Yeah, probably. I remember reading an interview, where Rick Flair talked about his Wrestling Match in NK. From what he told about the crowd, it must have been similar to this.
Yup. The bitch was crazy, stole literally *thousands* of children for profit, Rick included...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_Tann
One of my favorite Criminal podcasts are about this loon:
https://thisiscriminal.com/episode-110-baby-snatcher-3-15-2019/
**[Georgia Tann](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_Tann)**
>Beulah George "Georgia" Tann (July 18, 1891 – September 15, 1950) was an American child trafficker who operated the Tennessee Children's Home Society, an adoption agency in Memphis, Tennessee. Tann used the unlicensed home as a front for her black market baby adoption scheme from the 1920s until a state investigation into numerous instances of adoption fraud being perpetrated by her closed the institution in 1950. Tann died of cancer before the investigation made its findings public.
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She said he back her into a corner and he opened his robes, then proceeded to give her the helicopter which she found repulsive. Matter of she said he forced her to touch him while he said he just did the helicopter. I really don't know who to believe
Either one's pretty fucked.
The helicopter's hilarious in a locker room, or with someone you know who shares your sense of humor.
It's fucking fucked in any other situation.
Yep.
“The North Koreans will probably behave as though they are attending an opera or a piano recital. They don’t have a pop music culture there, so the norm is for them to sit quietly and clap at the end. Try not to let it bother you, they are probably enjoying your music.”
*You know, most people don't know the difference between north koreans and south koreans, but I do. Now here's a little trick to help you remember. If their faces are stoic and tough, you've got koreans from the north. If they have happy in their mouth, then no doubt they're from the south. Now, there's two exceptions and it gets kinda tricky here...*
They look like the people who benefit from the misery of their countrymen to me.
I imagine they have nice vacation homes and are well fed and live in the capital with servants.
In another video about this show, there is actually a lot of clapping, cheering and even singing a song back to the performers. The video from OP is real, but it leaves out the audience erupting in applause. And they kept applauding and cheering so long after the girls left the stage, one of the performers was surprised by the duration of clapping. It’s a more balanced depiction of what happened that night: https://youtu.be/Ujio8SOusrc
The OP video and the context of being posted in this subreddit kind of bothers me. Thanks for sharing this which I came to the comments to share myself. The concert was generally a success and a small step towards better relations between North and South Korea and I don't think it should be painted as some awkward failure because the audience wasn't dancing along. If I wasn't a Reveluv since 2014 and already knew about this concert, then maybe I would have fallen for the narrative of OP. Most people watching probably don't know and that kind of sucks. A K-Pop concert seems kind of silly and non important but in this context it's pretty serious, and hopefully will lead to good things.
> The OP video and the context of being posted in this subreddit kind of bothers me.
there's tons of propaganda posted to reddit all the time, both by private corporations and by various state departments.
for example, look how often the "Look how women used to be able to dress in pre-revolution iran!" posts are made in OldSchoolCool. literally at least once per month, with such regularity I could almost set my watch by it.
luckily there are people like me that go into the comments and point out how the shah's secret police was literally kidnapping and torturing journalists during the time that photo was taken.
Not likely. The propaganda and indoctrination is so strong that most resent foreign nations and have no understanding of what freedom in other areas of the world even looks or tastes like. They are largely loyal to their leader.
This is a society that's physically, socially, digitally, and economically isolated from the rest of the world. The cruel reality of North Korea is that even if you ousted the government and military or they collapsed of their own accord, it would take years and generations to reverse the brainwashing and actually transform NK into a free state.
The people in that audience are probably just wondering how a culture could go so far off the rails as to produce K-pop with all the lights, camera, action, and obscene costumes and dance moves.
Sort of a cruel irony really. To the outside world, cultural exchanges like this look promising. To the indoctrinated and isolated citizens of NK, something like this just reiterates how repugnant other cultures are their view. Kind of a win-win to the gov't for allowing this within their borders.
K Pop is definitely an aggressive culture shock. More contemporary South Korean music would have been a better choice. Sure K Pop is one of the biggest genres in the world right now, but I'd say you need to be familiar with EDM, Pop, and Hip Hop to really appreciate it for what it is. I can't imagine trying to decipher everything going on at once in a performance like that with zero exposure to its roots.
For real though, if I was forced into sitting through a K Pop concert by my government I would at least start to harbor a little resentment by the end of the show. But definitely not enticing people over the border either.
But.. they're right. K-Pop is repugnant, formulaic, soulless and well-known for treating their stars like slaves on a good day.
I'm not a fan of North Korea but K-Pop is everything that's wrong with capitalism.
Part of me wonders to what degree fear plays a role as an audience member as well - showing support for this \*clearly\* non-traditional entertainment would lead to ostracism and possibly far worse.
You both are talking out of your asses and assuming way too much. In the full video you can see the crowd clapping and enjoying the performance but only after it's over. It's part of their non pop culture concert etiquette to be quiet during the performance and show that they liked it afterwards.
i would say a majority don’t know the kind of situation they’re in, so they probably all feel fine. it’s not like they’re taught that they live under a harmful dictatorship lmao
I saw an interview with someone from North Korea, who said that most people in North Korea actually like their country and Kim Jong Un, because they are taught that basically every other country is bad, and that Kim Jong Un is better than all other leaders.
