Pyongyang Dreaming: The Cinema of North Korea

North Korea (officially the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) is everyone’s favorite totalitarian dictatorship, and like many dictatorships, the ruling family loves the cinema. As the late, great Kim Jong-il himself said in On the Art of the Cinema “The cinema is now one of the main objects on which efforts should be concentrated in order to conduct the revolution in art and literature. The cinema occupies an important place in the overall development of art and literature. As such it is a powerful ideological weapon for the revolution and construction. Therefore, concentrating efforts on the cinema, making...