Reviewing “The Flower Girl”: DPRK Sea of Blood Opera Troupe on Tour in China (1)

by Adam Cathcart

Practically any casual observer of North Korean media could tell you that the DPRK is proud of its arts.  However, the more salient question — “continuity or rupture in North Korean culture?” — is one where answers are less clear.  As the cultural and informational walls between North Korea and its neighbors gradually break down, the North Korean state is being forced to adapt its techniques and sometimes the charismatic propaganda content of its arts.

The question of continuity or change in North Korea is bound strongly to a related question: Wither Kim Jong-il’s cultural influence in North Korea?  As the Moranbong Ensemble threatens to eclipse other more established groups in the DPRK like the Unhasu Orchestra, itself the prime personalized vehicle for mourning Kim Jong-il, the question becomes more salient.

As in any large battlefield, the answer to the question depends on the specific front.  In the case of the Sea of Blood Opera Troupe, the answer to “change or continuity” leans very strong toward the latter; Kim Jong-il’s cultural influence remains pervasive.  If the Moranbong Band would indicate a new direction (or, at minimum, a new twist) of DPRK official culture, the Sea of Blood Troupe is a mark for the cultural conservatives in Pyongyang.

This essay is a first person subjective narrative of an audience member – myself – who attended the Sea of Blood Troupe’s performance on June 26, 2012, in Chengdu, Sichuan province in the PRC.

The troupe’s tour was quite extensive, lasting more than two months, and travelled to a number of cities where North Korea is not known to have many ties heretofore, like Shenzhen.  Another SinoNK analyst was able to attend one of the final performances in Beijing and may be chipping in views via the comments section of this essay.

North Koreans in the Chinese Economic Milieu | If the North Koreans want a taste of Chinese prosperity, it’s everywhere in evidence here.  There is a monstrous construction boom in Chengdu, and the streets are regularly torn up for subway lines; the city is literally clogged with cash and government investment. I arrived about an hour early at the theater, which is a boxy and bathroom tile-laden construction of 1980s vintage sandwiched in between a McDonalds and some jewelry stores just adjacent to Mao’s statue on the main square of Chengdu.

Mao Zedong in the Tianfu Square of Chengdu, Sichuan, PRC, overlooking a huge new subway station and the requisite growth of Gucci, Prada, etc. | Photo by Natalie Behring, May 2010, via Flickr

The odd thing about North Korean cultural exchanges like this is how little culture is formally exchanged; the North Korean singers do not give master classes at the Sichuan Conservatory. The expectation rather is that they will soak up with eager eyes the tangible material benefits of Chinese-style reform.

Opera Tours as Foreign Exchange Vacuum? |  The tickets are on discount – two for the price of one. Since prices were already inflated – the seats I want are 680 yuan, about $105 USD – it’s hardly a bargain.  As in most cases involving international opera tours there is simply no way that the receipts at the gate can themselves pay for the substantial costs of moving 180 performers and staff around some rather expensive cities.  In this case, we can assume that the Chinese government is making up the difference and making the arrangement very worth the North Koreans’ while.

The fact that the Sea of Blood Troupe has been on tour in China twice in the past year, having spent about 3.5 of the last 8 months in the PRC, indicates that the North Koreans believe it’s a useful exercise.  Another tour is planned for the fall, featuring a DPRK adaptation of the Chinese revolutionary classic “The White-Haired Girl.”

Scalping and Security |  Outside, there is a small gauntlet of Chinese men in their late 40s hustling to sell their tickets (procured somehow, probably through a friend’s work unit).  One looks at me, thrusts out two tickets, and says in Sichuan dialect, the equivalent of “Flower Girl – it’s the shizzle: 800 yuan” (卖花姑娘——巴适的很).  Even official opera performances, it seems, are subject to the Sino-North Korean grey market.

Security is remarkably lax; in a city teeming with police in the Tibetan quarter, the arrival of 180 North Koreans and a crowd of perhaps 1000+ Chinese does not merit the appearance of a single Public Security officer.  Perhaps there are a few in plain clothes, or perhaps no one is worried because Western students in groups like LiNK — or their South Korean counterparts — have never assured themselves of a speedy deportation by protesting Chinese-North Korean interactions on this particular field of battle.  And no Chinese in their right mind would go hang an anti-Kim Jong Un banner outside of a North Korean show.  After all, the word “Yoduk” means nothing in China and the show will go on unimpeded by any acts of what North Korea now calls “political terrorism.”   If nothing else, the feelings of normality are pervasive, if limned with a hint of excitement at the novelty of North Korean performers.

Chinese Audience |  The theater opens half an hour before the show, revealing the Chinese audience is a mixed bag.  While classical music concerts draw large numbers of young people (elementary school age), this crowd is older: banking on socialist nostalgia, the marketing has worked, but there’s very little of the oft-evoked yet rarely-seen deepening of the friendship down through the generations.  When the preponderance of the crowd arrives in a large wave, on the verge of being late, they fill the theater to probably 60-65% of its capacity.

As for CCP leaders, the Sea of Blood Troupe performs twice in Chengdu, but there aren’t too many bigwigs; the new Party Secretary of Sichuan isn’t there and the Xinhua delegation consists of a single reporter for Huaxidu Shibao who will later corner me in a chance backstage encounter and make the resulting impromptu US-North Korea dialogue the centerpiece of his story.  There is no CCTV crew.

North Korean Reporters in China |  Before the concert, the North Korean reporters are quite busy.  One, a slight man in a blue shirt roves through with a camera, identifies me almost immediately as the only evident foreigner at the concert.  He wants to film me, but first I want to discuss with him my book of North Korean songs.

I try to explain to him that I’m recording these for cello and piano and would like to meet some of the cellists in the ensemble, and that I’m trying to find a way to get a hold of more North Korean music for cello.  He nods excitedly while rummaging through the song book.  Looking for something safe and known, he decides he wants me to sing the Song of General Kim Il-sung, the North Korean national anthem.  I tell him I don’t know the words.

North Korean cameraman/reporter on tour with the Sea of Blood (Pibada) Opera Troupe in Chengdu, PRC, June 26, 2012. The author’s hand gesticulates, left.

Things get much easier when the DPRK’s Chinese media liaison (let’s call her Ms. Li) arrives.  She’s wonderfully fluent in Mandarin and we begin what is a very nice chat about the tour.  I want to explain to her my goal, but the lights are going down; we pledge to meet after the performance.  As soon as the lights go dark, the cameraman blinds everyone sitting for ten rows behind me by turning on his very bright camera light on the attentive foreigner locked in attention at the spectacle of North Korean arts.

Prelude to Act I: The Cleanest Race |   The opera begins with its most famous aria, a short and pure melody sung by a young girl.  One of the things I have learned from playing through the North Korean songbook is that occasionally music from the DPRK needs to be done without vibrato; the child’s voice is thus the ultimate vehicle for the expression of the nation’s purity.  If B.R. Myersneeds more evidence that the North Koreans are trained to see themselves as a child-like people, this aria ought to be exhibit A.

If the melody is pure, the words are a touch heavy: they concern the lost nation, and the sorrow of being nationless and exploited.  One is reminded obliquely, that, at some later date, when the bitterness has properly matured, the women will brandish pistols – now in the forge of the occupier — or hand them down to their sons.  This is the proper expressive theme in North Korean culture of the fatherless state (prior to liberation), addressed in large measure to a female or feminized audience.

For the Chinese, however, this is the melody that they recall from childhood when it was broadcast and re-screen all over the PRC during the Cultural Revolution.  At a time when China was almost completely closed to foreign media, this act of artistic solidarity from North Korean partners (when the Soviet cultural production had gone almost completely off into what China then considered avant-garde territory) was not to be forgotten.

Evil Landlord, Take One | The action begins in earnest with the appearance of the landlord.  Immediately he gets laughs from the Chinese audience.  “Dizhu (地主),” guffaw the two middle-aged women behind me.  The Chinese are well familiar with this landlord stereotype from the films and operas of the Cultural Revolution period and prior: He is overweight, mustachioed, with a large nose and a pronounced combover. His purpose is to squeeze profit from his slaves, exude lechery, and connive with foreign powers.[1]

Brassy, loud, and cruel, he throws a fragment of his wealth – a plastic pheasant, which lolls around onstage — at the peasants, disdainfully.

The peasants are all stooped in agony, acting out their suffering in the most exaggerated way, bent under unimaginably oppressive burdens.  One old woman is on her knees, slapping the ground and pretending to wail in a fashion precisely mirroring the mourning scene for Kim Jong-il.

Theater of Agony: Learn it from Sea of Blood | Image via Anthony Hall and Ipinions Journal, December 2011

Foreign Influence in North Korean Opera |  In the transition from the landlord toward an aria, the Flower Girl musical score betrays a heavy influence of the Russian Socialist Realism: a monophonic line of bass and celli, then overlaid by a desolate flute duet.  (For a primer on Soviet orchestration, please spend 40 minutes being emotionally destroyed by Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5.)

No sooner has the score borrowed the Soviet idiom than it turns into what can only be called the “North Koreanization of Verdi,” with a strophic baritone-soprano duet with conventional harmonies.  The form is a Verdian convention of three verses: 1. Baritone; 2. Soprano; 3. Baritone-Soprano. Kim Il Sung as Girabaldi?

The subject of the text is a classic one – interest rates.  The Korean peasant family must take eight years to pay off the debts of their dead patriarch to the landlord.  The mother is “sleepless” over the matter, allowing for the first strongly-implied rhetorical pairing of the mother-figure with the North Korean leader, who also does not sleep in vigilance.

The child arrives in a cheery triple meter.  Her older brother will finally return.  One wonders how Kim Jong Un feels about this particular trope in North Korea opera: the return of the vengeful and injustly detained older brother.  Kim Jong Nam, after all, is still hanging around Beijing and Macao.

Kim Jong Il Instructs the Landlord and the Flower-Selling Girl, in costume, circa 1971 | Image via Korean Central TV

Adam Cathcart is Lecturer in Asian history at Queen’s University Belfast (UK), and the chief editor of SinoNK.com.  He is the author of the article “North Korean Hip-Hop?” and several other peer-reviewed research articles on the subject of North Korean musical arts. 

Ri Sol-ju, center, with a very expensive handbag | August 7, 2012, via AFP. H/T to Stephanie Kleine-Ahlbrandt, International Crisis Group

Songun Mini-Skirt: Ri Sol-ju, the Moranbong Band, and North Korean Fashion Norms 

by Adam Cathcart 

No sooner does the Moranbong Band return to more orthodox clothing styles during their second concert — the commemoration of “victory” in the Korean War — than Ri Sol-ju, the North Korean version of “First Comrade Lady” appears in public with a Dior-style handbag, setting the foreign commentariat again wagging. This essay contends that the first Moranbong Band concert already broke new ground for female clothing and accessory styles in North Korea, and proposes to look at the clothing question again through the prism of that concert.

Textile Fetish |  If state propaganda is to be believed, the Moranbong Band’s first performance was also meant to stimulate production in the textile sector, an important node of which Kim Jong Un and his female companion had visited the day before the ensemble’s premiere in Pyongyang.

Cultural production therefore remains tethered to state-sponsored dreams of material production;  the Morabong performance was also, in a sense, about the promise of improved living standards. Kim Jong Un would not be caught dead in his father’s favorite vinylon jumpsuit – now safely if incongruously enshrined under a bronze trench coat in statue form on Mangyongdae — but he would be truly crazy not to look for any way to promote the North Korean textile industry.

Is it possible for us to interpret the Moranbong Band performance as a kind of promise to the women of Pyongyang and perhaps North Korean society more broadly that a kind of material prosperity is around the corner, and that self-expression along the lines of jewelry, short skirts, and high-heels is considered OK?

Consider the jewelry line-up on the Moranbong singers:

One of the Moranbong Band’s six jewel-bedecked singers at the ensemble’s debut on July 6, 2012 | Image via Korea Central TV

Haute Couture North of Parallel 38^th  |  Likewise, The Grand Narrative of women with oppressively plasticized physiques may not be arriving yet in Pyongyang, but changes in fashion are surely underfoot in the DPRK, and have been for some time.  “Strapless dresses,” wrote Isaac Stone Fish in an earlier analysis, are “rare for the capital of a very conservative country where woman cover their shoulders.”  The DailyNK had indeed reported on “clothing decrees” more reminiscent of Iran in 2009.

This North Korean state TV report on new women’s fashions — one cannot take away without giving something, after all — gives a good sense of the styles for Pyongyang women, circa 2009.  Note the total lack of jewelry on the reporters and the women being interviewed.  No earrings, etc.:

Kim Jong-il had also reportedly become upset upon returning from one of his four train trips to China in either 2010 or 2011 that North Korean women were wearing too many T-shirts with Western words on them.  (Thankfully for the Dear Leader’s delicate heart, he was not with me a couple of years back to witness one of his characteristically reedy national compatriots washing dishes in a North Korean restaurant in Beijing a; the DPRK dishboy was draped in a large and wet “DON’T MESS WITH TEXAS” T-shirt. Sadly, that restaurant has now been completely Sinified.)

While thus far in the Kim Jong Un era, the need for policing of fashions and hair styles seems increasingly irrelevant to the grammar of revolutionary etiquette in the cities.  However, none of this presupposes some sudden reluctance of the regime to pull back the slack already granted and snap city dwellers – particularly the youth. After all, before General Ri, there was the Kim Il Sung Socialist Youth League, where Kim Jong Un – quite uniquely after his father’s death – shuffled the leadership and has made stringent efforts to tether allegiance.  A lot of what is going on here with Moranbong and high-tech efforts, references to USB technology, is an effort to get out ahead of youth trends and corral the current generation.

North Korean women use cell phones in Pyongyang, August 2010 | Image by Ray Cunningham, via Flikr

Patriotic Answers to Questions of Change |  A month ago, Isaac Stone Fish made an important observation: “Additionally, for a country so proud of its individuality, it’s strange that the photos of the women and Disney [at the Moranbong Band concert] don’t actually look like North Korea.”  One question broached in the work of B.R. Myers is here completely relevant: once you give up your juche identity, what do you have? A much poorer version of a Northeast Chinese province or a forth-rate South Korea? What is the point of all the North Korean rhetoric about uniqueness if all that people want is  to be just like the rest of the global village?  Isn’t that a slippery slope at best?

North Korea, of course, has answers to these troubling queries.  The state has tried to justify new clothing liberalization by hearkening back to supposed fashion styles of the Koguryo kingdom to make the fashion desires of North Korean women become a product of patriotism rather than “flunkeyism.”  The fact that an apparently harmless policy (does the wearing of earrings really represent some counter-revolutionary tipping point?) needs to be cloaked in the practices of an ancient kingdom from the fourth century shows the lengths to which the regime will go to justify its own uniqueness, when in fact the personal practices of North Korean women indicates the opposite.

Kim Jong Un has neglected to appear with his father’s vinylon jacket in favor of the Mao suit: and state media has ceased reference to his desire to emulate his dad’s fashion (winter jacket and fur hat, gloves at all times). The vinylon jumpsuit will stay firmly on the statue and will not be worn by the Respected General.  Whether or not North Korean women will be able to follow in his heavy “footsteps” and continue going their own way with clothing choices remains an unsettled question.

