In Praise of North Korean Pop Music November 23, 2014
Author: Beach Combing | in : Actualite, Contemporary , trackback
We need to be grateful for North Korea. In a world where communism has crumbled like a biscuit in milk, where even Cuba is getting excited about the market, where there are scores of Chinese billionaires, then good old North Korea is there to remind us of just how god awful state run life can be. Beach has long been a covert observer of hermit kingdom for many years and he thought that he would today share with readers his long-standing delight in North Korean pop music. In truth, Beach’s enthusiasm is not for pop music per se, but rather for North Korean pop videos: for the North Koreans have done to the traditional western pop tableaux what Mormons did to Romanesque architecture with their temples. You know those moments when you read about Stalinist Russia in the 1930s or the Maoist China a couple of decades later and you wonder, how could people have done this? Well, the great thing is that with these videos you can enjoy that surreal Marxist ambience in the here and now in an electronic rock format. Beach starts with his personal favourite Excellent Horse Like Lady. Enjoy the images of a Stakhanovite pop singer working in a textile factory to create demeaning-looking teeshirts.
Just to give you a buzz the singer, Hyon Song-wol, was according to the South Korean media machine gunned to death with other members of her band for having a Bible and starring in a pornographic video. Then, it turned out she was still alive and she gave a speech to a North Korean art conference dressed in a terrifyingly butch military number…. What a country: you could market it as a role playing game!
This is an endearingly creepy stalker number entitled Don’t Ask My Name. A man wants a girl and begins to chase her around the city…
This is Footsteps, which combines a martial air (‘footsteps stepping with vigorous energy’), very bad Beethoven (‘garnishing the pure energy of February’), and some Soviet style choirs. The crowds and the marchers are a bit passe, but the gun-toting Kim family at the end are absolutely adorable. Love the bit where Kim Jong Un goes horse-riding bonanza style.
Whistle was also a hit in South Korea and Japan. North Korea’s version was easily the best though. In bad acting terms there are sitcoms, soap operas, high school plays, porn and only then North Korean pop videos.
This is the unbiggotted sounding My Country is Best. Look out for the Stepford communists, for everyone smiles in North Korea. Oh and look out for the idiotic Europeans at the end: you can see ‘North Korea isn’t that bad…’ in their dance moves.
Here is Women are Flowers: the video seems to be a highlights of Korea compilation, look out for the squirrel.
This is Intimate Talk which has some graphics that look as if they came from a BBC B.
This is a song about a city girl who comes to the country to get married (country girl comes to ideal farm). Of course, the west too has its whole return to innocence genre, but past the bad acting and the adorable kids you know that this poor woman and her husband are going to be getting 500 calories less a day. It apparently comes from this enjoyable 1990s film of the same name.
The song is nothing special but this is the only time most of us will have seen beautiful young women in army uniforms playing electric guitars: state run rock music. It is all so confusing…. Love the gun and cordite backdrops.
Other NK music: drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com
Jokes aside, pity those who live there…
