Propaganda is widely used and produced by the government of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea). Most propaganda is based on the Juche ideology, veneration of the ruling Kim family, the promotion of the Workers' Party of Korea, and hostilities against both the Republic of Korea and the United States.
The first syllable of Juche, "ju", means the man; the second syllable, "che", means body of oneself. Article 3 of the Socialist Constitution proclaims, "The DPRK is guided in its activities by the Juche idea, a world outlook centered on people, a revolutionary ideology for achieving the independence of the masses of people."
Many pictures of the supreme leaders are posted throughout the country.
Early history and integration into society Since the division of Korea in 1945, propaganda has delivered its messages in primarily visual forms, such as posters. This stemmed from high illiteracy rates among adults and low primary school attendance rates among children. Posters in particular are a relatively cheap way to spread the government's messages to the people in an eye-catching way. Posters can be seen in many areas on a daily basis, so that the messages can either be directly or subconsciously absorbed by the people.
Themes Cult of personality
North Korean propaganda was crucial to the formation and promotion of the cult of personality centered around the founder of the DPRK, Kim Il Sung. The Soviet Union used propaganda to develop a cult of personality around Kim, particularly as a Korean resistance fighter, as soon as they put him in power. This quickly surpassed its Eastern European models. Instead of depicting his actual residence in a Soviet village during the war with the Japanese, he was claimed to have fought a guerrilla war from the Paektusan Secret Camp.
Once relations with the Soviet Union were broken off, their role was expurgated, as were all other nationalists, until the claim was made that Kim founded the Communist Party in North Korea. He is seldom shown in action during the Korean War, instead, soldiers are depicted as inspired by him. Subsequently, many stories are recounted of his "on-the-spot guidance" in various locations, many of them being openly presented as fictional.
This was supplemented with propaganda on behalf of his son, Kim Jong Il." The North Korean famine of the 1990s, referred to as a "food shortage" by DPRK propaganda, produced anecdotes of Kim insisting on eating the same meager food as other North Koreans.
Propaganda efforts began for the "Young General", Kim Jong Un, who succeeded him as the paramount leader of North Korea on Kim Jong Il's death in December 2011. In July 2026 it was reported that murals of Kim Jong Un were installed across city centres in North Korea.
Foreign relations
Early propaganda, in the 1940s, presented a positive Soviet–Korean relationship, often depicting Russians as maternal figures to childlike Koreans. As soon as relations were less cordial, they were expurgated from historical accounts. The collapse of the USSR, without a shot, is often depicted with intense contempt in sources not accessible to Russians.
Americans are depicted particularly negatively. Brian Reynold Myers says that they are presented as an inherently evil race, with whom hostility is the only possible relationship. The Korean War is used as a source for atrocities, less for the bombing raids than on charges of massacre. June 25 is considered the start of "Struggle Against US Imperialism Month" (informally called "Hate America Month" in the U.S. media), which is commemorated by anti-U.S. mass rallies at Kim Il Sung Square in the capital Pyongyang. In 2018, these rallies were cancelled in what the Associated Press called "another sign of detente following the summit between leader Kim Jong Un and U.S. President Donald Trump" that same year.
Japan is frequently depicted as rapacious and dangerous, both in the colonial era and afterward. North Korean propaganda frequently highlighted the danger of Japanese remilitarization. At the same time, the intensity of anti-Japanese propaganda underwent repeated fluctuations, depending on the improvement or deterioration of Japanese-DPRK relations. In those periods when North Korea was on better terms with Japan than with South Korea, North Korean propaganda essentially ignored the Liancourt Rocks dispute. However, if Pyongyang felt threatened by Japanese–South Korean rapprochement or sought to cooperate with Seoul against Tokyo, the North Korean media promptly raised the issue, with the aim of causing friction in Japanese–ROK relations.
According to Myers in 2010, friendly nations are depicted almost exclusively as tributary nations. The English journalist Christopher Hitchens pointed out in the essay "A Nation of Racist Dwarfs" that propaganda has a blatantly racist and nationalistic angle: Nevertheless, North Korea analyst Fyodor Tertitskiy states that North Korean propaganda has "never asserted that Koreans are biologically superior" and that in fact, "such a statement was always directly condemned by Kim Jong Il". Instead, "the greatness of the Korean people lies solely in their leader. Koreans are great because they are led by Kim Il Sung, not for any other reason". He also notes that North Korea gives very little weight to racial and nationalists element in its propaganda compared to the cult of personality around its leaders.