“Kim Jong Un Confirms His Destiny with a Fur Hat,” via OceansVibe.com

Reading North Korean “Reform” in Shenyang: Reportage

by Adam Cathcart

In Bruce Cumings’ humorous, stylish, and occasionally cantankerous book reflecting on his experience of making a documentary film about the Korean War, the author describes how colloquies with Anthony Farrar-Hockley, a British veteran of North Korean POW camps on the Yalu River, would typically conclude with the old man saying, “But I was theah, dear boy!”

With a dogged empiricism, Cumings doesn’t care what Farrar-Hockley thinks happened in the Korean War.  Memory is, after all, a fickle thing.  Where are your cigarette burns after all, dear victim of communist torture?

Like Cumings, the young today are the easily unimpressed: they want documents, reams of them if possible, preferably digitized so as to remove the aroma of blood and ink.  Nothing really happened unless there was a photograph, or a film, or a bureaucratic chop denoting slaughter on the border, yes?  Without any evidence, who cares what happened to you along the Yalu River so long ago?

If it really mattered, any event would wind up as contemporary testimony, narrated as a quasi-primary source in a memoir of some kind, where we, der Nachfolgern, might properly lace it into our own footnotes, secure, poised, possessed of the paragraphs we needed, the data no longer scorned.

Moving Around |  The days spent last week by your present analyst on the ground in Beijing and Northeast China might, in other words, be worth approximately nothing.  In all, I spent three days in Dandong, a night in Shenyang, and a couple days of floating around the Foreign Ministry and North Korean Embassy in Beijing – all in the general orbit of Jang Song-taek, though always several steps behind. Obviously, these experiences in and of themselves do not a coherent analysis make; they certainly cannot confirm some general turn in the Chinese-North Korean relationship. (After all, men and women with minds far more agile, experienced, and data-steeped than mine are still trying to parse out the question of the recent meetings.)

Nevertheless there is something to location, and thanks to the vagaries of chance, I learned a few things while chasing Jang Song-taek’s long tail in Beijing and Northeast China.  These are some of the impressions I received along the way, which may have some value, even if, unlike my colleagues writing for the International Crisis Group or 38 North, I failed to interview anonymous Chinese officials or think-tank scholars along the way.  (We historians, after all, prefer our archives; interviewing dead people is always easier.)

Reading the Visit on the Shenyang Train | Prior to Jang’s trip, the smart money had it that the next big North Korean delegation would hit the hotspots of Jiangsu and its capital Nanjing, with a stopover in Shanghai, where, presumably, they could slobber in Friedmanesque obeisance at Pudong.  (“Did you know,” Jang Song-taek blurts out at a Politburo meeting, “that the world is flat?”)

His grey eminence brought his pallor to Liaoning instead.

When Jang Song-taek flew home[1] to Pyongyang, I got on a train to the northeast city of Shenyang.  Presumably, Jang Song-taek has left Kim Jong-il’s positively weird fear of flying behind and wasted minimal time on the ground, but in my case, costs mitigated for a train.  Thanks to the wicked controversies of a year ago and uncovering of positively gargantuan corruption in the Ministry of Railways, the high-speed trains from Beijing to Shenyang have gotten decidedly slower.  Puttering along at a positively Amtrak-esque 200 km per hour on August 18, one could at least lick fiduciary wounds and catch up on the Chinese news media about Jang’s visit.

That news response could best be described as taciturn. The fact that the core details about Jang’s itinerary were primarily released on a Friday afternoon meant that there would be less buzz.[2] Fortunately the national magazine New Business Weekly (新商务周刊) had produced a large and bullish prognostication of opportunities in the North Korean market which would take more than a single hour to plow through.

In Shenyang | Where did Jang Song-taek stay when he was here? Anyone’s guess, but one expert I trust, Michael Rank, pointed me to the Chilbosan Hotel [七宝山].  As I learn from Mr. Rank, the Chilbosan is a DPRK-owned joint venture which was advanced and enterprising enough to have an English-language website promoting rooms for 100 yuan per night. Arriving in the rain in Shenyang and out of a gleaming behemoths of a train station, several cabbies immediately warn me to stay away from the Qilbosan. “You know it’s owned by North Koreans,” they warn me, adding a futile “right?” Right.

I stride in with my best harsh northeastern accent. Unfortunately the two young  Chinese working at the front counter tatter my Western arrogance, and are simply incredulous that a website asserts the rooms are any cheaper than 460 yuan.  “What, us, changing the deal in mid-stream?,” they seem to say, “Impossible!”  I spin around, but there’s hardly a sofa to recline upon, and no point in hanging out in this low and wide lobby which resembles nothing more than pregnant white lobster giving birth to a huge chandelier.

Complaints of North Korean Corporate Banditry  |  On the way to the Xita [西塔] district, the cluster of North Korean restaurants in Shenyang, the taxi driver (prompted by a simple question) complains ruefully about the Xiyang ［西洋］business deal gone bad; the DPRK has managed to cheat a Liaoning province minerals conglomerate out of hundreds of millions of dollars.  While not an explicit word about the deal was uttered about in the mass press, the matter seems to be common knowledge in Shenyang.

The taxi driver concludes his discourse on the Xiyang case: “The North Koreans are the same as the Iranians,” he volunteers.  “All they have is their lies and their weapons.”

In Shenyang, none of the four taxi drivers I have man-to-man chats with (so much for bashing Tom Friedman) has anything good to say about North Korea.  Two are well-versed in the Xiyang deal.

It occurs to me that has been a very long time since I heard anyone in Liaoning say something nice about aid to the DPRK during the Korean War.  The old veterans of the conflict are an ebbing force in the province; living among huge coal plants has not aided in extending their lives, and they are falling rapidly.  None of those I interviewed in 2001, who were by and large positive about the DPRK, are still alive, and cancer killed them all.  Their sons are the taxi drivers in the aftermath.  Kim Jong Un may have inherited his father’s commitments whether he likes it or not, but few of his Chinese counterparts have deep emotional ties to North Korea’s ongoing viability.  A democratic regime in China would spell doom for the DPRK in more ways than one.

Rocky in Shenyang |  In Xita, the hour grows late but the stomach growls. Having reached the end of a particularly Korean-loaded street, a choice has to be made between two establishments: the huge North Korean restaurant (“Pyongyang”) and the small one (“Rainbow”).  “Pyongyang” looms, lighted up like a spaceship. Like the city it is named for, Pyongyang is sucking up all the electricity with all of the grandiosity and none of the production.

Going for the local underdog, I duck into “Rainbow,” ditching my suitcase in the coffee room downstairs.  With a ratio of three employees to its only customer, and running at a slow tempo, the coffee shop is suitably DPRK.  My bag, which I’m leave next to a neglected rack of Rodong Sinmun newspapers, contains an external hard drive full of dossiers, pdfs, and half-finished drafts about DPRK diplomats and relations with China.  If the North Koreans want my data they can take it, because I’m hungry, in the universal sense, and have no time to engage in protective redundancies.

Immediately my rashness is rewarded. In an impossible feat of timing, the “Rocky” theme is blasting at full volume upon my ascent into the restaurant, and I walk in on the last 40 bars of the Moranbong Band instant classic via the magic of DVD technology.

Moranbong Band — performing ‘Rocky’ on DVD while prepping the new performance about defending the West Sea | Image via Korea Central TV

In the satellite-data-rich world that some analysts inhabbt, this coincidence, this bit of “intelligence” means nothing: who cares that North Koreans outside of Pyongyang are watching the Moranbong Band or are now familiar with the “Rocky” theme?  Why would one performance at some random theater, and its viewing and reviewing at a North Korean outpost abroad, possibly matter?  Well, besides this, probably nothing. (That, and according to my Stockholm source for North Korean jeans, the Moranbong Band was on a flight from Pyongyang to Beijing the week before Jang Song-taek showed up.  Talk about a court in exile.)

At the very least, the recording of the Moranbong performance sets the table, literally, for my encounter with the small brigade of waitresses, who, according to some particularly sloppy reports, are all spies trained in the dark arts of sex and taekwondo. To me they look like young musicians who also serve food and are trying their damndest to learn Chinese (and, increasingly, English), but I could be wrong. In any event, everyone’s heels are higher than a year ago.

The second floor dining room is almost empty, but the waitresses seem tickled that I am excited about the Moranbong performance.

“Tai bang le (太棒了—Fantastic),” I say, genuinely.

“You know Moranbong Band?” one asks.

“Of course,” I say, “They’re all graduates of the Kim Gwon-gyun Conservatory, including Sonu Hyang-hui; she’s excellent, very strong technique and exceedingly creative as an arranger. Have you met her?”

The Moranbong Band continues to play over an empty drum set, and over the next half-hour I get the full KCTV version of the latter end of the performance, mainly the Disney sections which I have been needing to watch anyway.

Kim Jong-un’s mother, Go Young-hee, also brought black clutch purses along to on-site inspections with her husband | Image via DailyNK video footage obtained from DPRK, uploaded by StimmeKoreas

Engrossed in the work that occupies waitresses around the world, the North Korean girls don’t seem at all enthralled with it.  They do perk up when, rifling through my stack of newspapers, they find a picture of Ri Sol-ju.  The picture is attached to a highly critical article in the Belgian daily Le Soir about North Korea’s First Handbag (Christian Dior clutch purse, debuted by Ri Sol-ju and KCNA, circa August 7).  The girls don’t seem to care what the article is about and, unlike their counterparts in Beijing, no one in this joint seems to read French.  But the girls rip it away from me and bring it over to their main desk, where, hovering over the Ri Sol-ju picture, they point, they kvetch, they discuss.

Ri Sol-ju shows up at the beginning and the end of their Moranbong Band DVD, but they’ve obviously seen that already, and the picture of her with her handbag causes a kerfuffle.

Predictably, the whole gathering is broken up, not by the girls’ middle-aged ajumma minder, who doesn’t seem to care at all that they’ve abducted an imperialist newspaper from the white man eating kimchee, but instead by a drunken Chinese businessman.  The Chinese takes twelve minutes to pay his bill between nearly falling down, pawing at the girls and appearing to try to take one of them home with him.  He succeeds eventually at leaving, having entertained a group of six or seven North Korean males who slink out with a wink and a nod, leaving him with the bill. It’s the Flower Girl, Act II, all over again, with the Korean males absent and the lecherous landlord, with his ambiguous nationality, finally making his libido a character in the drama.

The girls take it in stride and get back to work as the patron stumbles down the stairs, talking and grasping the whole time.  I go to the desk to retrieve my Le Soir.  “What’s wrong with him?” I ask, nodding over at the staircase.  “He’s a customer,” says the girl behind the desk, with an attempt to be upbeat, as if this is what capitalism is all about – making one’s desires as naked as possible, and then compromises or refusals being reached, leaving the mostly-sated Chinese (presumably) to go vomit in the street.

Maestro Li Delun leading the nation in proletarian song in The East is Red, Beijing, 1964

Empty Beat: On the Relative Worth of North Korean Revolutionary Music Ensembles

by Adam Cathcart

Is North Korea’s official musical culture in a state of ferment, i.e., change? What is the meaning of the sudden primacy of the Moranbong Band in the musical lives of the DPRK leadership?  Do the very public musical activities surrounding Kim Jong-un indicate anything tangible about the future direction of his regime?

Taking the ictus, or the orchestral conductor’s stroke, as metaphor, an endeavor is made to develop these questions.

Downbeat: The Conventional Wisdom | The now-famous debut appearance of the Moranbong Band on July 6, 2012, has been more or less completely misread as a cheap nod to the United States (the source, after all, of Walt Disney’s hermetic utopia) and a false indication to the outside world that cultural flows in North Korea may be inclining to a more Western orientation.

As many North Korea watchers are wont to argue, the efforts at a “charm offensive” out of Pyongyang represent nothing more than a show. By extension, the argument goes, related North Korean efforts at promoting its Juche-inflected “soft power” are not indicative of any larger official impetus toward change. To the skeptics, cultural diplomacy is to be regarded as the DPRK’s effort to completely dupe the outside; we should thus ignore the signals sent, disregard any relationships established, and, presumably, get back to our satellite photos.

Ignoring the action on stage in Pyongyang – and North Korean performances around the Northeast Asian region – would be a particular folly. The ongoing entwining of the North Korean leadership with the evolving appearances of the Moranbong Band deserves more analysis, not less.

For instance:

How is the North Korean state mobilizing its cultural/musical resources to promote regime legitimacy?

How is the North Korean state using musical forms to present new narratives about North Korea’s past and future, including the legacy of Kim Jong-il?

How is the North Korean state using musical ensembles to promote engagement with allies and spark interest among adversaries?

At SinoNK, we have already interpreted the smashing debut of the Moranbong group and the group’s subsequent appearances as being primarily about messaging high living standards to women in the DPRK (“Songun Miniskirt“, August 9), setting up acts of diplomacy with China (“Korean War Revivalism,” August 5) and putting old wine into new bottles (Jimin Lee, “Soft Power on a Hardened Path,” August 2).

Today, the question of Moranbong’s ascent versus the traditional musical architecture in Pyongyang is the centerpiece of analysis.

Moranbong Band in Performance for Kim Jong Un, Ri Sol-ju, and KPA Generals, Pyongyang, August 25, 2012 | Via Rodong Sinmun, full concert available by clicking picture

Weak Beat: Neglecting Father’s Operatic Legacy? | Before there was the Moranbong Band, there was an opera company known as Sea of Blood.  What has the Moranbong Band’s appearance meant for this core group?

The Sea of Blood Troupe is arguably the cultural group in Pyongyang most fully associated with Kim Jong-il.  He created it from scratch in 1971, and his creative work with the ensemble forms a pillar of the hagiographies about him, along with the film studio work.

Of late, DPRK state media has been prattling on about how Kim Jong-il’s primary contribution to the revolution occurred in 1960 when he was 18 years old — a transparent and clumsy ploy to make Kim Jong-un look like a grizzled old man and backdate the roots of the Songun policy ever further.

In the daily laudatio for Kim Jong-il of late, his work in the 1990s and the 1960s has been emphasized, but his work on films and movies in the 1970s decidedly fallow.  Are residents of the DPRK have forgotten somehow that the Sea of Blood was one of his primary artistic achievements?  The troupe and its repertoire is unmistakably and irrevocably associated with him. What is the purpose of opera in the new cultural climate?

Since coming to power, Kim Jong-un’s acts of artistic guidance have been multiple – he has written critiques of new songs for Rodong Sinmun, directed the Kim Il Sung Socialist Youth League to go on a binge of poetry and story-telling, and, of course, generated the Moranbong Band.  Like father like son: Kim Jong-un is a veritable Minerva of artistic guidance and musical interests.

Why, then, does he delegate opera – the preferred art form of his father, the frustrated Wagnerite – to his elderly subordinates?  (See SinoNK, “Why Opera Matters,” January 13, 2012.)

Since his father’s death, Kim Jong-un has yet to attend a single Sea of Blood performance.

Strong Beat: Opera Over the Yalu |  In the aftermath of Kim Jong-il’s death, the Sea of Blood Opera Troupe has been almost exclusively used as a vehicle for public diplomacy with the People’s Republic of China.  As noted in our Dossier No. 3, the troupe spent months at a time in China in 2012, and plans further performance tours in the PRC which will focus on adaptations of the Chinese repertoire.

