Month: June 2012

Two New DPRK Features

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The Rodong Sinmun’s English website has given a brief glimpse of two new features that have been produced (presumably, but who knows) this year in North Korea.

The first is “Wishes”

The Korean Film Studio recently produced feature film “Wishes”.

The film is based on the solo play “Wishes” which was highly appreciated at the second-term fourth contest of art squads of servicepersons’ families of the Korean People’s Army. It has a great significance in cognitive education.

A preview of the film took place at the People’s Palace of Culture on December 15.

It was enjoyed by Kim Yong Nam, Choe Yong Rim and other senior party and state officials, officials of the armed forces bodies, ministries and national institutions, and creators, artistes, journalists and editors in the fields of culture and art and mass media and officials in Pyongyang.

It is based on a true life story of servicepersons who took part in the construction of the Huichon Power Station and their families. It gives ideological and artistic portrayal of the greatest wishes of the Korean people who uphold leader Kim Jong Il as the father of a big family. It also tells how to live and work to have those wishes come true.

It impressively shows the unanimous desire of all the people of the country to have pictures taken with Kim Jong Il to keep them as their eternal family photographs.

Source: Rodong Sinmun

The second is “Little Girl Presenting Wild Flowers”:

 Korean feature film “Little Girl Presenting Wild Flowers” was produced.

The film is based on the true story about a little girl who deeply impressed leader Kim Jong Il as she placed a bunch of wild flowers with best wishes before the monument to on-the-spot guidance in June 1996, missing President Kim Il Sung very much.

Heroine Jong Hui devoted herself to training from the very day she joined the Korean People’s Army, bearing deep in mind the great loving care Kim Jong Il showed for her by praising her deed in her childhood and made her known to the whole country as “a little girl presenting wild flowers.”

Through the portrayal of the genuine and simple soldier standing firm guard over her post, always bearing deep in mind the honor of pleasing Kim Jong Il, the film impressively tells where the worth of living of the soldiers in the Songun era is.

Source: Rodong Sinmun

SEKs and The Lion King Mystery

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In previous posts I’ve touched on North Korea’s animation industry, which, through a combination of cheap labour costs and skilled animators, has attracted a number of well known companies to outsource their movies (with or without their knowledge) to North Korea.

One of the main people behind this is animation legend called Nelson Shin. Shin, a South Korean, and his production company in Seoul has contributed the majority of the animation from such American classics as “The Simpsons” and the original “Transformers” cartoon.

Recognising the potential to build bridges between the North and South, it’s been suggested that Shin has outsourced a lot of work for major projects to North Korea. Controversial as it may seem, Disney’s “The Lion King” is rumoured to have been partly drawn in the DPRK.

One such clue to this fact comes in one of the film’s more controversial scenes when a cloud of dust kicks up from under Simba’s body seemingly spelling out the word “SEX”. A cheeky move from infantile animators… or perhaps it was actually our North Korean animators working for the company SEK sneaking in their companies name into the movie?

It’s often been denied by Disney (who would have had no part in a third party outsourcing move that would have been illegal under US law) that any of the movie was made there, but it is interesting to note.

A really important (purposeful) collaboration did take place, however, in 2005 when Nelson Shin produced the first ever animated film made and distributed in North and South Korea at the same time. “Empress Chung” agonisingly has never been released on DVD, but I would give my right arm to be able to see this film sometime soon… that or to find out if I can see SEX or SEK in the dust from under that lion.