Not surprisingly, North Korean state television shows a lot of obedient soldiers
There's a new streamer on the block. You won't find any true crime documentaries or Jennifer Lopez rom-coms on KCTV, but live streaming of North Korean state television programs is now available.
You need to log in to get all the benefits, but handing over your email address to a communist dictatorship is probably not a good idea. I would recommend sticking to regular viewing. KCTV (Korea Central Television) runs very smoothly, with no buffering, and even allows you to minimize the picture window while watching on an iPad — two technological advances that ITVX is obviously completely unable to handle.
Now KCTV doesn't have subtitles and Korean isn't part of my linguistic portfolio. But you got the point surprisingly easily. Essentially, North Korea is a land of communist abundance where everything is just bullshit. It's like a slightly less scary version of New Britain, Gordon Brown's recent report to Labour. There is an SNP atmosphere throughout the entire enterprise. Can you imagine Nicola Sturgeon listening approvingly and muttering, “Oh, if only…”
At first glance it all looks quite nice. Daily broadcasts and news reports show breathtaking cityscapes at night, high-rise buildings with bright lights turned on somewhat unconvincingly. Huge waves crash on the rocks. There are gorgeous sunsets there. All this is somewhat reminiscent of The Landscape Channel.
There are also, as you'd expect, lots of terrifying military parades and lots of happy, smiling people. Kim Jong Un is well represented and everyone is grinning at him the way Ed Miliband grins at Greta Thunberg — a kind of scared grin.
The schedule is largely based on very old North Korean films. I saw a piece of this about a failed romance, and there were a lot of medals in it. North Korea has declared the goal of culture to be «social education,» which sounds a lot like what we're heading towards here.
The children's program I caught consisted of an ancient cartoon, so old that the film has wear and tear on it. scratches. It all starts with a boy riding a white stallion. He fires an arrow that turns into a throwing pencil in the air. Bears are drawn with a pencil. These cuddly creatures then for some reason hit the donkey very hard in the face and then run away in horror from the raging inferno. I suppose there must be an explanation for this: maybe the donkey is a Western imperialist pig? – but in this world of instant information, it’s nice to have something to think about.
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