This activity is not to be scoffed at: unlike the Moranbong Band, who can more or less pack up and fit its personnel and instruments into a single semi-trailer or road bus, the Sea of Blood goes on the road with over 180 individuals, a full complement of orchestral instruments and their own sets and stage crew.  As anyone who has had a relatively extensive opera and vocal performing career (something I can only recall having had for 3-4 years), it is a huge production to take an opera company on the road or to work in one’s home theater. Whether or not China is footing the bill (either the state or some well-heeled Chinese businessmen looking for preferential treatment in the North Korean economy) for these tours, they represent a serious investment of cultural capital and energy by the DPRK in keeping its relationship with the PRC on solid footing.

The Sea of Blood Troupe tarried in Beijing for several days (perhaps more than a week?) after their final performance on July 22, 2012.  On August 14, they performed a homecoming concert in Pyongyang, pointedly attended by the regime’s head of propaganda efforts, Kim Ki-nam, and officials from the Chinese embassy, along with other DPRK heavyweights.  As ever, the DPRK was using the timing of opera performances to remind the Chinese counterparts of the positive turn the relationship was taking, and doing so on the very eve (August 10, anyway) of Jang Song-taek’s meetings about economic issues in the Chinese capital.

Kim Ki-nam, center, with Chinese Embassy Attache Guan Huabing, left, and cast of the Flower Girl in Pyongyang, August 10, 2012 | Image courtesy PRC Embassy in Pyongyang

It is no small measure of the North Korean need to placate anxieties in Beijing in the lead up to the Jang visit that, this massive Sea of Blood tour having just successfully concluded, the Moranbong Band both played a concert commemorating China’s involvement in the Korean War and then promptly traveled to China, perhaps for private performances for Chinese leaders or the delegation of DPRK business bigwigs gathering in Beijing in anticipation of the arrival of Jang Song-taek.

An upbeat, “On the Relative Decline of the Unhasu Orchestra,” is intended for a subsequent essay.  To be continued.   

Moranbong Band Performing for Kim Jong-un, et. al., in Pyongyang, August 25, 2012 | Photo via NK Leadership Watch

Juche Pop: New Assessments of the Moranbong Band

by Adam Cathcart

What does it mean when the North Korean state endeavors to update the revolution, artistically speaking?

The the DPRK resides within a historical space that remains very much in the mould of a Leninist unitary Party-State, at the same time overlaid and strengthened by ethnic unity which the Soviet Union and the founding fathers of the PRC would have envied.  Taken futher into account the strength of Korean court traditions, and one recognizes that the above question is still a hardly a simple one to answer.

When even Uriminzokkri, a foreign arm of DPRK state propaganda, is using “Gangnam Style” to parody South Korea’s lack of introspection about the harsh years of dictatorship in the early 1970s, you know that new models for revolutionaries are needed.

The DPRK has put out several rather interesting statements recently on the subject of “cultural infiltration” which are worth quoting in full, if only to emphasize that the state is highly sensitive to any kind of cultural exchange that could lead to contamination of the socialist purity that, at least nominally, domestically holds sway in the DPRK.

While scarcely a single Western news story goes by that does not remind us that the North engages in an actively defined program paranoia about, and suppression of, inside information, we also need to note that suppression is but one side of the coin: North Korea is also engaging in an active program of updated cultural production that is intended to absorb new idioms and transmute or turn them to the advantage of the revolution.

A new television station for university students, unveiled last month, seems intended to do just that.  New propaganda methods and updated KCTV sets sprung up over the summer.  And there is no better symbol of this notion of putting old revolutionary wine into new aesthetic forms than the Moranbong Band.

Intelligent analyses of the Moranbong Band are hard to find.  Although we at SinoNK have published a fair amoung of this kind of work, the band still lacks a simple Wikipedia page, and most journalistic outlets left their analysis at the Mickey Mouse level back in June, not returning to the theme, much less asking what role the ensemble was playing in North Korean society or what its connection to the leadership might be.

One never wants to be off in the wilderness of analysis, so it is good to find this analysis of the group from a reputable source in Paris.  While some readers might find the overall acceptace of the Moranbong’s mission objectionable, there is no doubt that the writer has a strong grasp, new ideas about the group’s meaning in the DPRK, and is worth reading.

AAFC, “Débuts du groupe Moranbong : symphonie pour une révolution inachevée [Symphony for an Unfinished Revolution: AAFC on the Moranbong Band]” AAFC, August 19, 2012.

Newly created at the initiative and under the direction of Kim Jong Un, the Moranbong Band made its major concert premiere onJuly 6, 2012, rebroadcast thereafter [on Korean Central Television].  The Moranbong Band gave a second concert, on July 28, marking the occasion of the end of the Korean War, in the presence of foreign diplomatic representatives.

Completely respecting the traditional forms of the Democractic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK/North Korea), the Moranbong Band – exclusively feminine, and directed by Sonu Hyang-hui — proceeds from the adaptation of traditional Korean songs and into the reprising of foreign songs through the musical arrangements of the innovative [Sonu Hyang-hui].

Accordingly, this creates a type of audacious marriage between classical music and more contemporary styles.  According to the North Korean agency KCNA, it is the will of leader Kim Jong-un to open “a spectacular turn in the domain of arts and literature” this year, at the opening of the second century of the Juche era.

If the AAFC [Association for French-Korean Friendship] does not share the conclusions and the orientations of Adam Cathcart – who, nevertheless, will occasionally refer to our articles – his analysis offers an interesting illumination of the DPRK.

In an article published on 12 July, he pertinently acknowledges the musical preoccupations of Kim Jong-un, the First Secretary of the Workers’ Party of Korea, who has realized the heritage of Leader Kim Jong Il and President Kim Il Song, [the latter of whom] was “an organist and who could speak with some finesse about the sense of modulation.”

In this context, the premiere performance of the Moranbong Band, created at the initiative of leader Kim Jong-un, given on July 6, offers an illustration of the artistic evolution presently underway in the DPR of Korea…. [article continues]

Commentary |  The AAFC called it a “major concert premiere,” which is precisely right: such a designation opens the possibility and the certainty of smaller private concerts prior to the big debut, which almost certainly accurately “reperiodizes” the history of the group and gives one a clearer immediate sense of the timeline of their development. This leads us to new questions which are consequential: “Was Moranbong Band sprung fully formed from the head of Kim Jong Un only after his father died?,” or, “Was the Moranbong Band developed far earlier, as seems likely?”

If the DPRK was already moving in a more globalized direction when Kim Jong il was in charge, the calculus of boldness (Kim Jong-un’s bold direction in culture: new or continuity?) becomes significantly changed.

Immeidately, in the second paragraph, again the AAFC gets the important facts straight.  The main purpose of the band’s second concert – which the mainstream media mangled – was diplomatic.

Finally, to conclude with some writing of Jimin Lee, the Performing Arts Analyst for SinoNK:

The work of Park Jung Lan, researcher at the Research Institute for Peace and Unification Studies at Seoul National University, answers some of these questions. Summarizing his remarks to Monthly magazine ‘North Korea’, Park states (in paraphrase): The Moranbong Band’s appearance in public is to meet the desire of the people in the era of information.  As the result of their performance, the North Korean leadership with Kim Jong Un was getting recognized and the people began praising about their new approach with a hope for the betterment in their lives.

Park added: “But one thing should not be overlooked despite Moranbong band performing format changes.” In the content of socialist society, Park sees song lyrics from the previous concerts containing a strong commitment adhering to the regime.  Park said, “Therefore, the regime would reflect on the tastes of the public while sticking with socialism at the same time.” However, he warns that their dual strategy, publicized allowance and reclusive control, will ultimately bring “fatigue and prolonged un-satisfaction and cause more speculation.”

If Park’s assumption comes true, North Korean society, accumulated and amplified by conflicts and subtle sentiment of anger, ultimately would destroy the silence which has been accumlulating in the country. At this time when the increasing amount of external information is flowing into North Korea, the people’s awareness of the outside of the country is getting thicker accordingly. North Korean authorities cannot simply overlook these phenomena that would ultimately become unavoidable pressure.  The Moranbong Band is but one visible element in a necessary response to that looming time.

Zhang Liangui reprising his avuncular consigliere role on Phoenix news. All screen captures from Phoenix programming.

Zhang Liangui: North Korea Will Conduct a Third Nuclear Test This Year

by Nathan Beauchamp-Mustafaga

With North Korea’s arduous march towards an increasingly likely nuclear test, Chinese scholars have gone into high gear with their pronouncements on North Korea. While op-eds by Chinese scholars offer a number of insights, as we have seen in the past, television appearances offer a chance for China’s top North Korea hands to directly and passionately lay out their double-edged analysis of the situation, and sometimes send a message to Pyongyang. The following program brings together some of China’s most respected North Korea experts from Beijing, Shanghai and Shenyang to share their thoughts on North Korea’s nuclear program, improving North Korea-Japan relations and prospects for a North-South summit this year.  These scholars inform and reflect Chinese leadership thoughts in ways few others can and offer a glimpse into some of the factors Chinese leadership may be paying attention to as the impending crisis unfolds.  (Note: This interview aired prior to the latest round of UN sanctions, and DPRK subsequently declaring that the Six Party Talks dead.)

Phoenix TV, “From Phoenix To the World [凤凰全球连线]” January 2, 2013

Translated from the Chinese by Nathan Beauchamp-Mustafaga.

Ren Ren: This is “From Phoenix To The World.” I’m Ren Ren.

Small and weak signifies being bullied and humiliated. For their 2013 New Years message, nearly all the leaders of East Asia took building a strong and prosperous nation as their New Year’s wish. This was the first time the leader of North Korea read a New Years message and Kim Jong-un called on the North Korean people to build a powerful country with the spirit of conquering the universe.

Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzo called for rebuilding a strong Japan, and behind this desire for a strong nation lays the bitter anguish in their inability to manage their territorial disputes with East Asian nations and homeland security. However, if the sole purpose of a strong nation is the fanatical pursuit of security, beyond expanding its arms amidst fear, what else can an East Asian country seeking strength do?

At the start of the new year, Japanese Prime Minister Abe gave South Korean President-elect Park Geun-hye an oral message of repairing the two countries’ tense relationship. In response to the imagined attacks from North Korea and China, the Japanese government is currently planning the combination of its land, air and sea self-defense forces for a comprehensive defense strategy.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un unexpectedly called for the reconciliation of North and South Korea. The South Korean Ministry of Defense’s judgment, however, is that the North may very well continue its provocations by misdirection and thus the South Korean military must raise its alertness.

Is trust in East Asia this precious a commodity?

On tonight’s “From Phoenix To The World,” we have Central Party School Institute for International Strategic Studies Professor Zhang Liangui in Beijing, Shanghai Jiaotong University Center for Japanese Studies Professor Wang Shaopu in Shanghai and Liaoning Academy of Social Sciences Center for North Korea Studies Director Lv Chao from Shenyang. From three different places, these experts will explain the New Years messages seeking strength and vigilance.

North Korea welcomed the New Year not only by launching fireworks for their countdown but also hosting a musical concert with foreign diplomats. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un coordinated red clothing with his wife, Ri Sol-ju, who hosted the New Years celebration, and Kim shook hands with foreign diplomats in a display of good-wishes. After the clock struck for the New Year, the skies above Pyongyang were illuminated with brilliant fireworks and Kim Jong-un and his wife enjoyed them with the crowd. At the musical performance, some performers gave flowers to Kim Jong-un and Ri Sol-ju and applauded for a long time. Before the performance started, everyone stood up and sang the national anthem and the Moranbong Band performed “With the Party ‘Til The End.” Besides Kim Jong-un and his wife, Kim Yong-nam, Choe Yong-rim, Choe Ryong-hae, other leaders, and the scientists who successfully launched Kwangmyŏngsŏng-3 Unit 2 also attended the performance. The North Korean Supreme People’s Assembly and cabinet also hosted a New Years celebration in Pyongyang at the People’s Cultural Palace.

Ren Ren: The North Korean people had a different type of New Years this year. Beyond Pyongyang hosting large-scale New Years activities and a New Years concert, Kim Jong-un also for the first time delivered a spoken New Years message promoting a wish for reconciliation with the South. Nevertheless, the South doesn’t believe Kim Jong-un’s address had anything new, but did it? We first want to invite Beijing-based Professor Zhang Liangui to explain his thoughts on whether the proposal for reconciliation in North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s New Years speech had any substantial political meaning?

Zhang Liangui: In reality, his speech is really worth paying attention to, since everyone knows in the five years under Lee Myung-bak, North-South relations have been very tense, and, especially in the not-so-distant past, the two sides had conflicts over many issues. For North Korea to announce in the speech this kind of appeal to the South for better North-South relations, right after the presidential elections in South Korea with Park Geun-hye elected to take power in February, this actually shows a positive attitude in North Korea and I believe this is worth welcoming.

Ren Ren: Professor Lv Chao in Shenyang, we also noticed that in Kim Jong-un’s New Years speech, beyond good will towards the South, he also mentioned North Korea’s desire to strengthen its political and military strength by every means possible, and that if others interfere then the North will ruthlessly strike back and wipe out its enemy. What message do you think this conveyed to the South?

Lv Chao: I also believe that Kim Jong-un’s speech was a carrot and stick approach to the South; this is what caused the South Korean Minister of Defense, Kim Kwan-jin, to respond so severely. Regarding Kim’s comment that he may use misdirection to attack the South, first off, [we need to note that] Kim Jong-un’s New Years speech is much more moderate than previous New Years editorials. The speech offered New Years greetings to foreign friends and South Korean compatriots by expressing a desire for unification, which is a phrase never used before, signifying this is a rare event. Yet Kim warned that confrontation amongst the Korean people will only incur war, demonstrating that he also has hardline options.

Lv Chao’s stock photo image when speaking from Shenyang’s Liaoning Academy of Social Sciences.

One noteworthy aspect was that this New Years message didn’t follow the convention of earlier messages in demanding the withdrawal of U.S. forces in Korea and criticizing South Korea and its leaders. This was the old convention and it’s no more. Thus, for South Korea, this speech by Kim Jong-un was a combination of a carrot and stick approach, or rather having a stick inside the carrot.

Ren Ren: Addressing the ongoing disturbances in 2012 for East Asia, wise leaders have actually all tried to find soft methods for creating a soft landing. We’ve seen that Japan has also done this, as the new prime minister, Abe Shinzo, sent South Korean president-elect Park Geun-hye a message through a special representative on January 1^st. He said that South Korean-Japanese relations are very important and hopes that they can improve relations between their two countries. Professor Wang Shaopu, this is part of Abe’s value-based diplomacy, so do you believe that this so-called value-based diplomacy can improve the previously-fraught South Korean-Japanese relationship?

Wang Shaopu: This indeed is an important aspect of Japan’s diplomacy. Since Abe took power, he has spoken of foreign policy as being based off the American-Japanese alliance and improving cooperation with countries of similar values and strategically important countries such as Vietnam, and by doing so push for better Sino-Japanese relations. This is actually one of his guiding principles for foreign policy and thus to have this kind of a relationship with South Korea is an important part of his value-based diplomacy.

