by Arvid Stark
What if North Korea was sending the United States clear messages about its weapons programs — through the medium of rock concerts? For fans of North Korea’s somewhat sexy all-female Moranbong Band, Thursday’s announcement by the National Defence Commission stating that North Korea would be carrying out more rocket and nuclear tests aimed specifically at the US came as no surprise whatsoever.
The key messages were wrapped in one short song. Entitled “Without a Break,” it is a glorification of the country’s missile program and its nominal genius-supervisor, the Respected General Kim Jong-un himself. The song, an up-tempo instrumental, was premiered by the Moranbong Band on December 15 for a crowd that included the newly-emerged head of the rocket program and his scientists, precisely some of the people who yesterday were hit by UN sanctions and travel bans.
The same song was the centerpiece of the band’s next massive stadium show in Pyongyang, where on New Year’s Day the Moranbong Band presented probably one of the most mind-blowing experiences possible for a North Korean who has neither been abroad nor ever been to a rock concert. Not quite Metallica in Mexico City, though: Kim Jong-un was there again, this time with his astonishingly slender wife, and no one in the crowd so much as held up a cell phone to take a picture.
Like the premiere performance, the first verse zoomed on a map of North America glowing in a shade of blue that pulsated as if Kim Jong Un was King Thorin and North America full of orcs. The crowd roared: the goal of the missile program was clear! USA, West Coast, pronto.
Instead of the two-verse version performed previously, the New Year’s Day version of the song had a third verse added, offering opportunity for more images.
BLOWING UP USA
While the Moranbong Band players are intended to serve as eye-catching icons for the emerging Pyongyang elite, the images projected digitally during their concerts are in some ways the more important element. Notable in these images at the December 15 performance was the glorification of Kim Jong-un’s personal guidance of the research and development process of the missile, extending to large screenshots of the various memoranda the young leader had scribbled all over with his trademark Sharpie, and digital renderings of a satellite in orbit.