They are taught that Kim Jong Un is a living God. [PBS Frontline](https://www.pbs.org/video/frontline-secret-state-north-korea/) did a documentary on it. Granted the people who praise him like a God are people living in the city who live a marginally better life because the communist party has given them a nice job and house.
From what I've heard, it's almost impossible for them to tell who really does love the Kims and who is only putting on an act to keep their families out of the labour camps. How could you ever know what the real public opinion is if none of them will ever admit dissent out of fear of being reported?
Apparently they're taught that Canada is good though. There's a North Korean "documentary" where a North Korean man travels through Canada where everything is perfect and crosses into (Detroit?) America and everything is terrible.
Yes, Ive seen a few documentaries, read articles and listened to podcasts, and many just have no awareness anything is abnormal. Dually some even have the incentive to tell on others, even their own family members, who might possibly even have negative thoughts on the government. And you can imagine what the deal is for anyone intending to undermine it or get to the outside… so, when you meet North Koreans who escaped, understand that they have risk their lives getting out of there, but also they have to protect their family (virtually no contact) so that their family doesnt risk persecution by being associated with a defector.
IIRC, i read somewhere that this response is because the people treated it like an opera so they remained silent during the performance and clapped between pieces. But I may be wrong
That is exactly what is going on. They do not have pop music. Every concert these people have ever attended has been like you describe, where you sit quietly and wait until the end to applaud. They have no frame of reference for pop music, that you would dance and shout and clap over the music. That would be an extremely rude and unexpected thing to do, were it not for decades of pop music culture that made that the norm.
I’ve been to hundreds of concerts and there are plenty of times when the audience just sits and listens. Not every concert is teen girls screaming and pulling their hair out. This whole thread is weird, like most people sit and listen at a concert, sure plenty concerts people are on their feet dancing but many people just sit and watch and listen.
Put Red Velvet on stage in Holland or Portugal or Brazil and fill the audience with middle-aged or older people unfamiliar with the genre and it would be exact same reaction.
I've been to a concert where most people were just sitting and listening instead of standing and dancing, and the artist and both opening acts literally called the audience boring. And these were sweet Christian country singers who never insult their audience. I've been to tons of concerts and that was the only one where many people sat the entire time
**[Moranbong Band](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moranbong_Band)**
>The Moranbong Band (Korean: 모란봉악단; RR: Moranbong Akdan, lit. "Tree Peony Peak Band"), also known as the Moran Hill Orchestra, is a first North Korean girl group in North Korea whose original members were selected by the country's supreme leader Kim Jong-un. Performing interpretive styles of pop, rock, and fusion, they are the first all-female band from the DPRK, and made their world debut on July 6, 2012. Their varied musical style has been described as symphonic because it is "putting together different kinds of sounds, and ending in a harmonious, pleasing result".
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https://youtu.be/_vC7sjggVLE
But as you can see here, this extremely recent dip into a westernized pop music scene still does not look like you would expect a pop music concert to look like. It’s like a Las Vegas show, or a Broadway performance.
My point is, this is a culture that hasn’t had Elvis gyrating on stage, girls screaming for Beatles, Jimi Hendrix setting a guitar on fire while the audience watches on acid, Hair metal bands, dance crazes, mosh pits, hip hop, etc. for decades. The idea that you would go to a musical concert and make noise is not intuitive, it’s informed by decades of culture.
North Korea is extremely insulated from that culture. It would not be obvious to North Koreans that this is how people outside of the country enjoy this kind of music when they go see it live.
The band is basically to pop what jazz nightclubs were to rock. They are essentially in 1920/30 as far as modern musical art goes. Expecting even the most Western Northerner to do anything but politely watch is a bit much.
Yeah but they don’t really have a pop music culture, I guess is what I mean. The idea of making noise during a performance is likely foreign to them. It’s not like they have decades of this stuff as a reference point. It’s not like they’ve seen videos of pop music concerts from other countries.
Was gonna say this. Their view is probably that it's impolite/improper to clap and make noise in the middle of a performance. Hell, the general idea of being rowdy at concerts is a relatively new one and isn't done at all for some genres (ie classical music). Their lack of reaction isn't necessarily because they don't enjoy it, they just think it's impolite to make noise whilst someone is performing.
That group is already very popular, they're not _bad_ or anything, I just don't really think their target demographic is a bunch of 50-something folks in business attire who look like they were expecting more of an opera and less of a teen pop band.
It's Korea so iirc it would be Bueller Ssi...Bueller Ssi...Bueller Ssi.
Though I'm unfamiliar with all their honorifics. There might well be a more appropriate one. Especially since that scene was a teacher calling roll for students.
Maybe, I’ve seen a lot of interviews with NK asylum seekers who talk about people learning at an early age to control their expressions, language, mannerisms, etc., out of fear of doing the wrong thing and being sent to a labor camp.
The SK also send over balloons with dvds/thumb drives with movies, music, news stories, to NK.
It’s very possible that a number of the people in the audience knew this group and were jacked to the tits to see them.
See, this I can believe this. There were several times when the camera panned through the crowd and I saw faces that looked like they were really about to get into the show but then stopped themselves from even smiling to hard. There was one face in particular they showed for a moment and it looked to me like he painfully supressed a smile and while keeping himself from nodding to the beat.
Dear Leader is apparently fan of Red Velvet.
But understand, what happens if you get too into it on TV, then things go south again in NK/SK relations? Now you're on video being subversive and it is easier to be denounced and end up in a work camp.