For now, value-based diplomacy has a certain usefulness but it also has its limits. He is primarily basing his foreign policy actions off of his national interests, as all countries do. From this perspective, although South Korea and Japan have similar value systems, in reality they still have important differences in their interests, such as territorial disputes and historical disagreements, so these are the circumstances they have to work within.

Wang Shaopu of Shanghai’s Jiaotong University speaks about North Korea on Phoenix TV.

South Korea’s interests are multi-faceted, beyond the common interests with Japan, the South also has very important common interests with China. South Korea’s main security partner is the United States, but the South’s most important economic partner is China. So in this situation, although Abe wants to promote his value-based diplomacy with South Korea, the South will be listening to what he says and watching what he does, especially since Abe has previously held a extremely incorrect attitude on the issue of history. For example, he has denied the existence of comfort women and many officials within his cabinet believe this, so in these circumstances, I believe South Korea’s current attitude is one of cautious observation.

Ren Ren: Another question on everyone’s mind is if North Korea’s next step will be to continue its nuclear tests. Professor Zhang Liangui, we’ve seen that recently John Hopkins University’s U.S. Korea Institute released a report based on the most recent satellite imaginary showing that the North is repairing the nuclear testing equipment that was damaged in heavy rain and will be able to test within two weeks of an order to move forward. Do you believe that after the success of last year’s satellite launch there will be a third nuclear test this year?

Zhang Liangui: Judging from the larger perspective, possessing nuclear weapons and walking the road of having nuclear weapons is a fixed national policy. How many times has North Korea already openly said that it will never abandon its nuclear weapons under any circumstances? This was especially evident in April 2012, when they wrote their status as a nuclear state into the constitution. From this perspective, North Korea will not abandon its nuclear weapons and will still advanced its nuclear warhead program. The North will choose a suitable time to conduct another nuclear test. As for the question if the North will conduct another nuclear test this year, this mainly relies on the North’s preparations.

Screen ticker reads, “North Korea will carry out a nuclear test within two weeks” No test was confirmed, but China sensed urgency.

According to my initial assessment, I believe there is a strong possibility for a third nuclear test this year. Obviously this nuclear test will likely evoke repercussions from the international community and the North will face severe sanctions from the international community. The North needs to consider [these repercussions]. In reality, the North is moving forward on two wheels. One wheel is advancing their nuclear program and the other is developing their economy to improve relations with bordering countries, especially a few important countries. These two wheels actually are certainly contradictory in their implementation so the North must think it over. Whatever course the North takes, they should make a complete analysis [of the situation].

Ren Ren: One on hand, both countries on the peninsula hope to improve relations, but on the other hand they live with the instability caused by nuclear tests and missile launches. We turn to Lv Chao in Shenyang. We have also noticed that South Korean president-elect Park Geun-hye has previously expressed that she hopes to meet with Kim Jong-un but has also called for North Korea to abandon its nuclear program. Do you believe that in this new year there is a high likelihood for the two leaders to finally meet?

Lv Chao: North Korea definitely has hopes for president-elect Park Geun-hye. Kim Jong-un’s New Years speech didn’t criticize anyone by name, but according to convention, he usually would criticize Park Geun-hye by name. While he has criticized people by name before, he didn’t this time but rather was comparatively calm. One of the biggest questions right now is whether the North will conduct another nuclear test. It’s worth noticing that Kim Jong-un’s speech didn’t mention denuclearization and also didn’t mention his status as a nuclear state. By not raising either one, he didn’t raise the nuclear program and this is meaningful, as it foreshadowed something for North Korea’s relations with the South and left a profound impression.

For now, the international community should inhibit North Korea from conducting a third nuclear test and this should be a common aspiration. If North Korea declines to have another nuclear test, I think this would show some hope for relations with the South. On the other hand, Kim Jong-un also proposed to produce more North Korean-style sophisticated weaponry and this implies a rise in prominence of developing nuclear weapons and missiles. For relations with the South, I think we should watch how the situation develops. The timing isn’t yet ripe for Park Geun-hye to visit the North. After all, North-South relations during Lee Myung-bak’s five years of governing saw North-South relations reach their lowest point, so for Park Geun-hye to visit the North in the short-term isn’t very likely.

Ren Ren: According to Japanese media reports, North Korea openly told Abe’s new government in Japan that the North was interested in reopening North Korea-Japan government negotiations next February. However, Japan temporarily doesn’t plan to reply as they grapple with the North’s intentions. First we ask Professor Wang Shaopu in Shanghai if trust is the biggest issue in the Abe government’s lack of a response to the North’s proposal?

Wang Shaopu: Trust is indeed a big issue and this is caused by a host of issues. Looking from the present conditions, first trust has historical reasons, such as Japan’s 39 years of harsh colonial rule, which is an issue that hasn’t been resolved since World War II. Japan has always had three demands on North Korea, namely abandoning its nuclear weapon and missile programs and resolving the abductee issue. Japan only demands that these three issues be resolved together and these haven’t been resolved between Japan and North Korea.

Wang Shaopu speaks but a North Korean rocket and a Japanese focus on abductees makes for an odd pairing in this screen capture.

Thus Japan and North Korea have always existed in a very important state of mistrust. This issue actually needs [to be implemented] a process of understanding [了解过程], especially after the North’s recent satellite launch. They have just sent out another signal for alleviating tension but what really are the North’s intentions? With a background of a lack of trust between both sides, there needs to be a process of understanding.

Also, for now, if Japan wants to adopt measures to improve relations with North Korea, Japan must work with the United States and South Korea. Japan has previously hoped to have a breakthrough in relations with the North, including a visit to the North by the deputy secretary general of the Liberal Democratic Party as well as Koizumi when he was cabinet prime minister. However these efforts failed for many reasons, one of which was the opposition of the United States and South Korea to Japan’s unilateral efforts to improve relations with North Korea. So overall, many reasons dictate that there is a lack of fundamental trust between Japan and North Korea and if this question remains unresolved it will be difficult for both sides to enter negotiations.

Ren Ren: Okay, here’s another question for Professor Zhang Liangui – is North Korea really willing to improve relations with Japan?

Zhang Liangui: From North Korea’s perspective, North Korea is extremely interested in improving relations with Japan. Everyone may have missed this, [but] think back to 2012: Even though everyone didn’t pay much attention, North Korea-Japan’s exchanges have actually been very intimate. In January, they had a secret meeting in northeastern [China] and in March they met in Mongolia and had secret meetings in May, July and August. In August they had Red Cross talks as well as also having section chief-level talks and in September and November they had bureau chief-level talks with plans for more in December. North Korea and Japan’s interactions have been very close and reflect the intent of the North to improve relations with Japan for many reasons.

The first reason is economics. Since both sides had previously reached an agreement, if they improve relations, and even establish official relations, Japan may give North Korea more than $10 billion in war reparations. Another reason is that improving relations helps the North’s entire strategic deployments, as improving relations with neighboring powers under the precondition of retaining its nuclear weapons forces these powers to recognize the North’s status as a nuclear state. Therefore, North Korea is seizing the situation that Japan’s relations with China and South Korea are in a difficult place, so if the North improves relations with Japan this will be an optimal outcome with little effort. [That's why] the North’s behavior is relatively positive.

Ren Ren: Indeed, some foreign analysis claims that the tone of Kim Jong-un’s New Years speech was the most reconciliatory ever. I want to leave the last minute for Mr. Lv Chao – how do you see Kim Jong-un’s future efforts to deal with the North’s foreign relations with East Asian nations, and will there be a new atmosphere?

Lv Chao: I think that on foreign relations, Kim Jong-un will change in 2013. Speaking from today, just like Professor Zhang Liangui said, there have been no halts in North Korean-Japan interactions. [This has been true] not just in 2012, but in recent years as well, when they have had secret meeting at all levels, including North Korea-U.S. interactions.  It seems North Korea’s relations with Russia are comparatively good, besides disagreements over the underground natural gas pipeline.

Ever since Kim Jong-un took power, he has developed the traditional good relationship with China so from the overall perspective, Kim Jong-un would like to improve his diplomatic status in East Asia through secret interactions with Japan and the United States. Kim Jong-un may make new diplomatic moves in 2013, as his New Years speech didn’t specifically raise the issue of withdrawing U.S. Forces Korea or the unification of North and South through a federation system. These issues show that it wasn’t carelessness but rather a profound desire for a breakthrough on the diplomatic front. Get ready for it.

Ren Ren: Great, thank you very much to our three guests for their insight and thank you for watching “From Phoenix To The World,” we’ll see you tomorrow.

Additional Reading: Nathan Beauchamp-Mustafaga, “Forecasting Breakthrough in DPRK-Japan Relations,” SinoNK.com, January 23, 2012, <http://sinonk.com/2013/01/23/zhang-liangui-north-korean-japanese-relations-breakthrough/>

Roger Cavazos, “Das Boot: Fishing in Troubled Waters,” SinoNK.com, May 27, 2012, <http://sinonk.com/2012/05/27/das-boot-china-nkfishing-in-troubled-waters/>

Kim Yoo-kyung, mistakenly identified as Ri Sol-ju’s sister, performing at the Moranbong 2013 New Year’s Performance. | image via Chosun Central TV

On March 8, Radio Free Asia’s (RFA) Korean-language service reported that Ri Sol-ju has a sister who is an active member of the Moranbong Band in Pyongyang. A You Tube video of the band’s 2013 New Year’s Performance (2012년 신년 경축 당을 따라 끝까지) was said to show the woman, the piece claimed.

According to a source reportedly from the North Korean capital, “Ri Sol-hyang came out of Pyongyang’s top music school, the Pyongyang University of Music and Dance (김원균 음악대학: lit. Kim Won-kyun Music University) and now is a mezzo-soprano at the center of the all-female group.”

The video that set off the rumors was the performance of a song called “We Love Our Passionate Life” (“불타는 삶을 우린 사랑해”), that features a soloist thought to have been Ri Sol-hyang. Naturally, the claims set South Korean media and netizens to work trying to learn more about this new, and well-connected, celebrity in the “North Korean Girls Generation.”

“Some young students are saying that Ri Sol-hyang is ‘prettier and sings better than her sister,’ while the reaction of others is ‘even though she is prettier than her sister, Sol-hyang can’t sing as well,” another citizen from Pyongyang reportedly explained in the piece.

However, it only took a further day to uncover there was no one named Ri Sol-hyang on the Moranbong Band roster. On March 9, the woman thought to be the younger sister of Sol-ju was reported to be one Kim Yoo-kyung. As well as Kim, the ten-woman group includes six other singers: Kim Sol-mi, Ri Myeong-hui, Ryu Jin-a, Park Son-hyang, Park Mi-kyung, and Jung Su-hyang.

What the rash of interest in not only Ri Sol-ju but even her alleged sister appears to indicate above all, however, is that South Korean citizens are far more curious about Pyongyang (and North Korean) life than the nuclear threat the North Korean government wants them to feel hanging over their heads. They are more concerned with youth culture, beautiful women, and celebrity gossip. Apart from anything else, dismissing these discourses without further analysis would be to underestimate the latent value of such performers in the field of cultural diplomacy, both now and in the future.

For more on the Moranbong Band in international coverage, see Part II of Adam Cathcart’s “Let Them Eat Concerts: Musical Diplomacy, the Ri Sol-ju Rollout, and Kim Ki-Nam” on SinoNK.com.

Blog by: Darcie Draudt

Could the Moranbong Band’s first concert last July, replete with the sounds of American film, demonstrate its potential to depart to foreign shores? | Image via KRCNR

Nearly nine months after the fact, the initial shock of the Moranbong Band’s debut concert seems a distant memory. Media rapidly moved on to Ri Sol-ju, the first lady accessorized with European luxury, and Pyongyang popular culture attracted the attention of not only high-brow cultural channels but also low-brow blogs as well. While the Moranbong Band has been out of the public eye since their New Year’s concert for 2013,  some speculate that the Band was called in for a private concert for a certain American b-ball hall-of-famer. When it comes to the possibilities inherent in the “slick PR stylings of Kim Jong-un,” the Moranbong Band is the ultimate test case. 

In this re-examination of the cultural turns that might be possible following changing tastes within the DPRK military and party, SinoNK’s Performing Arts Analyst Jimin Lee examines the Moranbong Band’s debut “Demonstration Concert” through the lens of its own name—that is, as a demonstration of its potential to act as bridge to the world with its “New Joseon Style” of pop musical performance. The author also examines whether, in the current tense political and military climate, a cultural tactic such as a foreign tour by the Moranbong Band could provide any relief.—Darcie Draudt, Assistant Editor

Neo-Joseon Style Music, Part I: Did the Moranbong Band Demonstrate a New Cultural Diplomacy?

by Jimin Lee

Lost amid the massive media hype surrounding the evening concert in Pyongyang of July 6, 2012, was the title of the event: “Moranbong Band’s Demonstration Concert” (모란봉악단 시범공연). Given that Kim Jong-un attended the performance with hundreds of North Korean government officials, we must ask the particularly alluring question: “Why is it a demonstration concert?” [Translation note: demonstration here (시범/示範) means “debut” or “exhibition,” not “protest.”] It is the first time North Korea titled a state performance only as a demonstration. The performance definitely grasped full attention from North Koreans. Following a Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) announcement that a recorded Moranbong rehearsal would be aired on TV on both July 11and July 12 of 2012, a Joseon Shinbo article from July 15, 2012 reported that hardly anyone could be found on the streets in Pyongyang on those two evenings—insinuating they were all inside, rapt with the performance on TV.

The Debut of DPRK Media Darlings | According to KCNA, Kim Jong-un organized the Moranbong Band as a calling of the new century, “prompted by a grandiose plan to bring about a dramatic turn in the field of literature and arts this year in which a new century of Juche Korea begins.” The report heralds the debut of the Moranbong: “the band, just several months old, raised the curtain for its significant debut performance proclaiming its birth before the world.” The same report quotes Kim Jong-un’s remarks on his ambition behind this music band:

The performance given by the band was one spurring the revolution and construction, a stirring and unique one reflecting the breath of the times and one which reached a new phase in its contents and style….The expectation and conviction that the creators and artists of the band would in the future also creditably fulfilltheir mission as a dynamic bugler, engine and genuine companion of the army and people in the efforts to glorify the country, the patriotic legacy left by President Kim Il-sung and Leader Kim Jong-il.

The fact that Kim Jong-un organized the band himself to bring a new turn in his term signifies the importance of the band to the regime, his leadership style, and the nation as a whole. Therefore, it is important to further investigate what the qualities of the concert may reveal about his political intention for future cultural diplomacy.

Since its appearance in July 2012, the Moranbong Band has ignited fervent debate over whether its existence signals a possible cultural thaw in the DPRK. Both western media and South Korean newspapers express speculation and concerns over the debut of Moranbong. Internally, the band may have been intended to consolidate the country around a Korean War narrative centered on the Kim family, celebrate the launching of the Unha-3 rocket (twice!) and draw international attention. If North Korea is interested in showing the highest quality cultural diplomacy abroad, this Moranbong group by far would do better than the previous national musical performance groups such as Unhasu Orchestra or the Sea of Blood Opera troupe, largely due to the global relevancy of electronic instruments in the West and familiar music selections for Westerners.