South Korea
South Korea was originally depicted as a poverty-stricken land which was run by harsh and cruel dictators backed by the US and where American soldiers based there shot and slaughtered Korean women and children, but by the 1990s, too much information reached North Korea to prevent their learning that South Korea had, by the 1980s, a much stronger economy and higher living standards and quality of life, including political and social freedom, and as a result, North Korean propaganda admitted to it.
"Military first"
Under Kim Jong Il, a major theme was the need of Kim to attend to the military first of all (in North Korea, this policy is called Songun), which required other Koreans to do without his close attention. This was a shift from the former policy of economic reform and diplomatic engagement. This military life is presented as something that Koreans take spontaneously to, though often disobeying orders from the highest of motives. The diplomatic offensive had failed to yield a normalization of relations with Japan. Meanwhile, relations with Russia remain cold and China was applying direct pressure on Pyongyang, thereby changing the dynamic of the long-standing relationship between the two erstwhile allies.
Devotion to the state Romance is often depicted in stories as being triggered solely by the person's model citizenship, as when a beautiful woman is unattractive until a man learns she volunteered to work at a potato farm.
Social control The capital city of North Korea has witnessed notable social control since Kim Il Sung's rule, and during as well as after Kim Jong Il's rule. The aerial bombardment of North Korean population centers inflicted the greatest loss of civilian life in the Korean War, which the North Koreans have claimed ever since was America's greatest war crime. Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) soldiers helped rebuild bridges, elementary schools, factories, and apartments. In February 1955, the 47th Brigade of the CPV rebuilt the Pyongyang Electric Train Factory.
The city's reconstruction was supervised by Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il. The DPRK, led by Kim Il Sung and supported by the Soviets, was left with a scene of complete and utter destruction; with the exception of a handful of buildings Pyongyang had been completely flattened. For a young general with socialist ideals, this was seen as a clean slate, on top of which a new country, both physically and ideologically, could be built.
Kim Jong Il favored grand scale buildings and monuments. The giant pyramid of the Ryugyong Hotel building, originally scheduled for completion in time for the 13th World Festival of Youth and Students in 1989, is 105 stories tall. Work on the structure stopped in the early 1990s due to structural defects. The monuments dedicated to Kim Il Sung were not made to be habitable, rather, they need only to look grand. A twenty-meter bronze statue of Kim Il Sung, arm outstretched to encompass his city, sits atop . Throughout the 1990s, Kim Jong Il had his late father's Kumsusan Palace extensively renovated to house the Great Leader's remains, hiring Russian specialists to embalm the corpse for permanent display. The planning of Pyongyang was unique. It was laid out in a highly symmetrical pattern. Massive, concrete structures are erected with a harmony of pastels. They did not possess the technology to construct any other type of buildings. An example of this is the pyramidal Ryugyong Hotel. There were no advertisements except political banners and portraits of the two Kims. There is very little traffic in the city, allowing for safe road crossing for pedestrians. Technology is in intentionally short supply in Pyongyang. Cell phones, the intranet, and the Internet are a service reserved for those in power. Internet access in North Korea is restricted to a small section of government and business officials who have received state approval, and to foreigners living in Pyongyang. In the absence of a broadband network, the only option is through satellite internet coverage which is available in some tourist hotels. Mobile phone use was banned in 2004, but service was re-introduced in 2008, jointly operated by the Egyptian Orascom company and the state-owned Korea Post and Telecommunications Corporation. According to the Daily NK website, the new service, despite its cost, proved popular among affluent party members in Pyongyang.
Women in North Korea
The cultural identity of North Korea was deeply rooted in Confucian tradition and intractable Confucian family traditions. Women's identity is seen through the prism of familial relationships. It became a primary aspect of women's lives irrespective of prevalent political regime or social circumstances. Women were considered angels which men had to protect. Women in representative propaganda productions, such as Sea of Blood and The Flower Girl, became not only the focal point of visual composition within the traditional family structure but also the agents of ideological awakening for the newly founded socialist state. Revolutionary operas and numerous other productions depicted as well as forged the new gender order within the structure of the imagined family, which gained supremacy over blood ties. The imagined family was deemed by the degree of commitment to ideological and political struggle, which separated the people from the enemy. Thus, imagining a family was perceived as a process of liberating women and motivating them to have a larger social presence.