Mick Hartley

From the Daily NK:

North Korea has ordered all writers and artists to complete an intensive ideological training course by early April, as the regime moves to tighten ideological control over the creative sector in line with resolutions from the Ninth Workers’ Party Congress, a source in Pyongyang told Daily NK on Monday.

“The party’s propaganda and agitation department and the culture ministry under the cabinet announced that all writers and artists are expected to attend an intense ideological training course by the beginning of April to help them carry out the resolutions of the Ninth Party Congress,” said the source.

The order was issued in early March, in accordance with leader Kim Jong Un’s declared drive for the “all-out development of socialism.” Its stated aims are to block the influx of foreign culture, eliminate non-socialist elements, and build a Juche culture insulated from ideological contamination.

The directive also calls for “erecting a cultural wall with South Korea” in support of the ruling party’s policy of treating North and South Korea as “two hostile states.”.

So what’s the most important task for these creatives?

The order further calls on the artistic community to intensify efforts to build a personality cult around Kim Jong Un. Writers and artists are expected to complete major works this year highlighting the regime’s achievements over Kim’s 15 years in power, including a large-scale collective theater production and a novel representing the Kim era.

What else is culture for?

But there are problems:

North Korea’s crackdown on South Korean pop culture has done little to dim young North Koreans’ enthusiasm for BTS, with sources inside the country reporting that the globally popular K-pop group has become so embedded in youth culture that those unfamiliar with them risk being labeled out of touch by their peers.

According to a Daily NK source inside North Korea, BTS has worked its way into daily life among young people not only in border regions but in the capital, Pyongyang, where being unaware of the group is enough to leave someone on the outside of peer conversations.

Oh dear.