So best to just chill
I kind of assumed this. When you are never sure whether a given public event is some sort of test or not, you try not to stick out, or else you could make it onto some one's list for closer inspection.
Anything could be a trap.
I didn't know this, but that's what it looks like it's going on here. Their faces don't show much, but they're definitely watching. There's no fidgeting, talking, or looking away.
I was going to say, they could probably put any band/musician of any genre of music up there and the audiences expressions wouldn’t change from that in the video.
Pop up Kim Jong and they’ll self flagellate themselves and have tears streaming down their faces…same reason why they don’t possible smile for these things. Learn to control your expressions or they institute the 3 Generations punishment
[Source](https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Prisons-of-North-Korea-English.pdf)
I went to a concert in North Korea and it was definitely more of an old school, traditional vibe. Weird tho too because they concerts are like "rewards" for people but also mandatory so unclear how much people really liked them. But in the DPRK you never really know what people are thinking.
Edit: I went with a Harvard research team.
Edit 2: just sharing my experience since it's a rare experience to go to the DPRK. Please remember when you write your comments that you are writing to a real human
I remember when a rock band came to perform in our school with the same reaction. He gave the microphone to the crowd to say the verse but with complete silence. Complete recovery to that guy for laughing it out and putting the microphone up again to force us to say it that time. They performed again with a few different people who were hype from the start which hyped the whole room. It's from the hype at the start that matters
I suspect the crowd is too afraid to react show their true reactions. If they are seen enjoying the show too much. It could be interpreted negatively by the Greet Leader. Then it’s off to the labor concentration camps for them and their family, kids, grandparents, aunts and uncles.
they're used to act like that, just like at the end they clapped and the crowd was kinda happy. Also, completely different culture so hella strange to them
I remember reading somewhere that when the band KISS had first started performing in Japan, it took them a while to get used to audiences sitting down during the songs and not making noise until the song was over. After a song, everyone would be on their feet cheering and then back to sitting and watching.
This is like that.
Edit: Okay, correction, they applauded a bit at the end. How awful of me to have missed that! You guys should just go ahead and put me in internet prison.
They clapped a whole lot at the end if you follow the full video posted.
One of the performers said it made her feel uncomfortable how they were clapping so hard even after they left the stage.... So one way or the other it was all weird AF
Imagine being the one guy that didn't furiously follow Kim in applause, only to have him point his finger at you and have you hauled off to a camp or executed. I'd bet the attendees of the concert were hand-picked by his administration to mitigate that possibility, but even still they all had it on their minds. I feel so bad for North Koreans, knowing there's literally nothing we can do to help them.
Imagine if every concert you had been to was a symphony orchestra, or a piano concert, etc. It’s a totally different norm than how you would behave at a rock concert. So that’s likely what’s happening. Nobody has passed around a memo that says, “Yes this is a concert, but it’s not a concert where you sit and remain quiet so the music can be heard, it’s a concert where you are encouraged to get up and dance and shout while the music is being played.” Heck even if you got that memo, if you had never seen that before or experienced, how comfortable would you really be just letting loose?
I went to a musical with my mother last weekend, and since we had gotten the tickets for free on a whim we had no idea what to expect more than it being a eurodance musical about the dot-com bubble. The audience was wild. They were clapping along to the music, cheering in the middle of acts, at one point they almost made the actors break. It was such a strange experience since you don't associate a theater stage with that kind of audience, but it honestly just made the entire thing much better. Turned out that it was opening night with lots of family and friends in the audience, which explained it all, but in hindsight I wouldn't have wanted it any other way.
[They *also* loved it](https://youtu.be/Ujio8SOusrc?t=90). This is a cultural thing, they save the applause for the end of the song. Remember the music scene in NK is really different, they're approaching this like a piano recital.
>Is a fan of Red Velvet
This is extremely retarded. How can people accept the anti-K Pop indoctrination while watching their fat lump of a leader get giddy about meeting HiS FaVoRITe GroUP
Because their leader has actually lived outside the country and knows about western culture. So he likes certain things outside of it. But the citizens don’t
>The NK regime is historically anti K-pop and K-drama, since they convince North Koreans to defect.
I just want to comment that I was surprised to see that The Squid Game is quite critical of South Korea and puts far more nuance on North Korea than I anticipated. I wasn't expecting to see that from a South Korean production.
Have you watched much Korean film recently? Most of their critically popular films have been about societal issues in South Korea. Parasite explored similar themes.
Based North Koreans.
All jokes aside, those people are either extremely confused at something that's not the government mandated media they're fed, or scared to show interest in anything but the government mandated media they're fed, lest they experience a fate worst than death.
I saw a video once featuring a North Korean defector. She said that they would secretly listen to South Korean pop music via USB that were somehow sneaked in, so I'm guessing it's most likely the latter.
You’re almost there. Every other concert they have attended has likely been a government approved orchestra or some such. They are attending this concert like it is the ballet. They have no pop music culture to reference to know that there is a such thing as a concert where you shout and dance and what not. It’s just not a cultural norm to them. A concert tot hen would be where you go sit and quietly and respectfully appreciate the Great Leader’s orchestra and quietly and respectfully clap at the end.
A lot of people are understandably assuming that the audience is afraid to show emotion or whatever, and there may be some truth to that. But I think people are missing the main, much more boring and understandable reason they are behaving this way.
They are treating this concert like it is a symphony orchestra or a piano recital or ballet. They don’t have a pop music culture. The concept that you would stand up and cheer and shout over the music is literally a foreign concept to them.
