North Korea Night Club

As night falls in cities all over the world, many people flock to nightclubs to dance to music and relieve stress. Tastes vary when it comes to music, and so there are plenty of nightclubs that vary in genre and atmosphere.

Several forms of music and dance exist in North Korea, just like in any other society in the world. Nevertheless, there are state-determined regulations regarding what sort of music and dance North Korean citizens are allowed to enjoy. Spontaneous creation in dance or music is illegal, and individually determined choice or creative expression is forbidden. Songs must be produced and vetted by state mechanisms for alignment with its ideological doctrine, and dance styles must be issued by the state (mass dancing).

Consequently, the cultural tastes and favourite actors, singers and genres across various North Korean age groups, from youth to elderly, have more often been shared than not. Yet as South Korea’s entertainment surge, commonly known as Hallyu or the Korean Wave, spread among the North Korean people, different transformations of their cultural and aesthetic values have taken place.

Na Sung-min, 21, who escaped North Korea in 2013, is now a university student in the South. He testified, “In North Korea, foreign films, music, dance (disco) is strictly prohibited. Above all, consumption of South Korean pop culture – watching South Korean movies or listening to South Korean music – can lead to capital punishment.”

Na continued, “Nightclubs or karaokes in North Korea are not the kinds of spaces they are in the South. You can’t just sing and dance with abandon as it pleases you. The most of that you do is when you are called up to be mobilised, where you must act out the collective swinging of arms to repetitive music at state events.”