they might be happy that North Korean propaganda, as you call it, is being used and disseminated in the outside world. Are you aware of any comment that's come out of North Korea so far about the TikTok craze? I am not aware of any comment that's come out of North Korea so far about the TikTok craze? I am not aware of any comment about it. I think it's important to emphasize that the song does have a domestic origin. It wasn't created for an international audience.

Right, but it was uploaded on YouTube for the international audience, probably by someone within North Korea or links to North Korea, perhaps at an embassy or something? Well, there are, it's kind of hard to distinguish between just genuine non-political fans of North Korean music who upload a video and someone who is more tied to the state, either formally or informally. That's true. But regardless of who it is, if you're outside North Korea, you've got to get that video from somewhere. Exactly. So someone in North Korea is making it available to the outside world. Yes. But of course, this is not the first North Korean propaganda or propaganda pop video that has been available to the public, especially during COVID. There are a lot of songs that really resembled ballads at that time from the early 90s that

were openly available. So someone could have just taken one from one of those channels and uploaded it themselves. But this song came out after the closing down of many of those channels, right? The YouTube channels? Well, yeah, the shutting down of the websites and the ceasing of activity on the social media channels that happened earlier this year. I think this song came out after that, did it not? Yes, but even when channels are shut down, the new ones can spring up.

It's almost like a cat and mouse game. So I don't know, there's still channels, and as I said, it's very ambiguous on whether they're just a genuine fan account and something that's tied to the state. Is this song also popular in South Korea? How are South Korean netizens responding to it? So it certainly has interest to part of the South Korean public. But I remember when it was KBS,

I believe, did a story on it, but they were very careful because the song, the lyrics, of course, were praising Kim Jong-un. And that's taboo, if not illegal, in the South. And so they made it so you couldn't really hear the lyrics, but they still play the music. And so what really interested South Korea about it was not so much of the music and the lyrics. What interests South Korea more was the thumbs up, the fist pumping, the appearance of celebrities, such as the woman who does the news broadcast. Yeah. And so that was kind of an image of North Korea that they weren't really used to seeing.

Something that's more, looks a little more harmonious or familiar from an international perspective. I believe, was it Christopher Green said that it's not so much imitating South Korean culture, but more just East Asia culture in general and something that's similar also to the West as well. Now, the South Korean National Intelligence Service has blocked or is trying to block the song from being played in South Korea, which, of course, is always hard with the Internet, but I guess it's blocking channels on which the video can be seen. Do you know if that's conversely made it more popular? Are more people seeking it out now that

it's blocked? Well, that has been what someone who was on that Korean Communications Commission emphasized. This was not a unanimous decision. It was a four to one decision. The Korean Communications Commission received a complaint or request from the National Intelligence Service that claimed that the song was psychological warfare and a violation of the National Security Act. So the members of the commission deliberated on it

and four of them voted in favor to ban, or more precisely to block access to certain videos on TikTok. Right. And then later, that extended to YouTube as well. Yes, I couldn't find it on YouTube today when I looked for it. But it was interesting to look at the different opinions about the song. But it was interesting to look at the different opinions about the song. So the person who voted against it, and I believe he's the only one who was recommended by the opposition party, the Democratic Party, he mentioned that perhaps the National Intelligence Service and the Broadcasting Commission unintentionally made people know more about it because of the new service about it being banned. And he also said that it's difficult to see that the phrases from the particular TikTok

video were threatening the existence of South Korea. And then he thought it was something that was more interesting to foreign audiences than domestic audiences. Here's a question that just occurred to me. You said that the National, what was it called again, the Communications Commission, they labeled, or the NIS, sorry, labeled it psychological warfare. Do you think that North Korea sees music like this song also as a form of psychological warfare? Well, my understanding is that while North Korea has had a propaganda department that's directed towards South Korea, kind of the Daednam, directed towards a South Korea propaganda agency, that has been downgraded recently to correspond with the lack of emphasis on unification and or the emphasis on not emphasizing unification. But we know that when they describe South Korean or world music being played in North Korea,

they often call that a form of spiritual warfare or spiritual pollution. Absolutely. It's interesting that here we have, this is one thing that North and South Korea can agree on, is that music can be used as a political instrument. Absolutely. As a propaganda tool. Yes, yes. Internally or externally, right?