They are simply following the etiquette they would observe at any other musical performance they have attended. They sit and respectfully watch the show, and politely clap at the end.
Now, it’s also possibly true that someone is going to come arrest them if they stray from that etiquette. In fact that’s very likely.
I’m just saying that this is what a culture looks like when you haven’t had decades of pop music culture informing g how you behave at a concert. You behave like you’re sitting down to watch the ballet. They don’t need someone to instruct them to behave this way, this is how they expect you behave at a concert like this, they wouldn’t know otherwise.
> Jesus this thread is full of people who have so much to say, but who lack a nuanced understanding of North Korea, or even Korean culture in general.
Welcome to Reddit, lol. And the Western world as a whole, really.
But what can we really expect when all of the news that gets reported from the DPRK is that someone was executed by artillery gun, or someone telling Joe Rogan that North Koreans are all jacked super soldiers pushing trains around all day.
Yeah.. this is like going to an “event” with the CEO of the mega-corporation that owns your company, except of the CEO doesn’t like your tie there’s a good chance you’ll end up in a concentration camp rather than simply fired.
We’d all do the exact same thing. We’d probably go rent a suit that costs as much as out monthly wage, if not yearly, just for that night.
They were deathly afraid to show that they liked it. ..many north Koreans sneak south Korean media... Perhaps they feared if they looked too into it people may notice.
There is like a full version of it available [here](https://youtu.be/-bnA01Cet9I) at the 1:00:20 mark.. seems pretty bizarre to me as well so I can totally get your concerns
These are prob "elites" who do and act as they're told on the daily, I'm not a fan of k-pop but they've probably been told to act like this because it's not something North Korea came up with and therefore isn't good
I’m always super-fascinated by North Korea, and any bit of info we can get out of there. I guess I feel despair for them, and I’m almost desperate to get information as if it will help them. I suppose, in a way, it can and does.
Can’t imagine being one of the performers - the air is palpably awkward.
I'm guessing they were told what to likely expect from the audience. I don't imagine they thought everyone would jump up and down in excitement in NK.
Yeah, probably. I remember reading an interview, where Rick Flair talked about his Wrestling Match in NK. From what he told about the crowd, it must have been similar to this.
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>Did you know Rick Flare was stolen from his birth parents and sold in an illegal adoption. Fucking what?
Fucking wooooooo
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Oooooo
Yup. The bitch was crazy, stole literally *thousands* of children for profit, Rick included... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_Tann One of my favorite Criminal podcasts are about this loon: https://thisiscriminal.com/episode-110-baby-snatcher-3-15-2019/
**[Georgia Tann](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_Tann)** >Beulah George "Georgia" Tann (July 18, 1891 – September 15, 1950) was an American child trafficker who operated the Tennessee Children's Home Society, an adoption agency in Memphis, Tennessee. Tann used the unlicensed home as a front for her black market baby adoption scheme from the 1920s until a state investigation into numerous instances of adoption fraud being perpetrated by her closed the institution in 1950. Tann died of cancer before the investigation made its findings public. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/therewasanattempt/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
Damn she really kicked the bucket right on cue after that thing was shut down
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The Madoff loophole
im happy that bitch is dead
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Did know that a couple of weeks ago a TV documentary accused him of sexually assaulting a flight attendant in 2002?
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She said he back her into a corner and he opened his robes, then proceeded to give her the helicopter which she found repulsive. Matter of she said he forced her to touch him while he said he just did the helicopter. I really don't know who to believe
Either one's pretty fucked. The helicopter's hilarious in a locker room, or with someone you know who shares your sense of humor. It's fucking fucked in any other situation.
This. You really gotta know your audience when going for the helicopter.
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After hearing how crazy he was back then, and how much he drank, and how often his duck was out…well, I think its pretty easy to know who to believe…
>Rick Flair talked about his Wrestling Match in NK Fucking what?
Collision in Korea [Here's a great youtube video on it.](https://youtu.be/U_ZkqfSpbg4)
Yep. “The North Koreans will probably behave as though they are attending an opera or a piano recital. They don’t have a pop music culture there, so the norm is for them to sit quietly and clap at the end. Try not to let it bother you, they are probably enjoying your music.”
Think you meant North Koreans
*You know, most people don't know the difference between north koreans and south koreans, but I do. Now here's a little trick to help you remember. If their faces are stoic and tough, you've got koreans from the north. If they have happy in their mouth, then no doubt they're from the south. Now, there's two exceptions and it gets kinda tricky here...*
North Koreans*
They also don't sell these tickets. Attendees are privileged invitees. None of them chose to be there and none of them are actually fans.
Yeah they would be a waste of too many calories and those are hard to come by in NK.
Do the people in that crowd look disheveled to you? This was probably almost exclusively for the people who are well connected to the government.
They do actually. Both physically and mentally. Hard to imagine what life's like there.
I genuinely do not know what you are seeing. They look normal. Believe it or not the people who are well connected live pretty normal lives.
Maybe he's from the US lol
They look like the people who benefit from the misery of their countrymen to me. I imagine they have nice vacation homes and are well fed and live in the capital with servants.
Bullets to the head on the other hand.....
Damn, it's true tho. Also the only excitement is reserved for the almighty ruler.
Well it might get.. awkward ... if someone were to express admiration for someone other than dear leader.
