The North Korean government has recently ordered that a vigorous campaign be waged against a recent trend among North Korean young people to sing songs of unknown origin or popular songs with altered lyrics, Daily NK has learned.
A source in North Hamgyong Province told Daily NK on Monday that the government ordered branches of the Socialist Patriotic Youth League around the country to combat this trend, especially when lyrics are being distorted for songs of great ideological or revolutionary significance.
“There is a continuing trend among young people who lack a profound affinity for the needs and intentions of the Workers’ Party to willfully distort songs in a way that runs contrary to our times or to go around singing songs of indeterminate origin and degenerate songs that are saved on their mobile phones or jotted down in their notebooks,” the authorities noted in their recent order.
In line with this order, provincial, municipal and county branches of the Youth League have been sending out teams of monitors since the end of August to city streets and villages to inspect young people’s mobile phones, notebooks and planners.
The monitors are focusing on young people who go around town openly listening to foreign songs that are saved on their mobile phones, the source said.
According to the source, some ten young people who had South Korean songs saved on their phone were busted during a crackdown by Youth League monitors in the city of Chongjin between Aug. 25 and 27.
“The young people who were caught were ordered to spend three days writing statements of contrition and 20 days in hard labor under the ideological education and punishment regulations set up by the Chongjin Youth League Committee,” the source said.
The Youth League monitors also found sarcastic lyrics set to the tunes of North Korean revolutionary or popular songs in the notebooks of 20 or so high school students, who were then brought before their local Youth League committees and given several days to write statements of contrition.
The North Korean government is currently cracking down harder on what it regards as “impure behavior” — such as importing or distributing foreign culture — as it focuses on preventing ideological dilution among the young people who represent the future of the country.
Previously, the authorities had focused their crackdown on the consumption of what are known as “impure recordings,” including South Korean movies, TV shows and music videos. But more recently, they have also been paying attention to the act of singing songs of uncertain provenance or penning critical or satirical versions of the lyrics to popular songs.
The source described the mood on the ground as follows: “The government’s orchestrated control and crackdown on young people continues each year. This tough ideological crackdown that views impure recordings and songs of unknown origin as rotting and corrupting the youth is making more young people fed up with the stifling atmosphere in society.”
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