Yes, yes. I think they both agree with that, but I don't think that it's persuasive that this was deliberately used as psychological warfare against the South. Yeah, coming in the context, as it does, of the shutting down of the southward-facing propaganda channels, which we'll return to later on. Is the success of this song, Friendly Father, Friendly Parent, do you think it's a repeatable success, or is it kind of just one of those one-off things?

Kind of in the same way that, you remember Psy with his song Kangnam Style was the first song to hit a billion views on YouTube, and it was massive. I mean, I remember even in the top 2,000 songs of all time in the Netherlands for 2012, Kangnam Style appeared, and then the next year it quickly disappeared. So do you think that the success of this song is repeatable? Oh, absolutely. that even though North Korea has drawn on international music styles from quite some time, it's now that some people are recognizing that and they find it somewhat appealing musically even if they don't agree with ideologically. And

so now I think would be an opportunity if North Korea wanted to to sort of market itself through its music in a little more palpable way, lyrically. Maybe songs about Naengmyeon that they'd done before, or songs about Pyongyang, maybe Pyongyang style instead of Gangnam style. That's something that they could do. But I don't think the regime is that interested in international propaganda as much as they have been in the past when they were kind of hinting that they would be interested in, propaganda as much as they have been in the past when they were kind of hinting that they would be interested in, well, stating directly that they'd be interested in denuclearization, perhaps in exchange for sanctions, exemptions. But now I think that's

no, they think it's not really that possible, at least with the current US administration precedent in charge. And also, I think that the priority more is domestic propaganda for all the developments that have been taking place over the past, since January, and even before that, with Kim Jong-un's personality called. It's kind of ironic that, you know, decades ago, in the 60s, 70s, 80s, even into the 90s, North Korea, the North Korean government was spending a lot of money from time to time to put full-page feature advertisements in newspapers in the Western world,

so the New York Times and The Guardian and some Western European newspapers to tout the benefits of the great leader and how wonderful the North Korean economy was. And to little success. I don't think it got a great return on investment there, but a lot of outlay. And now it's,

you know, making a song that kind of becomes an accidental hit and now they're not interested. Yeah. But there could be some parallels to that time though, because the people who were responsible for international propaganda wanted to kind of raise their own profiles within North Korea, they could make something that was very laudatory of the leader. And maybe there'd be incentives to do something similar, particularly in a year where Kim Jong-un's

personality cult is attempted to be elevated. Now, you're currently revising your PhD dissertation for a book to be called Mobilizing Musicians and the Making of North Korea, 1945 to 1991. What are a couple of the most interesting or most important things about North Korean music overall that we should know? things about North Korean music overall that we should know? Well, I think part of it is what we've been talking about all along, that North Korea has extensively borrowed music, borrowed culturally from the music of other countries. And that is something that began as soon as the state was founded and even earlier than 1945 when they're under Soviet occupation because there is rather than North Korea just simply being isolated and just attempting to preserve

indigenous culture and indigenous characteristics there has been this dialectic or two dialectics actually one of the dialectics is between kind of retaining something distinct or national, however that is defined, and having some kind of modern spirit or contemporary spirit or integrating the great aspects of other countries. The other dialectic is between what I have identified, according to North Korean discourse, as serving the people's spirit, creating culture, in this case music, that people will genuinely enjoy, and then party spirit, music that reflects the party line, that can harness serving the people's spirit for the sake of something that it's been beneficial for the regime.

And so there's just been different phases based on the time period. That first dialectic you mentioned there, the sort of keeping what is traditionally Korean while also introducing the new, I think that's how you can end up with a North Korean band that has both a kyogum player and an accordionist within the same group. Absolutely. As I'm sure we've all seen at some time or other. Yeah, yeah. And that is something that I would trace back to the 1950s and the first Juche speech.