Two Big Thumbs up for the Indomitable Spirit | By looking at the size of the concert and the quality of their performance, great time and consideration must have been allocated to organize the event. It might have taken at least three or four months to produce the Demonstration Concert, including music and performer selection, rehearsal, and staging. Counting backward from the performance, initial preparations must have begun not too long after Kim Jong-un’s inauguration following the death of Kim Jong-il in December 2011. The fact that Kim Jong-un organized the band and allegedly supervised the entire process of the concert enhances its significance. According to a KCNA report from July 7:

The performers showed well the indomitable spirit and mental power of the servicepersons and people of the DPRK dashing ahead for the final victory in the drive to build a thriving nation under the guidance of Kim Jong-un…After the concert, Kim Jong-un expressed great satisfaction over the fact that the creators and artists staged a performance high in ideological and artistic value by displaying revolutionary creative spirit.

Kim Jong-un gives a thumbs up after the Demonstration Concert, with First Lady Ri Sol-ju by his side. | Image via Chosun Daily.

After the Demonstration Concert, Kim Jong-un congratulated them on their successful demonstration performance with a “thumbs up” and extended thanks to the Supreme Commander of the Korean People’s Army. A drastically different pose than his aloof posture during a performance of the all-male KPA Merited State Chorus in February this year, this is his second time praising the band in such a modern and youthful way—previously he gave the Unhasu orchestra a “thumbs up” following by his attendance at the Unhasu Orchestra’s signature concert, “The Hearts Following the Sun,” for the 70th anniversary of Leader Kim Jong-il’s birth on February 17, 2012.

The Bochunbo Electronic Band, Remixed | Electronic music is one representative form of modern music that contains rich tone and unique timbre. The history of the electronic music in North Korea originates with the Bochunbo Electronic Band  (보천전자악단) formed by Kim Jong-il in June 1985. At that time, North Korea appropriated the electronic instruments that elsewhere are used to play the “degenerated music” of capitalist societies in order to create their own North Korean style of electronic music by experimenting with traditional music in North Korea.

Compared to the Bochunbo Electronic Band formed 27 years prior, the Moranbong Band in 2012 definitely brought Joseon-style music to the new level. In terms of the theme of the concert, musical arrangement, instrumentation, programming, and staging, the band boldly innovates what Joseon-style music means in the Kim Jong-un era. Kim Jong-un reorganized all the factors that entail in concert and music and made it different from the conventional music style.

What is remarkably different about the Moranbong Band is its instrumentation, which drastically departs from previous North Korean performance groups. The Band is comprised of sixteen musicians including three electrical violins, one electric cello, two electric keyboards, two electric guitars, one piano, one drum set, one saxophone, and five singers. The formation is centered to electronic violin and cello along with other electronic instruments such as piano, drum, and saxophone.

In the past, there were no electronic violins and cellos in the older Bochunbo Electronic Band, and electronic guitars, keyboard, and drum sets were only used for instrumental accompaniment. The Moranbong Band, however, adopted new instruments such as electronic guitars, keyboard, and violins, boldly signaling a new turn of the North’s musical accompaniment style. On May 30, 2009, the Unhasu Orchestra created a “Joseon-style” pop orchestra combining orchestral music with Western instruments and Korean instruments. However, that singular incidence is markedly different from the latest performance of the Moranbong Band, which now performs in diverse combinations with various musical instrumentations and staging with unconventional performance outfits in a North Korean spectacle.

Music Politics and Innovation in Joseon Electronic Music | Attention should also be paid to how the state performance style had evolved and how Moranbong band is different from the previous concerts. Not only the instrumentation was changed: the electronic instruments were used to segue from Western classical music to global pop music. The KCNA reported on July 16 that “the band took the stage with Korean popular songs, such as ‘Arirang,’ ‘Let’s Learn’ and ‘Victors’ as well as globally famous songs, including ‘Song of a Gypsy,’ all of which were arranged in a new style.” In an interview that appears in the same KCNA report, Choe Dan, a teacher at the conservatory, said:

I am very pleased to see the nation’s musical art in robust development…the performance reminded me of the dear respected Kim Jong-un’s remark that foreign music, suitable to Koreans’ emotions, should be introduced and developed in the Korean style. I will devote all my wisdom and energy to steadily developing in a balanced manner the traditional and popular music to suit the emotions and aesthetic sense of the Korean people.

The Demonstration Concert was divided into two parts and comprised 26 pieces, including thirteen light music pieces, three light pieces combined with singing, and three vocal ensemble pieces. As another point of comparison, the Unhasu Orchestra singers had performed with orchestral music accompaniment in the Bel Canto style, an Italian singing style that focuses on generating clear and bright sounds by reducing the vocal cords, whereas the Moranbong Band singers sing in global pop music style along with electronic instruments.

The repertoire of the performance started out with light music “Arirang” that is rearranged into an electronic version. This “Electronic Version of Arirang” is as nice as the latest rearrangement of combined string version by Maestro Jong Myong Hun in his Paris concert with the Unhasu Orchestra on March 14, 2012. “Arirang” is widely known internationally as one of the most representative pieces of Korea. When Moranbong Band played “Arirang” there was a world map centered on the Korean Peninsula as a live video background with a sunset over Baekdu Mountain around the waves of the sea. The purpose of this visual narrative exemplifies Kim Jong-un’s remarks emphasizing the reasoning behind the virtuosic performance: to reify the regime’s Juche ideology, which is ofen connected to to the geography and landscape of the Korean peninsula at the center. The visual representation of North Korea in the background provides a clue of Kim Jong-un’s strategy of music politics.

American Pop on a Pyongyang Stage | Besides these visual elements of the performance, the Moranbong Band definitely surprised the international media not only because they employed electronic instruments but also they played non-traditional national pieces. Kim Jong-un has emphasized the need to create and develop North Korea’s own culture for the contemporary era by adapting other cultures’ styles. With this purpose and intention, Kim Jong-un opened up the stage with foreign music through the Demonstration Concert.

In contrast, the Bochunbo Electronic Band played mostly pieces of rearranged traditional music with only the occasional foreign song.  Surprisingly the Moranbong Band came out with very unconventional forms and substance. The band played only three Joseon light music pieces at the debut concert, drastically fewer than the eleven foreign pieces it performed. The three domestic pieces were “Arirang,” “Yippuni,” and “Can’t Live without Him;” “Arirang” and “Yippuni” were played with everyone in the band, while the last one was played with only four string members.

Considering what North Korean music ensembles have played in the past, it is important to unpack the importance of the international sensation caused by Moranbong’s playing eleven foreign music pieces. From the full concert video on YouTube the list of foreign pieces they played are as follows: “Czardas,” a traditional Hungarian folk dance; “Zigeurnerweisen (Gypsy Airs),” a musical composition for violin and orchestra written in 1878 by the Spanish composer and virtuoso Pablo de Sarasate; and four French pieces )including “La Reine de Saba (The Queen of Sheba),” “Menuet,” “Penelope,” and “Serenade de l’Étoile (Serenade of the Star).”

Not only are the pieces foreign—what is more surprising is the number of American music pieces played. As a nation vehemently opposed to all aspects to debased American culture, it is quite striking the North had staged American popular music in a positive light in the spectacle that aired throughout the nation through KCNA. Of course, the pieces may have been presented as merely “foreign music” imported in the New Joseon Style, rather than as “American music.” The Moranbong Band arranged foreign music in their own style; the band staged American popular music including “Gonna Fly Now,” Bill Conti’s theme from the movie Rocky. Also, the piece “My Way” is a popular song sung by American pop icon Frank Sinatra and arranged by Paul Anka.

According to a KCNA report from July 7, 2012, the Moranbong Band actually had played three more foreign songs in addition to the eight pieces seen in the KCNA broadcasts.  The demonstration concert does not include the three pieces above; it is assumed that these were exempted in the editing process.

There were few more foreign songs only reported, not recorded, on KCNA report on July 7: “The Duel,” a popular song; “Victory,” a rap song; and “Dallas,” a country music selection. In addition to this, twelve American children’s cartoon film songs were performed in a piece titled, “The Collection of World Fairy Tale Songs.” As such, the Moranbong Band played not only American popular music but also rap music and country music—both styles whose histories are firmly rooted in the American cultural landscape. Usually the music in North Korea is developed from revolutionary songs or folk music. This shift should not be read as merely a cosmetic shift; we must also deal with the question of possible ideological implications.

Live (Inter)Nation: Tour Dates TBD | As discussed earlier, it is impossible to play American popular music in North Korea. The news agency is in complete control of the State, and the content is the State’s voice. Also, the fact that US-Sino relations have been shaky of late raises the question of what might be the intention of playing American pop music in an official DPRK state spectacle. Considering this situation, the Moranbong Band playing American popular songs is quite a radical gesture of Kim Jong-un.

As we might glean from his remarks in a KCNA report on July 7th, Kim Jong-un has a grand ambition to promote Joseon-style electronic music on the world stage. After Unhasu Orchestra’s successful performance on March 14, 2012, in Paris, this time it seems that Kim Jong-un may seek to bring the Moranbong Band to the global level beyond Pyongyang, and even beyond Paris. In order to advance Joseon Style electronic music abroad, the Moranbong Band should grasp the attention of Americans, the center of the international electronic music scene. There has been a persistent effort from a group based in the United States called Global Resource Service, Inc., (GRS) that is trying to invite the Joseon National Orchestra to the States, but the group faces opposition from the U.S. government. GRS, a non-profit, non-governmental organization based in Atlanta, has in the past coordinated limited cultural exchange between the U.S. and North Korea.

In fact, GRS has already sent three other groups to North Korea, including the Grammy Award-winning group Casting Crowns, a contemporary Christian rock band. The Sons of Jubal, one of the GRS groups, was invited to perform on April 28 at the Spring Friendship Arts Festival in Pyongyang by the Korea-America Private Exchange Society, which provides a relationship with U.S.-based non-governmental agencies. Considering some track record of successful cultural exchange, the Moranbong Band may be prepared to become the next step for North Korean performance groups onto the world stage with Joseon-style pop music. Thus, the designation of the July 12 concert as a “demonstration” may be more apt than “opening” or “debut,” as it may function to demonstrate the potential for concert organizers worldwide. The Moranbong Band Demonstration Concert may be read as a soft signal indirectly showing America how it might open up its door to cultural exchange. Their song choices were likely carefully calculated to be relevant to Americans as a welcome deviation from typical rhetoric from the DPRK.

Unlike the State Symphony Orchestra of DPRK (SSO) or the Unhasu Orchestra, the fact that the Moranbong Band only has 16 members would ease travel, with lesser expenses. The SSO can be seen as a corps army cultural mission outfitted with traditional instruments. The Unhasu Orchestra can be seen as a division army cultural mission equipped with traditional and electronic instruments. Extending the analogy, the Moranbong Band would be a guerrilla unit armored with the latest electronic instruments ready to perform on behalf of the regime. If a North Korean classical music mission was able to play a concert in March 2012 for the first time in Paris, the center of European culture, the destination for this New Joseon-style pop group might be envisioned as the capital of electronic music and the center of international politics: the U.S.

Redirecting the Course of Cultural Diplomacy | According to a KCNA report on July 30, Kim Jong-un intended for the Moranbong Band’s premiere on July 27 to coincide with Fatherland Liberation War Day (조국해방전쟁승리 기념일), a national holiday in North Korea that marks the 1953 signing of the armistice at Panmunjeom. Every year North Korea observes “Month of Joint Anti-American Struggle” (반미공동투쟁월간) during the period from June 25 to July 27in order to promote an anti-American sentiment as part of North Korea’s identity. The term for this holiday first appeared in state media in 1955, and did not appear in North Korean press again until 1996. It reinforced its celebration in 2012, when it appeared again in  a June 29 KCNA article last year that declared the DPRK’s determination to seek revenge against America during the celebration of this “Month of Joint Anti-America Struggle”. However, Kim Jong-un commended that Moranbong concert would perform on Fatherland Liberation War Day again. July 27, 2013, will be the 60th Anniversary of the armistice. If Moranbong Band continues its playing of American pop songs in the celebration of Fatherland Liberation War Day, it may be interpreted as urging the US to recognize the possibility for cultural exchange that might overflow into prospects for new developments in diplomacy.

From February 23 through 24, 2012, right before Kim Jong-un would have formed the Moranbong Band, North Korea and the U.S. held high-level exploratory talks in Beijing culminating in the announcement of the “Leap Day Agreement,” under which the US would provide food aid if the North denuclearizes. However, the events since then—including a long-range rocket launch in April 2012 and another nuclear launch in January in 2013—have already put the deal at risk less than a year after the agreement. Despite their apparent reneging, the DPRK continues to pressure the White House to carry out its end of the Leap Day Agreement. Following this sequence of events, the Moranbong Band may likely provide a measure of cultural diplomacy to allow the problematic Leap Day Agreement fade behind a new chapter in relations.

Full Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_sVYhdiiTc

Further Readings:

Adam Cathcart, “Juche Pop: New Assessments of the Morangbong Band,” SinoNK, September 28, 2012.

Jimin Lee, “Soft Power on a Hardened Path: On DPRK Musical Performance,” SinoNK, August 2, 2012.

Adam Cathcart, “Let Them Eat Concerts: Music, the Moranbong Band and Cultural Turns in Kim Jong-un’s Korea,” SinoNK, July 12, 2012.

Jimin Lee, “Rehearsal, Propaganda, Unity: Documenting the DPRK Unhasu Orchestra’s Performance in Paris,” SinoNK, March 24, 2012.

After an absence of nearly four months, the Moranbong Band recently returned to the national stage, doing so in a way that assured North Korean conservatives that the girls could have a salutary effect on military morale. Their attendance at an April 2013 martial arts demonstration gave the band’s members their first opportunity to themselves be entertained—by a bunch of commandos smashing rocks with their heads, no less. But soon enough, the women were safely back on stage, dancing along the edges of permissible harmonies and stage behavior. Darcie Draudt and Jimin Lee explore how the Moranbong’s performing as a collective for the state, on behalf of the head of state, raises questions of the performing nation under the male gaze.—Adam Cathcart, Editor-in-Chief

Packaged and Controlled by the Masculine State: Moranbong Band and Gender in New Chosun-Style Performance

by Darcie Draudt and Jimin Lee

According to KCNA on July 7, 2012, Kim Jong-un organized the Moranbong Band as a calling of the new century, “prompted by a grandiose plan to bring about a dramatic turn in the field of literature and arts this year in which a new century of Juche Korea begins.” By analyzing the performances of the Morangbong Band, what can we discern about the role this music group plays for the North Korean state? Specifically, how can we read the Moranbong Band, as an all-female group performing at official state functions for party cadres and military officials?

Rather than being liberated, as an apparatus of the state, it may perhaps be more appropriate to explore how these women, as performers, are being utilized by the state to uphold two goals: first, by reifying the gender divide in Pyongyang official culture for the domestic audience; and second, as female performers of a New Chosun style of electronic music to attract international attention. Indeed, a close reading of their performances complicates the role of this band in the construction of gender in contemporary North Korea.

