North Korean art – known as Chosonhwa – has a reputation for being kitschy. Artist and Professor B.G. Muhn – who teaches painting at Georgetown University – hopes to change this perception. He says the DPRK’s socialist realism “attempts to show reality by expressing the subtlety of human’s inner emotion.”

Having visited Pyongyang nine times between 2011 and 2016, Professor Muhn has now published a book: “Pyongyang Art: Uncovering the Complex Layers of Chosonhwa,” which he describes as the first focused on North Korean art.

DPRK art, he says, expresses a sense of transcendence and the nobility of the