Songs for New Leaders

This chapter first turns the spotlight on how fascist and socialist states approach popular music, both in respect to control and censorship and in attempts to create authorized pop repertories, arguing for a redefinition of “popular.” It then introduces the two North Korean pop bands established in the mid-1980s, Pochonbo and Wangjaesan. Two vignettes explore how pop songs functioned as a “state telegraph” during the 1994–1997 transition period to Kim Jong Il that began with Kim Il Sung’s death, and during 2009–2011 as the third leader, Kim Jong Un, was eased into power, following the death of Kim Jong Il. Featuring Moranbong as the major group, it next discusses the revival in pop culture that began around 2010, finding evidence for this revival stretching back to the beginning of the new millennium. An epilogue briefly considers 2018, when North Korea sent an expanded Samjiyŏn troupe with 130 musicians to the Pyeongchang Winter Olympic Games and South Korea reciprocated, sending K-pop stars to Pyongyang. From 2015, with the second incarnation of Moranbong, and then in 2018 with the Samjiyŏn troupe, the clock was turned back, and songs once again became the primary musical tool of the northern regime, reinforcing ideology, and signaling changes both within North Korea and in North Korea’s relations with the outside world.