North Korea is known worldwide for their restrictive approach to media distributed throughout the country, as an attempt to keep their citizens to follow and maintain the rigid regime of Kim Jong-un, the supreme leader. Meanwhile, their southern neighbors are blowing up mainstream media all throughout the world with the emergence of k-pop and Korean idols squeezing their way into the public eye. The two countries' approach to media is seemingly very different, as one uses a lack of media to control their population while another uses media to promote their culture to the world. However in recent years North Korea attempted to follow in the steps of K-pop, and take a shot at the music world for their own benefit.

The Moranbong Band, an all female band hand chosen by the North Korean Supreme Leader, Kim Jong-un, eerily resembles that of an all female music group that we might find in mainstream k-pop such as groups like blackpink or Twice. This new and northern take on k-pop, though, is less flashy and seems to revolve around the main ideas of the North Korean regime, mostly priding their country and the supreme leader with songs like “With Pride,” or “He’s our Comrade Kim Jong-Un.” North Korea has for quite some time now been seen as a part of the global south, due to how restricted the population is to the media, as well as what the global north might refer to as the idea of independence, freedom, and access to knowledge. There are some that believe this blatant response to South Korean K-pop as an attempt to increase morale within the country as a unification strategy. According to Time Magazine, “the North Korean leader reportedly handpicked the members himself, as part of a ‘grandiose’ cultural modernization effort (Meixler).” This direct response to k-pop is easily noted as an attempt to further the modernization that is attempted in North Korea by the government, as without culture, this task is posed as difficult. In this essay, I will argue that the Moranbong Band of North Korea does not reflect its contexts, by how it both does and does not reflect its audience through the style and formation of the band, as well as how this band does not reflect the technological infrastructure for most of North Korea. My goal is to dig deeper into this band, as well as North Korean popular culture and learn about state attempts at orchestrating cultural progression.

Through many life performances, most notably with the 2018 Winter Olympics (Arirang) as an attempt to join the two countries together, it is quite obvious that their hyper glamorized sequence studded bodysuits is not an incredibly accurate reflection of North Korea. A majority of their life performances include ideas of how great North Korea is and how well the country is doing for their people, when in reality, through numerous stories of escaping the country or even through the toxic mentality that is expected to have of the Supreme Leaders and the government, that the country is not what this group represents. One might say the same thing about American media of the diamond encrusted performers we have that travel the world to play music and represent the USA. For most American mainstream performers (unless you are talking about country music) lacks that extreme national pride that the Moranbong Band emulates. All of their songs, life performance visuals include a sense of ‘North Korea is doing great, there is nothing to worry about!”

In the 1990’s North Korea faced a famine that killed millions of people, and many blame the North Korean Government for their lack of responsibility to reach out for help when many of their crops failed to grow, which fed the country. Many believe that this is happening again, in 2019, as this year is the world crop yield in 10 years (Sang-hun). To have a country being starved to death, while also producing government manufactured media signaling to the rest of the world as being ‘okay,’ is completely contradictory in message versus actuality. If we are implying that the audience is supposed to be the North Korean population, whom most are in constant fear of the government, in an attempt to unify and modernize the country's culture - this band can't be further from the truth.

In other ways, this band is also completely representative of its audience if you change what its audience is intended to be. If we look at the audience as North Korea, which is what the band implies is, than no, this media does not represent its audience, but if you dig deeper its actual audience is spot on contextualized within this group. According to T.W. Lim for Asia & the Pacific Policy Studies, “the young and impressionable makes up an important segment of this target audience, and Moranbong's performances resonate with this segment of North Korean society, particularly its fashionable and status‐conscious younger elites.” This band is telling the world that they represent the country in many ways as a whole, when in fact, the target audience is an incredibly small minority that will in turn fill the shows of those currently in power by molding their ideologies with popular culture created by the state. In this case, the Moranbong Band is entirely representative of the intended audience, as a technique to manipulate national pride and devotion at a young age.

