Despite efforts to smuggle pop music into North Korea, most people still have no idea who Michael Jackson is. And sometimes the biggest fans turn out to be government spies ...
During North Korea's "arduous march" of the 90s, brought about by the collapse of the USSR and a series of natural disasters, illegal markets of smuggled goods sprang up across the country. It marked the beginning of a slow influx of outside culture still enjoyed by North Koreans today.
Charles Jenkins, a Korean war veteran who was captured and detained for 40 years, has witnessed this cultural transition. As a propaganda tool he was kept close to the elite and ? weirdly ? forced to become a film star. He escaped in 2004 and now lives in Japan. When I met him in 2008, he told me the only non-Korean music he came across before the 90s would be nationalist tomes imported from Soviet Russia. As a result, it wasn't until the mid-90s that he discovered who Michael Jackson was, when a smuggled Jacko cassette tape found its way into Jenkins's hands.
Although most North Koreans are still oblivious to MJ today ? leaving them ill-equipped to offer an opinion on the authenticity of his posthumous releases ? those who are allowed to interact with foreigners consume pop music enthusiastically. These days most students on the foreign relations course at Pyongyang's Kim Il-sung University will at some point encounter MJ, while the penetration of South Korean pop music (and TV dramas) in North Korean cities is widely reported, with both enjoying a wide following despite the act of consuming them being an imprisonable offence.
On a recent trip to Pyongyang, a guide by the name of Mr Oh took great relish in his regular party trick of "accidentally" confusing North Korean revolutionary songs for flashy South Korean pop. "Whoops! It's North Korean after all ... what a shame, I mean South Korean is much better, just don't tell any one," he would say. We later discovered he was not a tour guide at all, but a government spy keeping an eye on the "evil" Americans in our entourage. He'd done tae kwon do at the Mass Games and is pictured in the official Pyongyang guide book. The guy was an absolute gun. The North Korean Arnold Schwarzenegger. No wonder the government let him listen to South Korean pop and wear a Paul Smith shirt.
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