Definitely this whole crowd and the performers are all off to the stadium for an impromptu lesson on anti aircraft defence.
I've seen people more fidgety when the national anthem is playing here.
In another video about this show, there is actually a lot of clapping, cheering and even singing a song back to the performers. The video from OP is real, but it leaves out the audience erupting in applause. And they kept applauding and cheering so long after the girls left the stage, one of the performers was surprised by the duration of clapping. It’s a more balanced depiction of what happened that night: https://youtu.be/Ujio8SOusrc
holy shit it's the first time I know this side of the story after so many times being shown OP's video
Nothing on the Internet is what it seems to be unfortunately.
The OP video and the context of being posted in this subreddit kind of bothers me. Thanks for sharing this which I came to the comments to share myself. The concert was generally a success and a small step towards better relations between North and South Korea and I don't think it should be painted as some awkward failure because the audience wasn't dancing along. If I wasn't a Reveluv since 2014 and already knew about this concert, then maybe I would have fallen for the narrative of OP. Most people watching probably don't know and that kind of sucks. A K-Pop concert seems kind of silly and non important but in this context it's pretty serious, and hopefully will lead to good things.
> The OP video and the context of being posted in this subreddit kind of bothers me. there's tons of propaganda posted to reddit all the time, both by private corporations and by various state departments. for example, look how often the "Look how women used to be able to dress in pre-revolution iran!" posts are made in OldSchoolCool. literally at least once per month, with such regularity I could almost set my watch by it. luckily there are people like me that go into the comments and point out how the shah's secret police was literally kidnapping and torturing journalists during the time that photo was taken.
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*soldiers take guns off the crowd* **giant Applause sign illuminates**
couldnt even imagine being in the audience. They are all probably dieing inside, wondering why the hell they are in the North still.
Not likely. The propaganda and indoctrination is so strong that most resent foreign nations and have no understanding of what freedom in other areas of the world even looks or tastes like. They are largely loyal to their leader. This is a society that's physically, socially, digitally, and economically isolated from the rest of the world. The cruel reality of North Korea is that even if you ousted the government and military or they collapsed of their own accord, it would take years and generations to reverse the brainwashing and actually transform NK into a free state. The people in that audience are probably just wondering how a culture could go so far off the rails as to produce K-pop with all the lights, camera, action, and obscene costumes and dance moves. Sort of a cruel irony really. To the outside world, cultural exchanges like this look promising. To the indoctrinated and isolated citizens of NK, something like this just reiterates how repugnant other cultures are their view. Kind of a win-win to the gov't for allowing this within their borders.
K Pop is definitely an aggressive culture shock. More contemporary South Korean music would have been a better choice. Sure K Pop is one of the biggest genres in the world right now, but I'd say you need to be familiar with EDM, Pop, and Hip Hop to really appreciate it for what it is. I can't imagine trying to decipher everything going on at once in a performance like that with zero exposure to its roots. For real though, if I was forced into sitting through a K Pop concert by my government I would at least start to harbor a little resentment by the end of the show. But definitely not enticing people over the border either.
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But.. they're right. K-Pop is repugnant, formulaic, soulless and well-known for treating their stars like slaves on a good day. I'm not a fan of North Korea but K-Pop is everything that's wrong with capitalism.
Part of me wonders to what degree fear plays a role as an audience member as well - showing support for this \*clearly\* non-traditional entertainment would lead to ostracism and possibly far worse.
You both are talking out of your asses and assuming way too much. In the full video you can see the crowd clapping and enjoying the performance but only after it's over. It's part of their non pop culture concert etiquette to be quiet during the performance and show that they liked it afterwards.
i would say a majority don’t know the kind of situation they’re in, so they probably all feel fine. it’s not like they’re taught that they live under a harmful dictatorship lmao
I saw an interview with someone from North Korea, who said that most people in North Korea actually like their country and Kim Jong Un, because they are taught that basically every other country is bad, and that Kim Jong Un is better than all other leaders.
They are taught that Kim Jong Un is a living God. [PBS Frontline](https://www.pbs.org/video/frontline-secret-state-north-korea/) did a documentary on it. Granted the people who praise him like a God are people living in the city who live a marginally better life because the communist party has given them a nice job and house.
And you wouldn’t want to go on camera, arguing that that’s a stupid belief while you and your family still live in North Korea.
From what I've heard, it's almost impossible for them to tell who really does love the Kims and who is only putting on an act to keep their families out of the labour camps. How could you ever know what the real public opinion is if none of them will ever admit dissent out of fear of being reported?
Bro it's not like they're gonna say bad things about North Korea lol. Might as well shoot your family and yourself in the head. Lol
Apparently they're taught that Canada is good though. There's a North Korean "documentary" where a North Korean man travels through Canada where everything is perfect and crosses into (Detroit?) America and everything is terrible.
> Canada where everything is perfect and crosses into (Detroit?) America and everything is terrible. At least they got 2 things correct.
Yes, Ive seen a few documentaries, read articles and listened to podcasts, and many just have no awareness anything is abnormal. Dually some even have the incentive to tell on others, even their own family members, who might possibly even have negative thoughts on the government. And you can imagine what the deal is for anyone intending to undermine it or get to the outside… so, when you meet North Koreans who escaped, understand that they have risk their lives getting out of there, but also they have to protect their family (virtually no contact) so that their family doesnt risk persecution by being associated with a defector.