The actual audience of this band does not reach throughout the entire nation, yet ironically reached out to much of the world as an audience through the Winter Olympics in 2018. The audience intended by the state is very different that what the band claims to be, as most of those watching it are in positions of power in North Korea or simply foreigners who are being reassured that everything is okay through the many songs priding the supreme leader with lyrics like “How can he be so kind…His smile is so warm and sweet. I have no choice but to be taken by him and his warm heart (Lim).” This idea of national pride and the global image overlapping (126, Aronczyk) through the media is seen here in the bands constant reassurance in their songs to the world. They intend to have this image of the national as a representation of all of North Korea (when it is such a small minority), and use it to bring together the pride of the nation through a single unit, and distribute that national pride throughout the globe as a way of showing off their cultural development.

Developing a country, which is what many speculate is the intent of this band, as well as a few others, formation is, is far more than just shouting national pride through a microphone, especially with a medium like this. In a country whose citizens for the most part don't even have access to technology are a clear case that this band does not reflect its context. As mentioned by William Schramm, modernization through media ‘requires people to get a new set of skills (17),” or in this case, a new set of technologies to begin with. Because of the heavy restrictions around media and technology/communications, having this band reach every part of North Korea is almost impossible, unless they want to give their citizens access to this technology.

While the technology of this media does not reach a national level, as it might have been thought of as intended, this media certainly does reach a global level with their performance at the 2018 Winter Olympics, with all eyes on the Moranbong Bands performance, insisted on by Kim Jong-un - post meeting with the president of South Korea to help settle some divisions that the two countries had/have. This is partially due to the fact that the actual audience of this band is primarily countries who have access to technology, or rather “the global north” as well as the North Korea Elite. So it is logical that because only such a small amount of people have access to the technology that allows them to view the band from a distance is the primary audience, and everyone else, while intended to be included in that audience is actually excluded by the lack of means.

With the idea of this band reflecting the context surrounding its formation, it is easy to say that this isn't the case for the Moranbong Band, through their blatant obliviousness to the rest of the population of North Korea being pushed back by the Government restricting access to many medias, even a media like this one that promotes national identity and unification. It is interesting that this band’s main audience is young elite North Koreans, as the constant media that shapes them to be devoted to their country, while also shaping them into future leaders and military officials to replace the ones that are creating this content. One thing is for certain and it's that North Korea’s choice of who is in the band, also happens to be a young North Korean elite, who are all ranking military officials for North Korea. This band seems to be devoted to the fact that everyone, including them, are solely intended to serve North Korea by all means, even if it means being selected to perform in front of millions.

In conclusion, the North Korean attempt at k-pop through the Moranbong Band is a vessel to elicit the minds of the young to shape them into leaders, and does not reflect much of the context surrounding it, like the country it claims to unify in the end. Claims that this band is used to progress cultural development through releasing cheerful music praising the country and its leader, may be correct but in the long run was created to benefit the North Korean elite, not the country itself.

Cited Work

Aronczyk, Melissa. “Nation.” pp. 125–127. 2017.

Arirang. “Moranbong performs ''Dash to the future'' in South Korea.” Youtube, 25 May. 2018,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkY5qKD1fpc.

Lim, T. W. “State‐Endorsed Popular Culture: A Case Study of the North Korean Girl Band

Moranbong.” Asia & the Pacific Policy Studies, 4: 602– 612. doi: 10.1002/app5.195.

2017.

Meixler, Eli. “Moranbong Band: What to Know About North Korean Girl Group.” Time, Time,

16 Jan. 2018, https://time.com/5103724/north-korea-moranbong-band-winter-olympics/

Sang-hun, Choe. “North Korea Urgently Needs Food Aid After Worst Harvest in Decade, U.N.

Says.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 4 May 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/03/world/asia/north-korea-food.html.

Schramm, Wilbur. “ What Mass Communication Can Do, and What It Can Help to Do, in

National Development.” 1964, pp. 16–19.