Comrade Kim Yong Mi played by Han Jong Sim smiles as she wears a coal miner’s helmet in this image from North Korea film “Comrade Kim Goes Flying” which was released on Oct. 3, 2012.SEOUL, South Korea North Korea hates the currently scrapped Hollywood film that revolves around the assassination of its beloved leader, but the country has had a long love affair with cinema of its own particular styling.
In the six decades since North Korea began to cultivate its own film industry, there have been a kidnapped South Korean director and his movie star wife, a Godzilla-inspired monster movie that flopped in the South, American defectors hamming it up in anti-U.S. propaganda films and even a foray into “girl power” cinema with the more recent “Comrade Kim Goes Flying.”
The U.S. blames North Korea for a cyberattack on Sony Pictures, which produced “The Interview,” and also for threats of terror attacks against U.S. movie theaters. Sony canceled the movie’s release.
North Korea began building its cinema industry in the 1950s as a wing of a propaganda machine meant to glorify the country’s late founder, Kim Il Sung, the grandfather of current leader Kim Jong Un. The elder Kim once declared movies to be the most important tool to educate the masses, according to archive material maintained by the South Korean government.
North Korean moviemakers have since dabbled with science fiction, action and romantic comedy, but they’re mostly expected to stoke public animosity against rivals Washington and Seoul, and to portray the Kim family as a fearless bastion against evil foreign imperialists.