Well, it wasn't really recognized as the Juche speech at the time, but this is a speech where North Korea had just received a lot of assistance from the fraternal socialist allies. And so it was on the receiving end of all this culture, especially from Soviet Union, but also from Bulgaria. There was Bulgarian music played on the radio. So there was some speeches from Kim Il-sung, including the Juche speech about how we should not worship foreign things. We should elevate what is indigenous Korean. And so that kind of puts a shift towards being interested in music that can represent indigenous Korean heritage. But that mantra, national in form, socialist in content, that's not exclusively North Korean, right? That is, I think, if I'm

not mistaken, standard Marxist-Leninism. Absolutely. So in that sense, the Juche speech was nothing new. Yes, yes. And that's what- Very orthodox at the time. I think even Kim Il-sung at the time believed that he was just interpreting Korean orthodox Marxist-Leninism and just applying it to the Korea case and the Korea revolution. But before that, there wasn't as much emphasis on folk songs and folk music. There was some incorporation of it, but that was associated with feudalism in the past with the singing. And so then selectively at that time, North Korea integrated, or you might say assimilated heritage, the North Korean state, elements of Korean heritage. And

that did not include pansori, the Korean storytelling. That didn't make it through. For some time, the North Korean musicians were toying around with creating these changguk, which changguk are stage pansori, with revolutionary content. And one of them was about a female martyr from the Korean War. But then in 1965, Kim Il-sung makes a speech and he states very directly that songs from the southern province, meaning, southern provinces, meaning specifically Jeollanam-do, where pansori is believed to originated from,

are not revolutionary and we should move away from those. And so there was a sign of a soft purge of musicians who migrated from the south to the north at that time. In 1965, okay. Yeah, it was not just that time, but that was when there was the big break. And nature, of course, abhorring a vacuum. Is that how revolutionary opera came to be a big thing in North Korea,

to kind of replace pansori or fill the gap left by it? Yeah, well, jangguk, the stage pansori then was, there was some attempt to create jangguk that incorporated more of North Korean indigenous folk music, such as the seodo-sori. And that's literally sounds or songs of the western meaning specifically northwestern province because that's where Pyongyang is located in Pyeongando

exactly and so there was one Changuk that tried to incorporate a lot of the Seodo-sori but in the mid 1960s to late 1960s there is a shift from folk songs to music that the people were genuinely enjoyed. And ironically, a lot of that was music that came from the commercial industry of the Japanese colonial period. And so there were certain songs, they called them new folk songs,

that were reemphasized. And in some cases, their lyrics were changed to make them about North Korea specifically or revolutionary content. And there were also the revolutionary operas. A lot of the songs, I argue in my dissertation, drew on the popular song, the yu-hen-ga, literally the song in fashion that in the South Korea context kind of evolved into trot music.

Is that what is also called enka? Enka, yes. It's pretty much the Korean version of what was enka because there was heavily Japanese influence at that time. Which Park Chung-hee was a big fan of. I think he was singing an Inca song when he was shot. Well, I think it was a South Korean singer who sung it. But so it was a song that certainly sounded like Inca.

Right, he liked that style. Yeah, yeah. Wow. So tell us a bit more about how production and consumption of music interact in North Korea. Oh, wow. So that is not so much in the music, but more so in the lyrics. The lyrics, okay. Yes.

So at the same time that North Korea was arguably moving towards the search for a new national heritage. And that eventually becomes based on Kim Il-sung and his guerrilla fighters in Manchuria, kind of representing those values and that heritage. What was happening and with a respect to, remind me again? Consumption and production. Oh, yes. consumption and production. Oh, yes. Lyrically, songs were changing from themes of production to themes of consumption, or being on the receiving end of something that has been produced. So I would identify the production aspect of conventional socialist realist music, songs with themes about maximizing labor. And a lot of these were the musically based on folk songs.

So maximizing labor, like fulfilling your quotas at the factory. Exactly. For example, there's a song that was Ong Hea, Ong Hea. And like everyone, it's a song where everyone sings the chorus and then one person kind of improvises a verse and then Ong Hea, and then they just go around. sings the chorus, and then one person kind of improvises a verse, and then they just go around. And then there's one song that even though we're just four hands, we work like 10. And so that was the other than songs that were just about socialist patriotism or the Korean War, those were the most representative of lyrical content at that time. Things begin to

shift with the monolithic ideological system. 68. Yes. And in themes of production evolved into themes of consumption. So instead of about the labor process, there were songs about because all this labor has taken place and because the great leader Kim Il-sung at the time has connected the urban areas and the countryside and made things harmonious between that, we are now receiving a lot of the food and we're receiving a lot of things and some cases receiving gifts directly from Kim Il-sung. And sometimes those gifts are food and clothing. Exactly, exactly. And so that's something that I wrote the article about from production to consumption to sort of analyze, can we identify or conceptualize something as a socialist consumerism? And can we? Well, yes, but it's markedly different than the kind of consumerism that people talk about during the great North Korean famine in the 1990s,

