Kim Jong Un's Girl Group Moranbong Band Mentioned In 1 Of The 375 New Slogans Released Ahead Of North Korea's Congressional Meeting
Apparently, being a government-sponsored K-pop group has its advantages.
On Friday, when the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (the North Korean ruling party) unveiled 375 new slogans in anticipation of a May meeting of the congress, one of them directly referenced Moranbong Band, a group formed by the country's Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un.
"Learn from the revolutionary and militant creative style of the Moranbong Band!" the slogan read, according to a report by the BBC.
Other governmental suggestions include "become the sparks setting fire to the hearts of the masses and detonators giving full play to their mental power!" and "Let us thoroughly implement our Party's policy of putting all the people under arms and turning the whole country into a fortress!"
But like the 300 slogans released last year for the same purpose, many seemed to confront the issue of food scarcity that has increasingly plagued the country, long considered a rogue state by the US.
"Make the whole country seethe with a high-pitched campaign for producing greenhouse vegetables!" implores one pitch.
While another one appears to acknowledge the potential importing problems North Korea may experience following a new round of sanctions President Barack Obama approved on Friday.
"Let's give a decisive solution to the problem of consumer goods!" the slogan reads.
According to James Grayson, a professor of modern Korean studies at Sheffield University, the propaganda serves a very direct purpose.
"A lot of this has to do with very practical things to do with the economy, especially food," Grayson said in an interview with the Magazine Monitor when last year's list of slogans were unveiled
"It's an indication of the absolutely dire state of the North Korean economy. You have this huge disparity between the select few living in the best parts of Pyongyang, who live very well, there are now examples of international businesses there, coffee shops and designer labels, whereas other parts of the country are allowed to go to hell in a cart."
Since then the situation as only gotten worse, with the United Nations (UN) predicting back in June that drought conditions would cut national food production in half.
Due to the country's notorious secrecy and isolation from even its closest geographical neighbors, Liliana Balbi, a senior official at the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization, told the Guardian that the situation could be worse than we know.
"We don't have enough information to say if people are starving or not," she said. "But the situation is serious. They are on the borderline."