A New Chosun Girl Group | Compared to other North Korean high-level performance outfits, which feature both male and female musicians, the Moranbong Band is comprised exclusively of female members. The Bochunbo Electronic Music Band may perhaps be deemed the precursor to the Moranbong in revolutionizing electronic music for the DPRK. Though it featured female vocalists, Bochunbo was accompanied by only male musicians: the electronic keyboards, electronic guitars, and drums were all male musicians. However, all musicians of Moranbong Band are females. The band roster is listed as follows:

First Electric Violin and Band Leader: Seon-u Hyang-hui (선우향희)

Second Electric Violin: Hong Su-kyeong (홍수경)

Electric Viola: Cha Young-mi (차영미)

Electric Cello: Yoo Eun-jeong (유은정)

Synthesizer: Kim Hyang-soon, Ri Hui-kyeong (김향순, 리희경)

Saxophone: Choi Jeong-im (최정임)

Piano: Kim Young-mi (김영미)

Electric Drum: Ri Yoon-hui (리윤희)

Electric Guitar: Kang Ryeong-hui (강령희)

Electric Bass: Ri Seol-lan (리설란)

Vocals: Kim Yoo-kyeong (김유경), Kim Seol-mi (김설미), Ryu Jin-a (류진아), Pak Mi-kyeong (박미경), Jung Su-hyang (정수향), Pak Seon-hyeong (박선향), Ri Myeong-hui (리명희)

Left: North Korea’s Moranbong Band, Right: South Korea’s Girls’ Generation

The lead musician, Seon-u Hyang-hui, was previously a violinist in the Samjiyeon Band in the Mansudae Art Troupe. Having starred on many state stages, with the North Korean equivalent to the South Korean pop queens “Girls’ Generation” Seon-u appears as the chair of the band brandishing an electronic violin this time. The KCNA notes that Kim Jong-un praised Seon-u for helping realize his vision, according to a July 7 KCNA report of 2012:

“All of the musicians and singers of the band are promising, he noted, praising Seon-u Hyang-hui, leader of the band, for her splendid directing. He underscored the need to steadily develop the traditional music and popular music in a balanced manner to suit the thoughts and feelings of Koreans and their aesthetic taste while meeting the need of the times and the people’s desire.”

Thus the women of Moranbong are praised in official press by Supreme Leader Kim not only for their accomplishments as musicians, but also for their ability to evolve (“steadily develop”) music in North Korea recognizing that 2012 requires an aesthetic break from the past (“while meeting the need of the times”).

Revolutionized Women for the New Century of Songun Korea | As constructed in official media, such elite North Korean women until recently were presented in the role of the “revolutionized mother,” the archetype of which remains to be Kang Ban-sok, leader of the Democratic Women’s Union and mother of Kim Il-sung. Such an official image has certainly been maintained in the Kim Jong-un era, first with the canonization of his mother Ko Young-hui in a hagiographic film released last summer, titled “The Beloved Mother of the Great Songun Korea” (위대한 선군 조선의 어머님 [伟大的先军朝鲜母亲]); and secondly, with numerous appearances of his wife Ri Sol-ju at official functions.

But with both of these women, their merit was founded upon their relation to Kim Jong-un, the male leader of the nation. Despite both being accomplished performers—Ko was a dancer in the Mansudae Art Troupe in Pyongyang, and Ri was formerly a singer in the Unhasu Orchestra—the two women have been presented in state media as generation-specific “Ideal Women,” largely dependent on the historically based on the concept of “good wife and wise mother” (현모양처).

With the female performers of the Moranbong Band, we see a very different type of official, public image of the young woman of the “New Century of Songun Korea.” The vocalists dance restrained choreography that is more evocative of 1960s girl groups than any K-Pop act today—see the clip above, “배우자 (Let’s Learn)”—which harks back to an era of refined modernism that seems a bit anachronistic in the international context of 2012. Such an blending of the musical eras may be fitting for an all-girl group, as national time, according to Anne McClintock, is in a sense gendered, “veering between nostalgia for the past and the impatient, progressive sloughing off of the past” (1995:92). Showcasing their artistic talents, their physical beauty, and a very glitzy, non-traditional style of dress, Band Leader Seon-u and her band mates may fulfill a very different function for the state, a function that carries weight domestically and abroad as well.

The DPRK Male Gaze | We must take care, however, not to see these talented performers dressed in flashy costume as new archetypes for the New Modern Woman in the DPRK. According to Nicola Dibben’s theorizing of the female representation in popular music, “It would be hopelessly naive to declare that such tactics are exclusively empowering in their influence.” Rather, the gender division of the performance as a whole—from the stage through the audience space—should be examined for context.

Morangbong Band Concert. October 2012 | Source: KCNA

The live performances of the Moranbong Band can only be attended by high-level party members in Pyongyang (and occasionally foreign diplomats), and it is apparent from reports and photographs of the events that the audience is largely male (though some women were in the audience as well). The KCNA report also identifies key members of the audience, which included Choi Ryong-hae, Jang Song-thaek, Kim Ki-nam, Hyon Chol-hae, Kim Yang-gon, Kim Yong-il, Kim Byeong-hae, Choe Pu-il, Kim Myong-guk, Kim Yong-chol, and Jo Kyong-chol, in addition to other “officials, creators, artists, writers, and journalists of literature and art, media and art educational institutions.” With such a configuration, we might conclude that compared to other ensembles, this particular musical group places female performers as objects of the male gaze in Pyongyang.

Women and Foreign Music Performance | In many nationalisms, women are perched on the boundary between the domestic and the foreign, and perhaps their gender gave the Moranbong Band the freedom to play a wide variety of foreign pieces. At their debut “demonstration” concert alone, the band performed “Czardas,” a traditional Hungarian folk dance; “Zigeurnerweisen (Gypsy Airs),” a musical composition for violin and orchestra written in 1878 by the Spanish composer and virtuoso Pablo de Sarasate; and four French pieces, including “La Reine de Saba (The Queen of Sheba),” “Menuet,” “Penelope,” and “Serenade de l’Étoile (Serenade of the Star).” The band even covered American pop songs, including the theme from the film Rocky as well as an instrumental version of Frank Sinatra’s My Way.

The stage design also evoked a global pop style, with a Chosun twist. The video stage background featured nine different screens, across which images of Korean nature scenes, patriotic graphics, and even clips from Hollywood movies and Disney animations were projected to form a pastiche — very curious for the DPRK context, and not necessarily read only as a means of manipulating foreign public opinion.

In a stage design unprecedented in the history of North Korean performance, the Moranbong Band concerts appear to be closer in line with a K-Pop concert rather than continuing the legacy of the previous prim North Korean performances: lasers occasionally flashed across the stage and fireworks even shot from the floor. These features are not simply entertaining; they are perfectly in line with the broader propagandistic re-imaging of the North Korean economy as driven by high-tech development. North Korea thus joins the digital age without linking up specifically to the globe. In the age when musical emotions are expressed through electronic music, the Moranbong Band’s Chosun-style electronic music initiated by Kim Jong-il introduces a more contemporary and globally relevant Chosun-style electronic music while widening the scope of the Great Leader’s musical politics.

Moranbong Band Concert, October 2012 | Source: NK Leadership Watch

Performing Nation | In postcolonial societies in particular, women’s emergence on stage as performers might be “regarded as a cultural showcase as well as a pedagogical institution for the modern nation-state” (Croissant et al. 2008:10). Such a description is applicable to contemporary North Korea, where no official media falls outside an explicit promotion of nationality and national goals. In the case of the Moranbong Band, what sort of nation are these women performing? It may be that the performances of the Moranbong are charged with significant questions about the time of the North Korean nation: Wither the current DPRK, wither North Korean culture, and wither its future in the international system?

McClintock also points out that “for male nationalists, women serve as the visible markers of national homogeneity, they become subjected to especially vigilant and violent discipline” (1998:97). Do the members of Moranbong Band, as a band formed by the Supreme Leader himself (emphasis on the masculine agent involved) in the inaugural year of his tenure as Supreme Leader, threaten that national homogeneity, or function further to construct it? After all, this is not the everyday lived experience of women in the North Korean countryside or even the capital city, but rather the display of femininity on official stage, packaged and controlled by the masculine state. As a recent example of packaging women in the service of songun, Pyongyang’s celebration of International Women’s Day on March 8 focused on the women’s pride and value in serving the Leader.

While it may be true that women in Korea now enjoy relaxed restrictions on superficial matters—trousers and high heels are now permitted by law, though other aesthetic treatments are still regulated—by and large women still face many structural barriers, both social and legal, the only function of which seems to be to uphold a patriarchal order. In many accounts, we see that women lack empowerment in practical realms, mainly the economy and government (Haggard and Noland’s 2012 survey provides some insight, as does Andrei Lankov’s new book), and the ban on market trade (largely dominated by women) continues to hold real implications for women whose ability to work is secondary to their primary duties in the role of wife, mother, and daughter-in-law. Such a New Chosun Style heralded by Kim Jong-un may merely be an aesthetic move to garner positive public relations in the sphere of cultural production. Such spin on the female spectacle may be intended not only for domestic audiences, but for international audiences as well.

References:

Croissant, Doris, Catherine Vance Yeh, and Joshua S. Mostow, eds. Performing “Nation”: Gender Politics in Literature, Theater, and the Visual Arts of China and Japan, 1880-1940. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill Academic Publishers, 2008.

Dibben, Nicola. “Representations of Femininity in Popular Music.” In Popular Music. 18, no. 3 (1999): 331-355.

McClintock, Anne. “No Longer in a Future Heaven: Gender, Race, and Nationalism,” in Dangerous Liasons: Gender, Nation, and Postcolonial Perspectives. Anne McClintock, Aamir R. Mufti, and Ella Shohat, eds. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, (1995): 89-112.

Additional Reading:

Jimin Lee, “Moranbong Band: Joseon Style Electronic Music on a New Level,” SinoNK, April 8, 2013.

Jimin Lee, “Soft Power on a Hardened Path: On DPRK Musical Performance,” SinoNK, August 2, 2012.

Adam Cathcart, “Let Them Eat Concerts: Music, the Moranbong Band and Cultural Turns in Kim Jong-un’s Korea,” SinoNK, July 12, 2012.

A little bilateral discord, alleviated over Moranbong chords: Kim Jong-un meets Ambassador Liu Hongcai. | Photo courtesy PRC Embassy in the DPRK, January 1, 2013

China and North Korea are often at their most artful in trying times, usually while attempting to finesse a mixture of rhetorical bilateral anger, modest physical measures against one another, and continued mutual interaction. Formidable examples of this uncommon skill set at work could be seen throughout the period December 13, 2012-February 16, 2013, a time frame analyzed here in the latest KCNA-China File by Adam Cathcart and Evan Koepfler. — Christopher Green, Co-editor

A Soupçon of Anger: KCNA-China File No. 23, December 13, 2012-February 16, 2013

by Adam Cathcart and Evan Koepfler

KCNA File No. 23, December 13, 2012-February 16, 2013 [FULL TEXT, 36 pages]

In a period of extreme bilateral stress, the North Korean media resorted to indirect but clear critiques of China’s attitude toward the satellite launch, the third nuclear test, and China’s nominal support for United Nations sanctions against the DPRK. The files presented here are complementary to the more open critiques of China, and indicate how the North Korean media sought to retain commonalities with China and not fundamentally disrupt the relationship.

The fact that the DPRK reported on the signing of a January 9, 2013, agreement regarding “construction of the office buildings of the management committee” of Rason and Hwanggumpyong, respectively, is a sign that the tensions did not bring the relationship to an utter halt, but it was small solace to leaders in Beijing who might have hoped that the DPRK was moving in a more reformist direction since Jang Song-taek’s visit to Beijing in August 2012.

Ambassador Liu Hongcai finally emerges on the highwire up Mansudae Hill on April 15, 2013. | image: Chosun Central TV screen capture

KCNA File No. 23, December 13, 2012-February 16, 2013 [FULL TEXT]

Sino-NK’s previous KCNA-China files can be accessed here.

Sino-NK’s four previous China-North Korea document dossiers can be accessed here.

Michigan State University’s Kellogg Center, venue for the Midwest Conference on Asian Affairs | Image: Michigan State University

Since Sherri L. Ter Molen published an intriguing analysis of North Korea’s most overtly pop-cultural product, the Moranbong Band, in early summer 2013, analytical and investigative hearts have been aflutter as to the fate of Pyongyang shiniest and most glamorous (potential) cultural export.

Interested parties have been regaled with florid analyses from south of the DMZ and elsewhere about the fate of the resolutely modern musical troupe. Like Mi6 eliminating those infuriating boy wonders One Direction or the CIA taking out Miley Cyrus, both the Moranbong Band and Unhasu Orchestra were allegedly executed by gunshot in the aftermath of a scandal implicating the feminine gloss on the exemplary center, the fragrant and powerful Ri Sol-ju. If this turns out to have been the case (and one should bear in mind that, despite the column inches it has attracted, nobody really knows either way), it would surely go down as one of North Korea’s greatest presentational own goals, given the exportable nature of at least some Moranbong B(r)and pop-culture production.

How apposite, therefore, that Ter Molen is set to emerge from the heated speculation as to the mort (or otherwise) of these talented young women with “Does NK-Pop’s Moranbong Band Have a Shot at a U.S. Billboard Music Award?” her contribution to this years’ Midwest Conference on Asian Affairs at Michigan State University’s Kellogg Hotel and Conference Center. This Sunday, October 27th, Ter Molen will present the results of her investigation, which is rooted in theories of cultural hybridity, assessing the potential for Moranbong and the rest of the North’s accumulated artistic output to find a viable space within United States media and culture.

Ter Molen will also consider the connections between North Korea’s pop potentiality and the actualized acceptance by Americans of South Korean cultural output through the medium of “Hallyu” (한류/Korean Wave). Intriguingly, she will perform this analysis through the medium of a “Pecha Kucha”, a presentational form nominally authentically Asian but actually authentically hybridized as it was originally derived by the European directors of a Tokyo-based architecture practice. Such an approach to presentation is especially relevant considering the goal of the Midwest Conference on Asian Affairs to adopt an extended and Americanized hybridization of the form known as “Diamond Presentations.” Let’s hope the analytic and academic sparks fly in East Lansing, like the light refracting across one of the Moranbong Band’s bejeweled, be-sequined, and hopefully still in-use mini-skirts.

Could the Moranbong Band’s first concert last July, replete with the sounds of American film, demonstrate its potential to depart to foreign shores? | Image via KRCNR

Nearly nine months after the fact, the initial shock of the Moranbong Band’s debut concert seems a distant memory. Media rapidly moved on to Ri Sol-ju, the first lady accessorized with European luxury, and Pyongyang popular culture attracted the attention of not only high-brow cultural channels but also low-brow blogs as well. While the Moranbong Band has been out of the public eye since their New Year’s concert for 2013,  some speculate that the Band was called in for a private concert for a certain American b-ball hall-of-famer. When it comes to the possibilities inherent in the “slick PR stylings of Kim Jong-un,” the Moranbong Band is the ultimate test case. 