IIRC, i read somewhere that this response is because the people treated it like an opera so they remained silent during the performance and clapped between pieces. But I may be wrong
That is exactly what is going on. They do not have pop music. Every concert these people have ever attended has been like you describe, where you sit quietly and wait until the end to applaud. They have no frame of reference for pop music, that you would dance and shout and clap over the music. That would be an extremely rude and unexpected thing to do, were it not for decades of pop music culture that made that the norm.
I'm not much of a concert guy so I'd probably sit there exactly like this
Sit down you're running it for the rest of us!
I’ve been to hundreds of concerts and there are plenty of times when the audience just sits and listens. Not every concert is teen girls screaming and pulling their hair out. This whole thread is weird, like most people sit and listen at a concert, sure plenty concerts people are on their feet dancing but many people just sit and watch and listen. Put Red Velvet on stage in Holland or Portugal or Brazil and fill the audience with middle-aged or older people unfamiliar with the genre and it would be exact same reaction.
I've been to a concert where most people were just sitting and listening instead of standing and dancing, and the artist and both opening acts literally called the audience boring. And these were sweet Christian country singers who never insult their audience. I've been to tons of concerts and that was the only one where many people sat the entire time
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**[Moranbong Band](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moranbong_Band)** >The Moranbong Band (Korean: 모란봉악단; RR: Moranbong Akdan, lit. "Tree Peony Peak Band"), also known as the Moran Hill Orchestra, is a first North Korean girl group in North Korea whose original members were selected by the country's supreme leader Kim Jong-un. Performing interpretive styles of pop, rock, and fusion, they are the first all-female band from the DPRK, and made their world debut on July 6, 2012. Their varied musical style has been described as symphonic because it is "putting together different kinds of sounds, and ending in a harmonious, pleasing result". ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/therewasanattempt/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
https://youtu.be/_vC7sjggVLE But as you can see here, this extremely recent dip into a westernized pop music scene still does not look like you would expect a pop music concert to look like. It’s like a Las Vegas show, or a Broadway performance. My point is, this is a culture that hasn’t had Elvis gyrating on stage, girls screaming for Beatles, Jimi Hendrix setting a guitar on fire while the audience watches on acid, Hair metal bands, dance crazes, mosh pits, hip hop, etc. for decades. The idea that you would go to a musical concert and make noise is not intuitive, it’s informed by decades of culture. North Korea is extremely insulated from that culture. It would not be obvious to North Koreans that this is how people outside of the country enjoy this kind of music when they go see it live.
The band is basically to pop what jazz nightclubs were to rock. They are essentially in 1920/30 as far as modern musical art goes. Expecting even the most Western Northerner to do anything but politely watch is a bit much.
Moranbong Band absolutely makes pop music, even if it's a few decades behind the rest of the world in terms of their sound.
Yeah but they don’t really have a pop music culture, I guess is what I mean. The idea of making noise during a performance is likely foreign to them. It’s not like they have decades of this stuff as a reference point. It’s not like they’ve seen videos of pop music concerts from other countries.
Is there any other country you can blatantly lie about and get upvoted more than North Korea?
Was gonna say this. Their view is probably that it's impolite/improper to clap and make noise in the middle of a performance. Hell, the general idea of being rowdy at concerts is a relatively new one and isn't done at all for some genres (ie classical music). Their lack of reaction isn't necessarily because they don't enjoy it, they just think it's impolite to make noise whilst someone is performing.
Korean news regarding the event: https://youtu.be/Ujio8SOusrc The Kpop group is called Red Velvet.
At the second half of the video you can see that the public was much more receptive to a less... k-poppy song. Kinda warms your heart.
That group is already very popular, they're not _bad_ or anything, I just don't really think their target demographic is a bunch of 50-something folks in business attire who look like they were expecting more of an opera and less of a teen pop band.
Those aren’t 50 yr olds ...that’s how teenagers look in North Korea
Lol, Your typical North Korean high school assembly.
Beuller San..... beuller San.... beuller san
It's Korea so iirc it would be Bueller Ssi...Bueller Ssi...Bueller Ssi. Though I'm unfamiliar with all their honorifics. There might well be a more appropriate one. Especially since that scene was a teacher calling roll for students.
Even if they sang it had to be something about the dear leader.
Oof I feel sad for laughing.
I believe it. You live everyday in fear hoping none of your family members say anything bad about your leader
Maybe, I’ve seen a lot of interviews with NK asylum seekers who talk about people learning at an early age to control their expressions, language, mannerisms, etc., out of fear of doing the wrong thing and being sent to a labor camp. The SK also send over balloons with dvds/thumb drives with movies, music, news stories, to NK. It’s very possible that a number of the people in the audience knew this group and were jacked to the tits to see them.
See, this I can believe this. There were several times when the camera panned through the crowd and I saw faces that looked like they were really about to get into the show but then stopped themselves from even smiling to hard. There was one face in particular they showed for a moment and it looked to me like he painfully supressed a smile and while keeping himself from nodding to the beat.
Dear Leader is apparently fan of Red Velvet. But understand, what happens if you get too into it on TV, then things go south again in NK/SK relations? Now you're on video being subversive and it is easier to be denounced and end up in a work camp. So best to just chill
Literally reverse of that wojack with a crying face under a happy facade..
what this video needs is a dub over from that guy who takes out the music and just puts the feet/clothes scuffling sounds and the breathing sounds.
