Filmmaker Soon-mi Yoo is getting her own focus at the London Korean Film Festival. Her 2014 documentary Songs from the North takes a neutral approach toward a nation that is usually reviled or laughed at.
North Korea
Posted inArt
The Italian Gallery Brokering an International Market for North Korean Art
Much of the art that leaves North Korea travels to a small village outside Tuscany, where Pier Luigi Cecioni runs his gallery.
Posted inArt
The Mesmerizing Mundane Objects of Ordinary North Korean Life
With North Korea so often discussed only in terms of extremes, this exhibit’s focus on the mundane is what makes it so fascinating.
Posted inBooks
In North Korea, the Graphic Design of Everyday Objects Promotes National Identity
Selections from a frequent visitor’s personal collection highlight a “golden age” of North Korean graphic design.
Posted inNews
North Korea’s Top Architect Allegedly Executed, Possibly Due to Airport Design
When North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un toured the sparkling new Pyongyang Airport last week, he was happy. But throughout the event, the building’s chief architect Ma Won Chun was conspicuously missing.
Posted inOpinion
Chinese Artists to Host a North Korean Film Festival
You likely won’t hear about it on the festival circuit, but one of the most exclusive international venues can be found in Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea.
Posted inArt
Unicorns, Ghosts, and a North Korean Past
CHICAGO — Last December, rumors about a North Korean unicorn lair circulated the internet. Word got out that an ancient Korean king once rode this mythical beast. But soon it was discovered that this “unicorn” was not an actual unicorn, but rather an English mistranslation of the word “unicorn.” According to a report on International Business Times, the animal was actually a “beast with a dragon’s head, a deer’s body, the tail of a cow, hooves and a mane.” Because North Korea is known in the US for mysteries like these, and because the internet loves to consume bizarre or “weird” news, headlines about the supposed mythical unicorn creature lived for a while in readers’ minds.
Posted inOpinion
This North Korean Art Factory Will Build Monuments to Your Leaders
Here’s something you may not have known: there’s a massive art factory in North Korea that makes monuments, sculptures, statues museums, and more for at least a dozen countries around the world. In a fascinating story in Bloomberg Businessweek, writer Caroline Winter lays out the details — or at least those she can gather — of Mansudae Art Studio in Pyongyang, which takes up 30 acres, employs 4,000 people, 1,000 of them artists, and also includes a soccer stadium, paper mill, sauna, and kindergarten. Why does every story that comes out of North Korea seem somehow more bizarre than the last?
Posted inOpinion
Google Maps Reveals North Korea to the Web
It happened in a surprising instant: North Korea became just a little bit more accessible. Google Maps now features data on the secretive country, with the names of streets and buildings labeled, plus some more sensitive information.
Posted inOpinion
North Korea’s New Website
LOS ANGELES — North Korea has a new website. And as far as I can tell, it’s not a parody.
Posted inArt
You, Me and The DMZ: Imagining North Korea
North Korea is so wacky they have their own calendar system, and it marks its centennial anniversary in 2012, the birthdate of the late Kim Il-sung, Kim Jong-un’s grandfather. Dovetailing neatly with the recent passing of Übermeister Kim Jong-il, A Postcard From Afar: North Korea From A Distance at Apex Art showcases this mysterious place.