when because the public distribution collapsed, people, mostly women, because men had to report to work sites even though they weren't paid, were just involved in the private exchange and selling and buying things, some of which came across the border from China. So it's not that kind of consumerism. It's the consumerism of distribution and rationing and receiving something from the leader and from the party and taking pride in that. And also I would consider Vinolan, I believe this, the indigenous North Korean textile. Right. Scratchy, I understand. Yeah. As part of this socialist consumerism, this is something that has been produced with our own resources and something that we should be proud of and show to the world and show to

each other, even though it's something material. What's a specific example of a song that listeners could look up on YouTube and learn something about Korean society around the time that that song was made? Okay, so perhaps we can include this in the description. I don't have the name of it, but it's a song about this grandfather and said, look how much of distributions or look how much I've received. And so he's just counting all the rice he's received and all the other things that he's received in a package from the state.

And he just can't believe it so much. And he doesn't know what he's going to do with it all. What are we going to do with all this food? Yes, exactly. So it's sung in the voice of the grandfather? It's from the perspective, yeah. Literary voice. And literally, it was a male quartet.

And so that was in the 1970s, um, the time when the phrase our style, uh, I wouldn't say first emerged, but emerged in earnest around that time. Um, and later our style socialism became a way to distinguish North Korea style socialism from Eastern Europe socialism that was collapsing at the time. And so, yeah. But our style at that time was just a way to identify something that was uniquely Korean, or in this case, North Korean, that was not something tied to the past. It's something that is more tied to the present. Now, do musicians generally enjoy a special status in North Korea as sort of warriors on the front line of spiritual warfare?

Absolutely. And that's why I thought they were an important social group. I mean, we won't want to call them a class. I mean, they're kind of a mixture of intellectual class and some might consider them productive laborers, especially the singers. But in terms of their just group identity, they have a somewhat privileged status, but they also are probably more scrutinized than others as well because they are the living embodiments of state ideology. And so, yeah, it is a privileged status. A lot of parents want their children to be musicians. So that's created a lucrative underground market for private music instruction. Is there a factory system in North Korea that resembles that which is here in South Korea? Is there a factory system in North Korea that resembles that which is here in South Korea? Oh, wow. You mean the K-pop factories?

So there are these specialized music schools that children have to audition for at a very early age. And when evaluating the student, they not only value their music ability or potential, but also their height. They have to be a certain height, their physical appearance, and maybe even more important than any of that is bribes. How much money the parents can bribe the selection committee. Perhaps you can put that down on the list of unintentional things in which North Korea and South Korea resemble each other more than at first expected. Yes, yes. And perhaps I wouldn't say education, I wouldn't put education in that category necessarily, but there is this obsession with sort of hitting the books. But in North Korea, it's more about for the sake of ideology.

Right, you've got to read your life of the Kims. Yeah, yeah. Now, there seem to be in the last couple of decades quite a few girl groups in North Korea. Is this really a phenomenon or is it overstated by media? It certainly was a phenomenon. Yes, I divide the Kim Jong-un period musically into two halves. One from the time of the introduction of the Moranbong Band, July 2012, I believe. And then until the Moranbong Band stopped performing. I think they had a reunion performance very recently, but they weren't the number one thing in North Korea after a while. And so there certainly was a girl group phase in North Korea, but it was not necessarily something that was influenced from South Korea K-pop initially. But they took on K-pop features over time and gradually.

The dancing, the costumes. Yeah. Originally, it was more influenced by the British group Bond. They play classical music instruments, electronic strings. With modernized electrical sort of minimalist violins and guitars and things. Yes, yes. And also perhaps the, was it the 12 girls group in China? China also had a group of women who played instruments,

but they played more traditional Chinese instruments or just reformed Chinese instruments. So perhaps a mix of the two. But then later there was a second girl group that emerged called Chungmong Band. And then they started to sing and dance at the same time. And they did concerts together, where they would kind of almost have a battle back and forth. And so at that time, the K-pop influence was the greatest. But there's so many reasons why I think North Korea moved away from the girl groups. Now, to what extent did or do these girl groups have a following outside North Korea's borders?