In this re-examination of the cultural turns that might be possible following changing tastes within the DPRK military and party, SinoNK’s Performing Arts Analyst Jimin Lee examines the Moranbong Band’s debut “Demonstration Concert” through the lens of its own name—that is, as a demonstration of its potential to act as bridge to the world with its “New Joseon Style” of pop musical performance. The author also examines whether, in the current tense political and military climate, a cultural tactic such as a foreign tour by the Moranbong Band could provide any relief. — Darcie Draudt, Assistant Editor

Neo-Joseon Style Music, Part I: Did the Moranbong Band Demonstrate a New Cultural Diplomacy?

by Jimin Lee

Lost amid the massive media hype surrounding the evening concert in Pyongyang of July 6, 2012, was the title of the event: “Moranbong Band’s Demonstration Concert” (모란봉악단 시범공연). Given that Kim Jong-un attended the performance with hundreds of North Korean government officials, we must ask the particularly alluring question: “Why is it a demonstration concert?” [Translation note: demonstration here (시범/示範) means “debut” or “exhibition,” not “protest.”] It is the first time North Korea titled a state performance only as a demonstration. The performance definitely grasped full attention from North Koreans. Following a Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) announcement that a recorded Moranbong rehearsal would be aired on TV on both July 11and July 12 of 2012, a Joseon Shinbo article from July 15, 2012 reported that hardly anyone could be found on the streets in Pyongyang on those two evenings—insinuating they were all inside, rapt with the performance on TV.

The Debut of DPRK Media Darlings | According to KCNA, Kim Jong-un organized the Moranbong Band as a calling of the new century, “prompted by a grandiose plan to bring about a dramatic turn in the field of literature and arts this year in which a new century of Juche Korea begins.” The report heralds the debut of the Moranbong: “the band, just several months old, raised the curtain for its significant debut performance proclaiming its birth before the world.” The same report quotes Kim Jong-un’s remarks on his ambition behind this music band:

The performance given by the band was one spurring the revolution and construction, a stirring and unique one reflecting the breath of the times and one which reached a new phase in its contents and style….The expectation and conviction that the creators and artists of the band would in the future also creditably fulfilltheir mission as a dynamic bugler, engine and genuine companion of the army and people in the efforts to glorify the country, the patriotic legacy left by President Kim Il-sung and Leader Kim Jong-il.

The fact that Kim Jong-un organized the band himself to bring a new turn in his term signifies the importance of the band to the regime, his leadership style, and the nation as a whole. Therefore, it is important to further investigate what the qualities of the concert may reveal about his political intention for future cultural diplomacy.

Since its appearance in July 2012, the Moranbong Band has ignited fervent debate over whether its existence signals a possible cultural thaw in the DPRK. Both western media and South Korean newspapers express speculation and concerns over the debut of Moranbong. Internally, the band may have been intended to consolidate the country around a Korean War narrative centered on the Kim family, celebrate the launching of the Unha-3 rocket (twice!) and draw international attention. If North Korea is interested in showing the highest quality cultural diplomacy abroad, this Moranbong group by far would do better than the previous national musical performance groups such as Unhasu Orchestra or the Sea of Blood Opera troupe, largely due to the global relevancy of electronic instruments in the West and familiar music selections for Westerners.

Two Big Thumbs up for the Indomitable Spirit | By looking at the size of the concert and the quality of their performance, great time and consideration must have been allocated to organize the event. It might have taken at least three or four months to produce the Demonstration Concert, including music and performer selection, rehearsal, and staging. Counting backward from the performance, initial preparations must have begun not too long after Kim Jong-un’s inauguration following the death of Kim Jong-il in December 2011. The fact that Kim Jong-un organized the band and allegedly supervised the entire process of the concert enhances its significance. According to a KCNA report from July 7:

The performers showed well the indomitable spirit and mental power of the servicepersons and people of the DPRK dashing ahead for the final victory in the drive to build a thriving nation under the guidance of Kim Jong-un…After the concert, Kim Jong-un expressed great satisfaction over the fact that the creators and artists staged a performance high in ideological and artistic value by displaying revolutionary creative spirit.

Kim Jong-un gives a thumbs up after the Demonstration Concert, with First Lady Ri Sol-ju by his side. | Image via Chosun Daily.

After the Demonstration Concert, Kim Jong-un congratulated them on their successful demonstration performance with a “thumbs up” and extended thanks to the Supreme Commander of the Korean People’s Army. A drastically different pose than his aloof posture during a performance of the all-male KPA Merited State Chorus in February this year, this is his second time praising the band in such a modern and youthful way—previously he gave the Unhasu orchestra a “thumbs up” following by his attendance at the Unhasu Orchestra’s signature concert, “The Hearts Following the Sun,” for the 70th anniversary of Leader Kim Jong-il’s birth on February 17, 2012.

The Bochunbo Electronic Band, Remixed | Electronic music is one representative form of modern music that contains rich tone and unique timbre. The history of the electronic music in North Korea originates with the Bochunbo Electronic Band  (보천전자악단) formed by Kim Jong-il in June 1985. At that time, North Korea appropriated the electronic instruments that elsewhere are used to play the “degenerated music” of capitalist societies in order to create their own North Korean style of electronic music by experimenting with traditional music in North Korea.

Compared to the Bochunbo Electronic Band formed 27 years prior, the Moranbong Band in 2012 definitely brought Joseon-style music to the new level. In terms of the theme of the concert, musical arrangement, instrumentation, programming, and staging, the band boldly innovates what Joseon-style music means in the Kim Jong-un era. Kim Jong-un reorganized all the factors that entail in concert and music and made it different from the conventional music style.

What is remarkably different about the Moranbong Band is its instrumentation, which drastically departs from previous North Korean performance groups. The Band is comprised of sixteen musicians including three electrical violins, one electric cello, two electric keyboards, two electric guitars, one piano, one drum set, one saxophone, and five singers. The formation is centered to electronic violin and cello along with other electronic instruments such as piano, drum, and saxophone.

In the past, there were no electronic violins and cellos in the older Bochunbo Electronic Band, and electronic guitars, keyboard, and drum sets were only used for instrumental accompaniment. The Moranbong Band, however, adopted new instruments such as electronic guitars, keyboard, and violins, boldly signaling a new turn of the North’s musical accompaniment style. On May 30, 2009, the Unhasu Orchestra created a “Joseon-style” pop orchestra combining orchestral music with Western instruments and Korean instruments. However, that singular incidence is markedly different from the latest performance of the Moranbong Band, which now performs in diverse combinations with various musical instrumentations and staging with unconventional performance outfits in a North Korean spectacle.

Music Politics and Innovation in Joseon Electronic Music | Attention should also be paid to how the state performance style had evolved and how Moranbong band is different from the previous concerts. Not only the instrumentation was changed: the electronic instruments were used to segue from Western classical music to global pop music. The KCNA reported on July 16 that “the band took the stage with Korean popular songs, such as ‘Arirang,’ ‘Let’s Learn’ and ‘Victors’ as well as globally famous songs, including ‘Song of a Gypsy,’ all of which were arranged in a new style.” In an interview that appears in the same KCNA report, Choe Dan, a teacher at the conservatory, said:

I am very pleased to see the nation’s musical art in robust development…the performance reminded me of the dear respected Kim Jong-un’s remark that foreign music, suitable to Koreans’ emotions, should be introduced and developed in the Korean style. I will devote all my wisdom and energy to steadily developing in a balanced manner the traditional and popular music to suit the emotions and aesthetic sense of the Korean people.

The Demonstration Concert was divided into two parts and comprised 26 pieces, including thirteen light music pieces, three light pieces combined with singing, and three vocal ensemble pieces. As another point of comparison, the Unhasu Orchestra singers had performed with orchestral music accompaniment in the Bel Canto style, an Italian singing style that focuses on generating clear and bright sounds by reducing the vocal cords, whereas the Moranbong Band singers sing in global pop music style along with electronic instruments.

The repertoire of the performance started out with light music “Arirang” that is rearranged into an electronic version. This “Electronic Version of Arirang” is as nice as the latest rearrangement of combined string version by Maestro Jong Myong Hun in his Paris concert with the Unhasu Orchestra on March 14, 2012. “Arirang” is widely known internationally as one of the most representative pieces of Korea. When Moranbong Band played “Arirang” there was a world map centered on the Korean Peninsula as a live video background with a sunset over Baekdu Mountain around the waves of the sea. The purpose of this visual narrative exemplifies Kim Jong-un’s remarks emphasizing the reasoning behind the virtuosic performance: to reify the regime’s Juche ideology, which is ofen connected to to the geography and landscape of the Korean peninsula at the center. The visual representation of North Korea in the background provides a clue of Kim Jong-un’s strategy of music politics.

American Pop on a Pyongyang Stage | Besides these visual elements of the performance, the Moranbong Band definitely surprised the international media not only because they employed electronic instruments but also they played non-traditional national pieces. Kim Jong-un has emphasized the need to create and develop North Korea’s own culture for the contemporary era by adapting other cultures’ styles. With this purpose and intention, Kim Jong-un opened up the stage with foreign music through the Demonstration Concert.

In contrast, the Bochunbo Electronic Band played mostly pieces of rearranged traditional music with only the occasional foreign song.  Surprisingly the Moranbong Band came out with very unconventional forms and substance. The band played only three Joseon light music pieces at the debut concert, drastically fewer than the eleven foreign pieces it performed. The three domestic pieces were “Arirang,” “Yippuni,” and “Can’t Live without Him;” “Arirang” and “Yippuni” were played with everyone in the band, while the last one was played with only four string members.

Considering what North Korean music ensembles have played in the past, it is important to unpack the importance of the international sensation caused by Moranbong’s playing eleven foreign music pieces. From the full concert video on YouTube the list of foreign pieces they played are as follows: “Czardas,” a traditional Hungarian folk dance; “Zigeurnerweisen (Gypsy Airs),” a musical composition for violin and orchestra written in 1878 by the Spanish composer and virtuoso Pablo de Sarasate; and four French pieces )including “La Reine de Saba (The Queen of Sheba),” “Menuet,” “Penelope,” and “Serenade de l’Étoile (Serenade of the Star).”

Not only are the pieces foreign—what is more surprising is the number of American music pieces played. As a nation vehemently opposed to all aspects to debased American culture, it is quite striking the North had staged American popular music in a positive light in the spectacle that aired throughout the nation through KCNA. Of course, the pieces may have been presented as merely “foreign music” imported in the New Joseon Style, rather than as “American music.” The Moranbong Band arranged foreign music in their own style; the band staged American popular music including “Gonna Fly Now,” Bill Conti’s theme from the movie Rocky. Also, the piece “My Way” is a popular song sung by American pop icon Frank Sinatra and arranged by Paul Anka.

According to a KCNA report from July 7, 2012, the Moranbong Band actually had played three more foreign songs in addition to the eight pieces seen in the KCNA broadcasts.  The demonstration concert does not include the three pieces above; it is assumed that these were exempted in the editing process.

There were few more foreign songs only reported, not recorded, on KCNA report on July 7: “The Duel,” a popular song; “Victory,” a rap song; and “Dallas,” a country music selection. In addition to this, twelve American children’s cartoon film songs were performed in a piece titled, “The Collection of World Fairy Tale Songs.” As such, the Moranbong Band played not only American popular music but also rap music and country music—both styles whose histories are firmly rooted in the American cultural landscape. Usually the music in North Korea is developed from revolutionary songs or folk music. This shift should not be read as merely a cosmetic shift; we must also deal with the question of possible ideological implications.

Live (Inter)Nation: Tour Dates TBD | As discussed earlier, it is impossible to play American popular music in North Korea. The news agency is in complete control of the State, and the content is the State’s voice. Also, the fact that US-Sino relations have been shaky of late raises the question of what might be the intention of playing American pop music in an official DPRK state spectacle. Considering this situation, the Moranbong Band playing American popular songs is quite a radical gesture of Kim Jong-un.

As we might glean from his remarks in a KCNA report on July 7th, Kim Jong-un has a grand ambition to promote Joseon-style electronic music on the world stage. After Unhasu Orchestra’s successful performance on March 14, 2012, in Paris, this time it seems that Kim Jong-un may seek to bring the Moranbong Band to the global level beyond Pyongyang, and even beyond Paris. In order to advance Joseon Style electronic music abroad, the Moranbong Band should grasp the attention of Americans, the center of the international electronic music scene. There has been a persistent effort from a group based in the United States called Global Resource Service, Inc., (GRS) that is trying to invite the Joseon National Orchestra to the States, but the group faces opposition from the U.S. government. GRS, a non-profit, non-governmental organization based in Atlanta, has in the past coordinated limited cultural exchange between the U.S. and North Korea.

In fact, GRS has already sent three other groups to North Korea, including the Grammy Award-winning group Casting Crowns, a contemporary Christian rock band. The Sons of Jubal, one of the GRS groups, was invited to perform on April 28 at the Spring Friendship Arts Festival in Pyongyang by the Korea-America Private Exchange Society, which provides a relationship with U.S.-based non-governmental agencies. Considering some track record of successful cultural exchange, the Moranbong Band may be prepared to become the next step for North Korean performance groups onto the world stage with Joseon-style pop music. Thus, the designation of the July 12 concert as a “demonstration” may be more apt than “opening” or “debut,” as it may function to demonstrate the potential for concert organizers worldwide. The Moranbong Band Demonstration Concert may be read as a soft signal indirectly showing America how it might open up its door to cultural exchange. Their song choices were likely carefully calculated to be relevant to Americans as a welcome deviation from typical rhetoric from the DPRK.

Unlike the State Symphony Orchestra of DPRK (SSO) or the Unhasu Orchestra, the fact that the Moranbong Band only has 16 members would ease travel, with lesser expenses. The SSO can be seen as a corps army cultural mission outfitted with traditional instruments. The Unhasu Orchestra can be seen as a division army cultural mission equipped with traditional and electronic instruments. Extending the analogy, the Moranbong Band would be a guerrilla unit armored with the latest electronic instruments ready to perform on behalf of the regime. If a North Korean classical music mission was able to play a concert in March 2012 for the first time in Paris, the center of European culture, the destination for this New Joseon-style pop group might be envisioned as the capital of electronic music and the center of international politics: the U.S.

Redirecting the Course of Cultural Diplomacy | According to a KCNA report on July 30, Kim Jong-un intended for the Moranbong Band’s premiere on July 27 to coincide with Fatherland Liberation War Day (조국해방전쟁승리 기념일), a national holiday in North Korea that marks the 1953 signing of the armistice at Panmunjeom. Every year North Korea observes “Month of Joint Anti-American Struggle” (반미공동투쟁월간) during the period from June 25 to July 27in order to promote an anti-American sentiment as part of North Korea’s identity. The term for this holiday first appeared in state media in 1955, and did not appear in North Korean press again until 1996. It reinforced its celebration in 2012, when it appeared again in  a June 29 KCNA article last year that declared the DPRK’s determination to seek revenge against America during the celebration of this “Month of Joint Anti-America Struggle”. However, Kim Jong-un commended that Moranbong concert would perform on Fatherland Liberation War Day again. July 27, 2013, will be the 60th Anniversary of the armistice. If Moranbong Band continues its playing of American pop songs in the celebration of Fatherland Liberation War Day, it may be interpreted as urging the US to recognize the possibility for cultural exchange that might overflow into prospects for new developments in diplomacy.

From February 23 through 24, 2012, right before Kim Jong-un would have formed the Moranbong Band, North Korea and the U.S. held high-level exploratory talks in Beijing culminating in the announcement of the “Leap Day Agreement,” under which the US would provide food aid if the North denuclearizes. However, the events since then—including a long-range rocket launch in April 2012 and another nuclear launch in January in 2013—have already put the deal at risk less than a year after the agreement. Despite their apparent reneging, the DPRK continues to pressure the White House to carry out its end of the Leap Day Agreement. Following this sequence of events, the Moranbong Band may likely provide a measure of cultural diplomacy to allow the problematic Leap Day Agreement fade behind a new chapter in relations.