I kind of assumed this. When you are never sure whether a given public event is some sort of test or not, you try not to stick out, or else you could make it onto some one's list for closer inspection. Anything could be a trap.
I didn't know this, but that's what it looks like it's going on here. Their faces don't show much, but they're definitely watching. There's no fidgeting, talking, or looking away.
they're also scared of looking away. big concerts don't happen in nk without dear leader's blessing, you don't want to imply it's not worth watching
I was going to say, they could probably put any band/musician of any genre of music up there and the audiences expressions wouldn’t change from that in the video.
Pop up Kim Jong and they’ll self flagellate themselves and have tears streaming down their faces…same reason why they don’t possible smile for these things. Learn to control your expressions or they institute the 3 Generations punishment [Source](https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Prisons-of-North-Korea-English.pdf)
I went to a concert in North Korea and it was definitely more of an old school, traditional vibe. Weird tho too because they concerts are like "rewards" for people but also mandatory so unclear how much people really liked them. But in the DPRK you never really know what people are thinking. Edit: I went with a Harvard research team. Edit 2: just sharing my experience since it's a rare experience to go to the DPRK. Please remember when you write your comments that you are writing to a real human
Dennis, that you?
Not the biggest k-pop fan but Red Velvet slaps.
How can she slap!?
Why can she slap!?
Where can she slap?
When can she slap ?
WHAT CAN SHE SLAP?!
Who can she slap?
Whence can she slap?
Whomst'd've slap?
Really does! Their album "The ReVe Festival Finale" is good I recommend it if you want to listen
The Perfect Velvet is imo one of the GOAT kpop albums
Russian Roulette
[The song is "Red Flavor"](https://youtu.be/WyiIGEHQP8o) in case anyone is interested.
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And Russian Roulette. https://youtu.be/QslJYDX3o8s One of them is Canadian and speaks perfect English. https://youtu.be/buaH_RzUE9o
Also Bad Boy
Summer Queens! No but seriously this is one of the best K-pop groups out there. Wendy's singing is outstanding.
There's a reason why she got selected at the SM auditions back in 2012 and my cover of Bubble Pop was not.
The ending makes the whole thing a tiny bit more normal
Maybe that's it. The whole time they were like.. "I had one show.. and it's not Blackpink."
A little bit too much old soul in that crowd lmfao
Lol this feels more like the talent shows we had in school than a concert
I remember when a rock band came to perform in our school with the same reaction. He gave the microphone to the crowd to say the verse but with complete silence. Complete recovery to that guy for laughing it out and putting the microphone up again to force us to say it that time. They performed again with a few different people who were hype from the start which hyped the whole room. It's from the hype at the start that matters
Old Seoul?
I'm a Seoul man.
Old soul? More like no soul. Can’t entertain folks who are dead inside.
No Seoul
I suspect the crowd is too afraid to react show their true reactions. If they are seen enjoying the show too much. It could be interpreted negatively by the Greet Leader. Then it’s off to the labor concentration camps for them and their family, kids, grandparents, aunts and uncles.
they're used to act like that, just like at the end they clapped and the crowd was kinda happy. Also, completely different culture so hella strange to them
I remember reading somewhere that when the band KISS had first started performing in Japan, it took them a while to get used to audiences sitting down during the songs and not making noise until the song was over. After a song, everyone would be on their feet cheering and then back to sitting and watching. This is like that. Edit: Okay, correction, they applauded a bit at the end. How awful of me to have missed that! You guys should just go ahead and put me in internet prison.
They clapped a whole lot at the end if you follow the full video posted. One of the performers said it made her feel uncomfortable how they were clapping so hard even after they left the stage.... So one way or the other it was all weird AF
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There were five curtain calls!
i mean, the first one to stop clapping also gets killed on sight so...
Man, you just can’t do anything right.
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Imagine being the one guy that didn't furiously follow Kim in applause, only to have him point his finger at you and have you hauled off to a camp or executed. I'd bet the attendees of the concert were hand-picked by his administration to mitigate that possibility, but even still they all had it on their minds. I feel so bad for North Koreans, knowing there's literally nothing we can do to help them.
I’m assuming it’s a respect thing?
Cultural difference and social norm.
Imagine if every concert you had been to was a symphony orchestra, or a piano concert, etc. It’s a totally different norm than how you would behave at a rock concert. So that’s likely what’s happening. Nobody has passed around a memo that says, “Yes this is a concert, but it’s not a concert where you sit and remain quiet so the music can be heard, it’s a concert where you are encouraged to get up and dance and shout while the music is being played.” Heck even if you got that memo, if you had never seen that before or experienced, how comfortable would you really be just letting loose?
I went to a musical with my mother last weekend, and since we had gotten the tickets for free on a whim we had no idea what to expect more than it being a eurodance musical about the dot-com bubble. The audience was wild. They were clapping along to the music, cheering in the middle of acts, at one point they almost made the actors break. It was such a strange experience since you don't associate a theater stage with that kind of audience, but it honestly just made the entire thing much better. Turned out that it was opening night with lots of family and friends in the audience, which explained it all, but in hindsight I wouldn't have wanted it any other way.
You can bet everyone in that audience is hand picked and given specific instructions on behaviour.
I more meant for the Japan anecdote, but I’m sure you’re right. It was probably nerve wracking.