That's a very good question. So their songs did not go as viral as Friendly Father did, obviously. But at the beginning, they signaled receptiveness to international music because they had the famous demonstration performance where they played theme from Rocky. They played Disney songs and Disney characters coming. And then they had a lot of electronic music and electronic guitars. had a lot of electronic music and electronic guitars. But they did get somewhat popular in Japan and China, which, interestingly enough, paralleled the Korean wave.

Put that on the list, too. Just on a smaller scale. So there was millions, if not a billion views of Moranbong band songs on the Bidi Bidi, the Chinese version of YouTube. Right. And in Japan, there were these karaoke fan groups of North Korean music. Wow. Even in Korean? Yes, yes.

Perhaps phonetically, if they don't know the language. Exactly. Yeah, I've met some of them. So some of them learn Korean and others of them just memorize the songs because it's a lot easier for a Japanese person a small handful of occasions when South Korean musicians and bands went and performed to audiences in Pyongyang. Recently, there was one when President Moon was in the Blue House. So it was 2018 when things were good and there was a whole bunch of bands that went up there. Typically, in footage of those performances, the North Korean audience doesn't seem to be very receptive.

That's a very interesting observation. I think it really depends on the song. I think that there is a lag of exposure to South Korean songs. So, for instance, at that concert, I believe it's the group Red Velvet played and they were singing a hip hop song. And one of, I talked to this NBC announcer who's since become a specialist. And she said that there was people in the audience, older people that are saying, are they singing in Korean or English? They didn't even know. But on the other hand, there were songs that they had already been familiar with, including the song It's this ballad song, just like a bullet to the heart. And according to that NBC announcer,

who was part of the planning of that concert, she said that that seemed to leave an impression on the young women in the audience because it kind of spoke from a woman's voice of someone facing hardship. And my understanding is just generally North Koreans have been interested in the ballads more than the K-pop. K-pop is something they found interesting, fascinating, but ballads have just left more of an emotional

and presence on them. Tell us more about what music North Koreans enjoy. Are they interested in music from South Korea or from other foreign cultures? So I think they would be most interested in South Korean music because they understand it, but there's been some misrecognition without a lot of access to external information. Sometimes they think a South Korean song is

actually a song from the Yongbyon province. So there's a little mix up there. But interestingly enough, according to a recent report released by the Ministry of Unification, interest in foreign music has actually gone down since 2012. Interest in foreign information, foreign culture has continued to go up. Interest in foreign music has actually gone down. So that could be a sign that North Korea's incorporation of foreign styles of music is working, at least domestically. They've co-opted it so they don't need the foreign stuff anymore. Or it's just been so heavily restricted that people just don't have access to it as much

as they did in the past. Now, let's talk a little bit about North Korea's broader political culture a bit, because you also observe and analyze that too. So what changes in North Korea's domestic political culture have you seen happening this year after Kim Jong-un's shift away from emphasizing unification and reconciliation with the South? So I think that this year has witnessed a double severance. The first severance, as you just said, has been a severance from the South and concepts of compatriotism and unification. And that has been very explicit.

And then the other has been a severance or at least a slight departure from Kim Jong-un being in the shadow of the legacies of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il. And you see that with the, I don't want to say downgrading of the holidays, but just kind of demystifying of the holidays instead of Day of the Sun.

Today the Sun, April 15th, being the birthday of Kim Il-sung, the founder of North Korea. And then there's the, what do they call that? There was the Lodestar Day or something for February the 16th, Kim Jong-il's birthday that had its own name too. Exactly, exactly. And it's really interesting to consider how much these two severances are in interaction with each other. Some analysts say that in order to kind of stress

a severance from South Korea, it is important for Kim Jong-un to de-emphasize Kim Il-sung because Kim Il-sung had the unification ideology. Yeah. I mean, that was a central part of what it means to be North Korean, is to desire unification with South Korea. Exactly. So that's one theory. Another theory may be that North Korea is trying to demystify its culture. And because North Korea is sort of an interesting place now between the cult of Kim Jong-un in particular, between an assimilation to conventional strongman personality cult status dictatorship in the mold of Putin or Xi Jinping. And between that and continuity with what might be called