Full Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_sVYhdiiTc

Further Readings:

Adam Cathcart, “Juche Pop: New Assessments of the Morangbong Band,” SinoNK, September 28, 2012.

Jimin Lee, “Soft Power on a Hardened Path: On DPRK Musical Performance,” SinoNK, August 2, 2012.

Adam Cathcart, “Let Them Eat Concerts: Music, the Moranbong Band and Cultural Turns in Kim Jong-un’s Korea,” SinoNK, July 12, 2012.

Jimin Lee, “Rehearsal, Propaganda, Unity: Documenting the DPRK Unhasu Orchestra’s Performance in Paris,” SinoNK, March 24, 2012.

Kang Ryong-hui rocking with her guitar in a female version of the Kim Jong-un hairstyle | Image: Moranbong Band concert 25 April 2013/Youtube.

The Moranbong Band hasn’t publicly performed since last October, prompting speculation that Kim Jong-un has disbanded the ensemble. Pekka Korhonen, professor of world politics at the University of Jyväskylä in Finland and visiting scholar at Kyoto University, suggests that we examine the entire corpus of the band’s aesthetic rather than wondering if the band is finished playing for good or delving into cesspools of Jang Song-taek related rumor. Here Pekka investigates the ties between the band and the military (from the Eternal President to the beloved Marshal, hairstyle included), the artistic rock gospel style of the band, and the position of the band within a larger regime of art. — Adam Cathcart, Editor-in-Chief

Rock Gospels: Analyzing the Artistic Style of Moranbong Band

by Pekka Korhonen

It seems that the Moranbong Band has ceased performing publicly, at least for the time being. This may be a proper moment to take a look at the short history of the ensemble, and try to understand its meaning in North Korea. Fourteen concerts have thus far been released on YouTube, one of them apparently censored totally (the July 27, 2013 concert), and another one partly (June 23, 2013 concert; first installment here). Using Rudiger Frank’s analytical methodology presented in his “The Arirang Mass Games of North Korea,” and comparing published and previous North Korean messages, we can now take a look at the forms of communication of the band.

Problems of Analyzing North Korean Music | There has not been much research on Moranbong Band; practically the only venue systematically interested in it has been Sino-NK. Even at Sino-NK the general frame of analysis has been rather critical or belittling; whatever comes from the evil kingdom, must be evil, or at least in some way participate in evil. This may be so, but the band is nevertheless important.

Most commenting has concentrated only on the extraordinary debut concert in July 6, 2012. Sherry Ter Molen found that the style of Moranbong Band is old-fashioned according to contemporary US standards; Darcy Draudt and Jimin Lee considered it ”merely a display of femininity on official stage, packaged and controlled by the masculine state;” while Adam Cathcart lambasted it for not being politically edgy and not displaying irony at the stage, categorizing the band simply as old revolutionary wine in a new aesthetic form. Only after the ending of public performances by the band has he shown some nostalgia for it.

I feel that these commentators are looking at the wrong aspects, and asking for too much. Irony, and its more blunt partner satire, are the rhetorical tropes for oppositional political expression (see: Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays, Princeton University Press, 1957). They work exactly by taking something previously expressed and adding a new angle to it, transforming the meaning to something that is intellectually amusing, funny, ridiculous, or outright blasphemous. Moranbong Band cannot do this in North Korea; romance is the only proper narrative plot in a totalitarian cultural system.

Anyway, if the band were so harmless, why would it now have been prohibited from appearing in public? We have to look for much smaller details.

One problem is the category of ”pop culture” under which Moranbong Band has been placed. It creates the wrong associations. The ensemble should rather be understood as a military orchestra. They dress in military uniforms and wear one, two, or three small stars on their shoulders, symbols which according to Wikipedia make them all officers, with ranks of sangjwa (상좌), chungjwa (중좌), and sojwa (소좌), corresponding with captain, first, and second lieutenant in US Army rankings. This does not necessarily mean that band members have gone through long military training in addition to their intensive musical studies: in North Korea it is possible to be promoted to a military rank, such as general or marshal, without previous experience.

Notwithstanding, Moranbong Band is a military band, and there is no reason to think that its members would not be good patriotic citizens of their state, proudly and willingly performing all the military and political songs that we hear. This is rather normal in all states constantly prepared for military conflict.

It is apparent, though, that there have been clear symptoms of control by the ”masculine state,” although, in point of fact, we do not actually know the gender of the architect.

The original female version of the Kim Jong-un haircut; Kim Yu-kyong. | Image: Moranbong Band concert 10 October 2012/Youtube.

Controlling the Visual Aesthetics of Moranbong Band | There has been a severe drive to unify the outlook of the members to the point where all individuality disappears. While the band’s debut was not explicitly connected to the Korean People’s Army, in performance, the band members have been clothed in military uniforms since late summer 2012. During spring 2013 they were placed on a diet, which made all of roughly equal thinness. Jewelry and make-up were minimized at the same time; bourgeois wealthy individuality displayed in the early concerts was thus erased from the band.

Cutting down long hair started individually during autumn 2012, but by the eighth concert in February 1, 2013 everybody had received the same treatment. The string quartet wore from then on hair of neck length; ladies’ fashion in Samjiyon Orchestra, where they hailed from, had been long elaborately arranged hair that fit well with evening dress and classical music. All the others wore their hair much shorter.

Especially singers Kim Yu-kyong and Ryu Ji-na, as well as guitarist Kang Ryong-hui and drummer Ri Yun-hui wore a female version of the Kim Jong-un hairstyle. It is far shorter than ordinary military female hair, cut also in the neck and above the ear, but leaving hair amply at the top of the head, so that the person appears simultaneously ascetic and tall. It may be a symbol of allegiance to the monarch. The others wore their hear a bit longer. By the last published concert in October 15, 2013, even the hair of the string quartet was cut very short, and hats, which hid all the small individual differences in hairstyles, capped the head of all members.

Notwithstanding, although this appeared as a form of increased discipline placed on the band, it was a new stylistic element, emulated by fashion conscious North Korean ladies. Even when made to conform to a strict code, the Moranbong Band ended up creating a new fashion. The band is difficult to control; it has effects in the North Korean society.

I agree with all the commentators that Moranbong Band has to be regarded as a symbol of a new era, giving a distinct aura for the reign of the new monarch. Ostensible audiences of its live concerts have been the Pyongyang political elite and targeted groups of military and technical professionals meriting special recognition, but the real audience has been the whole population with an access to a TV set.

Among the North Korean population the band became immediately extremely popular, an object of talk and admiration. The band had style, it promised something new, had a foreign aura even when playing familiar military marches, and made music that truly inspired people. Visitors tell about people dancing in public while listening to Moranbong Band DVDs, or shops closing and streets becoming deserted when the group’s concerts were broadcast on national TV.

The important thing that should be analyzed is the style of the political concerts, not the Disney and Rocky tunes of the first concert, which are rather irrelevant in the whole picture. Foreign political messages have been searched from it, like Jimin Lee has done, sensible at the time, but with hindsight it perhaps was just a whim, with no particular deeper meaning. In 2012 we still could assume that North Korea was ”under control,” whoever then did the controlling, but all the executions and forms of repression in 2013, as well as the treatment of Moranbong Band, have rather pointed to frantic efforts at regaining control.

Regimes of Art | Jacques Rancière’s concept of regimes of art may work as a usable tool to analyze the musical aspects of Moranbong Band (see: The Politics of Aesthetics. The Distribution of the Sensible, London and New York: Continuum, 2006, pp. 20-22). Ethical and poetic regimes are relevant here. The ethical regime is a totalizing political system: all arts, in the plural, are seen as serving the educational ethos of the state; raison d’Etat defines ethical principles.

Arts, such as music, are used for teaching citizens the teleological goals of the state, and the proper roles of citizens in fulfilling them. Arts that are not useful in this sense are not necessary, and thus banned. This is the art regime of socialist realism, still in force in North Korean popular media, at least until the emergence of the Moranbong Band. The poetic regime instead considers art as a singular, regarding it as an essential element in fulfilling human life, and as an autonomous form of existence separate from the state. The concept of fine art, referring to objects of art enjoyed solely because they are “art,” explicates the poetic regime.

We have seen also this type of art in North Korea, namely in certain performances of musical ensembles like the Samjiyon and Unhasu orchestras, which have performed traditional European classical music, and have been used for cultural exchanges with Russia and European countries, as Adam Cathcart and Steven Denney analyze here. They are important because of the high international prestige value accorded to elite forms of poetic art. These orchestras have been subsumed under state interests, but what is important here is that the education given in this field has directed artists towards poetic expression.

There exists an interesting video from 2011 where Suno Hyang-hui and Hong Su-kyong appear as ordinary violinists in a Samjiyon concert conducted by Pavel Ovsyannikov (Павел Овсянников), director of the Orchestra of the 21st Century of Russia (Русскийсимфоничейский “Оркестр XXI века” им. С.С. Прокофьева). Ovsyannikov also exemplified in person how a true artist should behave freely on stage.

However, the poetic regime is not limited to elite circles. It can exist equally in all forms of public producing of art, also popular music, because its essence is artistic creation and innovation. It is hard to define in an exact manner, but we recognize it when we see or hear it: the quality of doing whereby a creative, new, and inspiring element is added to the production.

Moranbong Band Style | Moranbong Band works within the ethical regime, singing the songs of the state, but in its activity it also continuously explicates the poetic regime. Its music is not ”pop,” nor is it typical ”military music.” The music it performs is rather technically difficult, containing complicated arrangements, as well as constant changes in melody, tempo, instrumentation, and singing.

Because the composition of the ensemble is so heterogeneous, there is an endless variety of possibilities in their disposal. They also change rapidly the types of music played, moving from military marches to classical music, throwing in a sweet pop hit or two, followed by political and religious songs.

All songs related to the Kim family have to be taken as gospels. They declare the good message (evangelium) of earthly but immortal gods, who over the boundary of death still give guidance and encouragement to their faithful congregation members, most touchingly exemplified by the sermons that the Eternal President Kim Il-sung delivers in videos during some Moranbong Band concerts.

The band plays softly while he speaks, transforming the historical video to a phenomenon of the present moment; the audience stands and listens reverently, breaking in the end into thundering applause. An example of this particular hymn was presented in the August 3, 2013 concert.

The Eternal President addressing his followers in summer 2013. | Image: Moranbong Band concert 3 August 2013/Youtube.

All these complicated harmonies created by the Moranbong Band – whoever then acts as the art director – are backed and carried forward by a rock beat, creating a rhythm that easily catches on and quickly makes the songs hits, but the arrangements contain so much detail, that one does not tire easily on the songs. These rock gospels are the artistic essence of Moranbong Band, and should be the principal subject of scholarly analysis, not an object of derision and mockery. These songs contain more than is visible at first sight.

This distinct style has continued despite personnel changes. Apparently there exists a large pool from where to draw talented musicians. The original members have been introduced by Darcie Draudt and Jimin Lee. By the April 11, 2013 concert bass player Ri Sol-lan and synthesizer player Kim Hyang-sun had disappeared from the ensemble. Kim Yong-mi, who had been playing piano thus far, replaced Kim Hyang-sun in one of the two synthesizers. Kim Jong-mi (김정미) became the new pianist. Jon He-ryon (전헤련) came to play bass. By the April 25, 2013 concert an eighth singer joined the choir for four concerts, but her name was too unclear to be deciphered. She did not appear in the last 14th concert.

However, these changes did not have any noticeable effect on the style; they rather increased the artistic qualities of the band. Presumably they were simply considered better musicians.

The distinct Moranbong Band style, simultaneously catchy and intricate, is clearly created by people used to the refined modulations of sound in classical music. It is not Unhasu Orchestra style, but resembling it at a more popular level. It can be called a symphonic style, in the Greek meaning of the word σύμφωνος, putting together different kinds of sounds, and ending in a harmonious, pleasing result. This poetic creation is continuous. Practically all of their versions of the national hymn Aegukka are different, although there would be no ethical social realist reason for this. They simply create art.

It is important to notice that also the choir strongly participates in this. They may sing sweet melodies with swaying bodies and appear very feminine on stage, but their singing skills, the constant interplay between singers, their concerted movement at the stage, and their small well-composed dances, are all true artistic creations, both musically and visually. All this can be seen clearly, e.g. in the two concerts given together with the State Merited Choir. The February 1, 2013 concert was not very good, because the SMC dominated, and its size drowned much of the Moranbong Band sound.

The only exception was the song Without a Break (단숨에). It was a military march turned into a contagious disco dance celebrating Kim Jong-un’s leadership in the successful launch of the Unha-3 carrier rocket on December 12, 2012, and an emblem of the national spirit that during 2013 came to be known as the revolutionary Masik Speed campaign in all fields.

At the time it was such a great new Moranbong Band masterpiece that it was presented also in this concert; with Moranbong Band lyrics and tempo, not with the original style more suitable for a large military orchestra and choir. The interesting detail was that it made even the military choir behave in a non-standard way, as they tried to keep up with the Moranbong Band tempo.

The October 15, 2013 concert was much better, because then Moranbong Band dominated, both in terms of allotted time, occupation of space at the stage, and in general style of the concert. The contrast between ethical socialist realist performance and poetic artistic performance can be seen in this concert with absolute clarity. This does not mean that SMC would be a bad choir; it is not. It simply is much narrower than Moranbong Band.

Thus, even though the Moranbong Band performs reverent political gospels in military uniforms, it nevertheless also constantly explicates an artistic regime that is different from the typical art regime of totalitarian North Korea. The stability of an ethical regime presupposes one-dimensionality and monotony, because the message that is repeatedly delivered must of necessity be simple, unambiguous, and unifying. Poetic art is a danger for it, because it continuously declares that there is change, imagination and continuous creating of new forms of expression. We have in music the same phenomenon as in hair style: the more the Moranbong Band does its best to conform and express loyalty to the Kim Jong-un regime, trying to create as effective political gospels as possible, the more it ends up creating something admirable and inspiring for the populace of North Korea.

Of course the political power of this kind of pure art cannot be considered very strong, or too obvious. If it were, we would not have heard about Moranbong Band as long as we did. But it is there, and it became problematic in North Korea when the atmosphere turned chilly in autumn 2013. At the moment only Kim Jong-il era type of music is being presented publicly, and, according to the KCNA, Kim Jong-un praises the musical skills of the Military Band of the Korean People’s Army, not those of Moranbong Band. Inspiring and creative forms of expression are not allowed in present North Korea. It is a rich country, and even liberal in one sense. It can afford to waste artistic talent liberally.

Wasting talent is an ominous expression regarding today’s DPRK. There is, however, an eyewitness’ assurance by Koryo Tours that Moranbong Band has not been purged or executed among the amounts of people affected by the Jang Song-thaek purges; they have been seen skiing at the Masik Pass Ski resort in mid-January. But this is the only good news from North Korea recently. This also means that besides losing the support of Jang, as New Focus International argues in its series of analyses, Kim Jong-un has lost also the ability to use the huge popularity of an apparently totally loyal musical ensemble for his support.