The Jukebox in Pyongyang

If John Lennon imagines a shared world, without countries and without religions, U2 dedicate two songs to Martin Luther King, Simple Minds publish Mandela Day in the year of the liberation of the South African leader.

Immortal songs that represent important victories of civilization and hymns to freedom, capable of stimulating a change in consciences. But the combination of music and freedom is as powerful as it is uncomfortable: artists can represent a dangerous adversary for totalitarian regimes, to be eliminated with censorship and repression. In December 2020, North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un approved a "Law for the Elimination of Reactionary Thought and Culture": fifteen years in prison for those who possess prohibited material, while for those who dare to distribute it, life imprisonment or the death penalty. The music that Kim fears the most is South Korean K-pop, a real taboo, as it symbolizes an unacceptable integration between traditional Korean elements and Western pop music. The government of Seoul, for its part, is also well aware of the revolutionary power of music: in 2016, in response to a nuclear test by Kim Jon-Un, South Korea “fired” with a hit of the moment, Bang Bang Bang by the South Korean boy band Big Bang, blasting it at full volume from amplifiers placed on the border with the demilitarized zone.

So what kind of music can North Koreans listen to? The hard and endless working day of a North Korean begins at 6 in the morning, always with the same song, broadcast on the loudspeakers of the Pyongyang train station: it is called Where are you, my general? and serves to motivate the population to work, remembering the death of the "Eternal President" Kim Il-Sung. A catchphrase that can go on for hours. It is obviously not the only option on the jukebox, there are several patriotic songs, related to the cult of personality and with propagandistic titles such as Our life is really a song, We must hold our bayonets more firmly, My homeland full of happiness, We are One. Many of the most famous songs belong to a genre known as taejung kayo, traditionally performed by women accompanied by bands, or by choirs supported by a large orchestra. Among the few local pop groups, the Moranbong Band stands out, sixteen women (eleven instrumentalists and five singers) personally selected by dictator Kim Jong-Un, with a predictable repertoire of pieces dedicated to the leader and the country. North Korea also boasts a state symphony orchestra and an opera company with a disturbing name: Sea of ​​Blood.

The only wish we can make for this unhappy and closed “island,” stubbornly sealed in the sea of ​​contemporaneity, is that the long and overwhelming wave of free music may one day come to lap its shores. Who knows, maybe in the future the notes of Imagine will be able to freely flood the semi-deserted and silent streets of Pyongyang, to tone down the serial and Soviet greyness of its architecture and finally warm the hearts of its inhabitants, because only music, as Bach reminds us, «helps not to hear inside the silence that is outside».


Mauro Tabasso
with Valentina Giaresti
NP March 2025