this mystical, hereditary, bloodline, or even ghost-based personality cult dictatorship. And in other words, is Kim Jong-un replicating what his father, Kim Jong-il, had to do after the death of Kim Il-sung and during the North Korean famine in order to be taken seriously domestically? Or is he attempting to move in a different direction, departing from the sacred bloodline model in order to be taken more seriously internationally, not from the West, but from Russia and China? not from the West, but from Russia and China. Well, I guess, I mean, just on the face of it, something that makes whatever he does very different from his father is that Kim Jong-il, as I recall,

was only recorded to have spoken in public twice during his 30 or so years in the public face, whereas Kim Jong-un does it often. Exactly. And so that's just, you know, on the surface,, whereas Kim Jong-un does it often. Exactly. And so that's just, you know, on the surface, that's a very, very big difference there. So if you're going to go for charismatic leadership, but if you're not prepared to speak publicly, it's hard to do that. Yeah.

And I think Kim Jong-il felt more urgency to distinguish himself because even though he didn't make these public appearances, only three years after Kim Il-sung died, he oversaw the changing of the songs of official ceremony from songs about Kim Il-sung to Kim Jong-il. And Kim Jong-un, according to Radio Free Korea, had made the same kind of change back last year, late last year. Oh, so he waited a bit longer. Yeah, yeah.

And then I think that's also a prequel to songs like The Friendly Father and other ways that he has elevated himself and which one might say is at the expense of his predecessors. Has there been some revisionism of lyrics where Kim Il-sung or Kim Jong-il have been written out or have been maybe referred to not by name but by title or something like that? Absolutely. And that, I think, is a significant change this year, even if you argue that some of these transitions have been gradual rather than sudden. At the New Year's concert this year, the song Nothing to Envy originally stressed our father Kim Il-sung, and that was changed to Our Father Kim Jong-un. And it wasn't subtle. Kim Jong-un's name is in red letters, and you can hear the volume going up on that time too.

And that's something that I have never heard about happening with Kim Jong-il, even though there have been songs that praise him and glorify him, I don't remember songs about lyrics about him or placing lyrics about Kim Il-sung. There's been two other notable lyrical changes that may be indirectly related to this, but it's more related to the South. The national anthem used to have Samcheolli, like the 3,000 Li. 3,000 Ri from North to South, the whole peninsula.

Our glorious fatherland, the Samcheolli, the 3,000 Li. And that has since been changed to our great fatherland in the world. Yi Seisang, like in this world, we have a great fatherland in the world. Yi Se Sang, like in this world, we have a great fatherland. And another has been a song of Kim Il Sung, which, by the way, is not sung as much as it was, at least domestically. And that's one of the earliest songs, isn't it, from the North Korean canon?

And that precedes, if I'm not mistaken, the 1948 founding of the DPRK. And it precedes the national anthem as well. And some, Keith Howard, someone that I've really learned a lot from. Previous podcast guest. Hi, Keith, if you're listening. Yeah, he has argued that that song paralleled the initial rise of Kim Il-sung's personality call. But in that song, there's a line that's Buk-jo-sun, North Korea. And now when it's sung, for my understanding, it's Lee Jo-sun.

This Korea. Yeah, this Korea instead of North Korea. So there are some shifts going on there over the last six months that we're only just starting to see, I think, right? Absolutely. We'll see more of it as time goes by. Well, that's the thing. I mean, and particularly the second of the two severances of whether Kim Jong-un is trying to replicate what Kim Jong-il did at a very critical period of demonstrating

his legitimacy, or if Kim Jong-un is just trying to appeal to China and Russia, trying to become more conventional. I think we'll know a lot more about this as the year progresses. Interesting. Now, have you seen any evidence yet that North Korea has a sharing culture, a music sharing culture through their internal mobile phone networks in which people share songs or videos with each other? So my understanding is that songs were originally, I'm not sure about right now, but the songs were downloaded at stores. So they were uploaded more. There are songs that were uploaded onto their mobile devices rather than downloaded from some server on the intranet. But now it's hard to tell. In the Friendly Father music video, there is one girl listening to music on her headphones.