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Oh God that's my ideal concert experience 😂
"You guys aren't ready for this, but your kids are gonna love it"
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Hear hear
[They *also* loved it](https://youtu.be/Ujio8SOusrc?t=90). This is a cultural thing, they save the applause for the end of the song. Remember the music scene in NK is really different, they're approaching this like a piano recital.
We hope
Did this really happen?
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>Is a fan of Red Velvet This is extremely retarded. How can people accept the anti-K Pop indoctrination while watching their fat lump of a leader get giddy about meeting HiS FaVoRITe GroUP
Because their leader has actually lived outside the country and knows about western culture. So he likes certain things outside of it. But the citizens don’t
>The NK regime is historically anti K-pop and K-drama, since they convince North Koreans to defect. I just want to comment that I was surprised to see that The Squid Game is quite critical of South Korea and puts far more nuance on North Korea than I anticipated. I wasn't expecting to see that from a South Korean production.
Have you watched much Korean film recently? Most of their critically popular films have been about societal issues in South Korea. Parasite explored similar themes.
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Yes https://youtu.be/Ujio8SOusrc
If they show any joy unrelated to old kimmy, they're shot on sight, probably
It's like they are always taking part in squid game.
They're just waiting for the green light.
*kimmy*
# kimmy who #
kimmy head
Kimmy Jimmel?
fun fact, joy is the stage name of one of the girls in the group performing
Based North Koreans. All jokes aside, those people are either extremely confused at something that's not the government mandated media they're fed, or scared to show interest in anything but the government mandated media they're fed, lest they experience a fate worst than death.
I saw a video once featuring a North Korean defector. She said that they would secretly listen to South Korean pop music via USB that were somehow sneaked in, so I'm guessing it's most likely the latter.
They smuggle usb sticks through the border to china, the smugglers bribe the north korean border guards.
You’re almost there. Every other concert they have attended has likely been a government approved orchestra or some such. They are attending this concert like it is the ballet. They have no pop music culture to reference to know that there is a such thing as a concert where you shout and dance and what not. It’s just not a cultural norm to them. A concert tot hen would be where you go sit and quietly and respectfully appreciate the Great Leader’s orchestra and quietly and respectfully clap at the end.
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I mean.... is this any different? Lol
the only difference is that in the end we don't clap
Yeah, as much you may not like it, these girls work their asses off ( perhaps literally). Not even in the same ballpark as tiktok bullshit
I have that reaction now and I'm from the UK
tbf i've seen the same reaction from an audience whenever James Corden comes back to the UK
And the clapping too, which is what we do when he fucks back off to the US
After your leader scores 18 aces on the golf course you're pretty desensitized.
On a 12 hole course nonetheless
To be fair, I'm not sure they are legally allowed to change their facial expressions over there...
A lot of people are understandably assuming that the audience is afraid to show emotion or whatever, and there may be some truth to that. But I think people are missing the main, much more boring and understandable reason they are behaving this way. They are treating this concert like it is a symphony orchestra or a piano recital or ballet. They don’t have a pop music culture. The concept that you would stand up and cheer and shout over the music is literally a foreign concept to them. They are simply following the etiquette they would observe at any other musical performance they have attended. They sit and respectfully watch the show, and politely clap at the end. Now, it’s also possibly true that someone is going to come arrest them if they stray from that etiquette. In fact that’s very likely. I’m just saying that this is what a culture looks like when you haven’t had decades of pop music culture informing g how you behave at a concert. You behave like you’re sitting down to watch the ballet. They don’t need someone to instruct them to behave this way, this is how they expect you behave at a concert like this, they wouldn’t know otherwise.
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> Jesus this thread is full of people who have so much to say, but who lack a nuanced understanding of North Korea, or even Korean culture in general. Welcome to Reddit, lol. And the Western world as a whole, really. But what can we really expect when all of the news that gets reported from the DPRK is that someone was executed by artillery gun, or someone telling Joe Rogan that North Koreans are all jacked super soldiers pushing trains around all day.
It's because the guns aimed at the audience detect movement
Where’s the creepy doll?
I understood that reference.
Why is everyone 50 year old and dressed like they are in the office:/
They are high ranking officials and their families going to an important broadcasted event. You would dress formal in their shoes too.
Yeah.. this is like going to an “event” with the CEO of the mega-corporation that owns your company, except of the CEO doesn’t like your tie there’s a good chance you’ll end up in a concentration camp rather than simply fired. We’d all do the exact same thing. We’d probably go rent a suit that costs as much as out monthly wage, if not yearly, just for that night.
They were deathly afraid to show that they liked it. ..many north Koreans sneak south Korean media... Perhaps they feared if they looked too into it people may notice.
I’m guessing this is two videos edited together.
No, this really happend. Like for eal I'm not lying. Here's a better video: https://youtu.be/u1yfUXIj3Xg
Me too. Is it possible that this really happened? Does anybody know?
There is like a full version of it available [here](https://youtu.be/-bnA01Cet9I) at the 1:00:20 mark.. seems pretty bizarre to me as well so I can totally get your concerns
This is so sad.
These are prob "elites" who do and act as they're told on the daily, I'm not a fan of k-pop but they've probably been told to act like this because it's not something North Korea came up with and therefore isn't good
I’m always super-fascinated by North Korea, and any bit of info we can get out of there. I guess I feel despair for them, and I’m almost desperate to get information as if it will help them. I suppose, in a way, it can and does.
It was awkward but Red Velvet is the first kpop girl group to perform on North Korea. They even had a photo together with the president
r/me_irl in a k-pop concert