And from people who have studied, like non-North Koreans, but who have studied in North Korea, I've learned that the television is considered something that the old people watch. Ah, yes. And the people are just more, the younger people are just perhaps similar to other parts of the world. They're getting more of their media on their phones. So it wouldn't surprise me. There are Korea-affiliated sites that have songs you can listen to and download, but I'm not sure if those sites also exist in North Korea's internet system. Are there potential ways to musically engage with North Korean society?

I think so. And one way I think of musically engaging North Korea is by practicing what I've called receptive diplomacy. What's that? Receptive diplomacy is an inversion of the traditional concept of cultural diplomacy, where you send your cultural ambassadors outward to the other country to influence them directly. outward to the other country to influence them directly. Receptive diplomacy would be letting another country's cultural ambassadors come to your state and have some kind of performance. And that can lead to the cycle of reciprocal diplomacy and be beneficial in the long term. It also can signal openness to the people as well of that culture.

And so there is some precedent for this. Dwight D. Eisenhower worked out this agreement with the Soviet Union to have the, and I think eventually it was during JFK's presidency, that the Bolshoi Ballet from the Soviet Union would come and perform. And Soviet Union just expected that this would just make everyone see the greatness of the Soviet society, civilization, technology, whatever. And the performances were sold out, but no one was persuaded ideologically about Soviet Union. They just liked the... So I think that, and South Korea has done this with North Korea as well. I think with negotiations on what songs are suitable and what songs are not suitable, it is possible to engage North Korea musically

by perhaps inviting them first. And then that will probably lead to a reciprocal visit where there can be more engagement. It seems unlikely in this time though, in this political climate, plus also they would be competing with performing groups of North Korean defectors down here in South Korea who do their own concerts of songs. Yes, yes, that's true. But I think people would be perhaps more interested to seeing the real North Korean performance. Defectors would also be an interesting performance to see, but I think people would have curiosity about the musicians that are actually prominent in North Korea currently. Yeah, the biggest impediment, though, is I don't think that the Kim Jong-un administration currently is that interested in this kind of cultural diplomacy. At one time, in my understanding, when the New York Philharmonic

Orchestra played in North Korea, they were perhaps interested in reciprocating that, but for whatever reason, that didn't work out. Finally, Peter, do you have a favorite North Korean song? Oh, wow. So this is quite an interesting question. I will say that North Korean songs compared to other kinds of pop music have a more limited range. And so singing them, you would not lose your voice if you sung them for a longer period of time. Right. But I would say probably favorite North Korean song is a song about the dove fly high. And so that it's not really ideological in terms of its lyrics. It's very general.

I mean, it could be considered tied to ideology, but it's just about a pidugi, which is a dove just flying high. And interestingly enough, there was a, and it was performed in Japan in the early 1990s by the Pochonbo electronic orchestra. So when I first heard it on video, I thought it was a Japanese song that they were just singing in Korean. But then I realized it was actually one of their songs that just wasn't so heavy in terms of its ideological components. And then, interestingly enough, I don't know if you know, Kim Il-sung's birthday, every year they have the Spring Friendship Festival and they invite foreign musicians in. And a Christian band went in. And

in order to play in North Korea, you have to play a North Korean song. Right, they went with this one. Yeah, and they went with this one because they didn't find anything that objectionable about it lyrically. Interesting. And so I'd say that's probably my favorite song out of North Korean songs. Send me a link of that after the interview. We'll try to put it in the show notes. I certainly will.

Along with the other song you mentioned. Yeah, I don't think we'll have to worry about it being banned as psychological warfare, since it doesn't praise the leader. It doesn't. Well, thank you very much for coming on the NK News podcast today, Dr. Peter Moody. Where can people find you and follow your work online? Oh, probably LinkedIn. You could probably reach out to me there, but ResearchGate is where you can find a lot of my work. And if something's not there, you can ask me about it. I'm happy to share anything at any time. Excellent. All right. Well, thank you once again.

Okay. Thank you for having me, Jaco. I really appreciated the interview. Super. Welcome to a new realm of insights into the Korean Peninsula. At Korea Risk Group, we delve deep into the complexities of North and South Korea, offering bespoke analyses that empower decision makers. Whether you're in government, business, or academia, our tailored solutions provide clarity in an opaque region. Let our team guide your strategy with

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