ⓒ KBS

An inter-Korean summit between former South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in September 2018 drew worldwide attention. Many people may still remember that Moon delivered a speech to the North Korean public in Pyongyang at the time as the first South Korean president to do so. 

In front of 150-thousand North Korean citizens at Rungrado May Day Stadium, Moon said that Korean people had lived together for 5,000 years but have lived separately for the last 70 years. He proposed that the two Koreas completely end the past 70 years of hostility and take a big stride of peace to become one again. 

At the time, North Korea staged a mass gymnastics and artistic performance titled “Glorious Country” to welcome the South Korean president. The show had been produced as a propaganda performance in essence, but its content was modified drastically for visitors from the South to emphasize the message of peace and unification. 

A large Korean Peninsula flag appears to the music of Arirang, signaling the start of the show. Thousands of people hold up flip-cards in the stand to create a mosaic image that reads “We welcome President Moon’s visit to Pyongyang.” Audiences are treated to spectacular performances featuring traditional musical instruments, Korean martial art of Taekwondo, a mass game and dance, as well as a high-tech drone show, in which some 100 drones display the letters “Glorious Country” in midair. 

A show consisting of a large-scale choreographed card display and a variety of presentations is one of the performances representing North Korea. Today, we’ll examine North Korea’s mass gymnastics show with Kim Chae-won, director of a research institute dedicated to comparing dance culture. 

In North Korea, a mass game is more than just a performance. 

North Korean mass games involve over 100-thousand performers. I guess very few countries in the world can mobilize such a large number of people for a mass game. North Korea has been proud to stage the mass gymnastics show on special occasions or for foreign guests. The country includes the show in its tour package for foreigners, using it as a means of earning foreign currency. Domestically, the show plays a great role in intensifying ideological education for the public and strengthening internal unity. 

In North Korea’s Grand Dictionary of the Korean Language, a mass game is defined as a new form of comprehensive sport art that combines sophisticated athletic techniques with high-level ideological and artistic content involving thousands of or tens of thousands of people. 

North Korea describes artists as fighters positioned in the cultural frontline and uses culture and art as an instrument of political propaganda. In the country, a mass game is one of the means of educating the public. 

According to the North’s official Rodong Sinmun newspaper, the show originated from “Flower Gymnastics” created and instructed by the nation’s founder Kim Il-sung at Jinmyong School in Changchun in the Chinese province of Jilin in 1930. 

North Korea’s gymnastics performance is known to have started from “Flower Gymnastics” created by Kim Il-sung as part of his activities for agricultural revolution in the 1930s. It is assumed that people gathered to create some images of letters at the time. Gymnastics shows began to include stretching exercises and some others in 1947, when the country held a performance titled “Hurray, General Kim Il-sung.” A card stunt was not introduced yet. 

A flip-card part was added to the gymnastics show called “Song of Liberation” that was held in 1955 to commemorate the tenth anniversary of Korea’s liberation from Japanese colonial rule. The scale of the event became larger in 1958, with more than 10-thousand people taking part in the performance “Glorious Country.” The 1961 performance titled “The Era of the Workers’ Party” was the original form of today’s mass gymnastics show. 

North Korea’s mass game consists of the gymnastics squad, the card stunt or background squad and music. During the show, the gymnastics squad plays the most important role. 

The gymnastics squad presents powerful acrobatic, dance and gymnastic performances on the ground. Each movement has a symbolic meaning. For example, raising arms at a slant is a sign of respect and admiration, while movements reminiscent of shoveling or swinging a hammer symbolize labor. In the “assembly” movement, two or more people build a human tower. Performers use various tools such as Indian clubs, balls, jump ropes, horizontal bars, parallel bars and ladders. 

In the show, music plays a role in guiding countless performers to move in perfect unison. The card stunt squad flips through colorful cards and creates a series of mosaic images of pictures and letters. Their presentation is not just a card stunt but is regarded as the art of painting. It is said that specialists work on the card display meticulously. 

Like a stage background, the card stunt squad positioned in the stand explains and complements themes that the gymnastics squad cannot fully express. The background squad is known to consist of schoolchildren aged between 13 and 15. They receive training after school. They should move in perfectly synchronized forms, which require extreme concentration. They receive intense training that includes sitting in a correct posture and holding and unfolding card books properly. 

Last November, the Rodong Sinmun newspaper reported about a briefing session commemorating the 50th anniversary of the foundation of an organization in charge of the production of mass gymnastics shows. North Korea would stage mass games in the capital and local regions on major anniversaries, but there had not been any permanent system dedicated to the shows. Whenever the need arose, teachers of physical education, music and art at local schools would organize a team temporarily to work on the show. For a more effective preparation and execution of the event, North Korea established an organization that would be exclusively responsible for mass games in November 1971. 

The organization was set up with the purpose of creating, distributing and developing mass games. It consists of different departments in charge of direction, gymnastics, card stunts and music as well as a band. Specialists in gymnastics, dance, music and stage costume work at the organization. 

It goes through a three-stage procedure for a performance. In the first stage, a script is written. In the second stage, students learn basic movements, while costumes, props and the stage are prepared. In the third phase, a comprehensive training and a trial performance are held. Students who have completed training at their schools gather at Kim Il-sung Square, the square of the April 25 House of Culture or the Pyongyang Gymnasium to have a rehearsal.

The mass games were mostly joined by students and workers, while those who majored in sports or dance were deployed for difficult, high-level movements and important scenes. “School of Physical Education for Teenagers” was created in 1983 under the organization. The school selected talented students and trained them after school so they would be able to perform with advanced techniques during a mass game. 

North Korea’s mass games became larger and complicated. In the 2000s, the country created a new form of performance combining gymnastics and art. 

A mass game titled “Ever-victorious Workers’ Party” was staged in 2000 to mark the 55th anniversary of the party foundation. Involving as many as 100-thousand people, the large-scale show was renamed “mass gymnastics and artistic performance.”

“Ever-victorious Workers’ Party” was premiered at the May Day Stadium on October 12, 2000. The massive show illustrated the background for the party’s foundation and its history through music, dance, circus and the card stunt. It became known to the outside world after then-U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who was visiting North Korea, watched the performance.

The so-called mass gymnastics and artistic performance, as its name indicates, blends gymnastics and art to create a unique show. Key members of North Korea’s top performing groups such as the Pibada Theatrical Troupe, the Mansudae Art Troupe, the National Folk Art Troupe and the Pyongyang Circus Troupe contributed to the creation of the performance. 

Two years later, in 2002, North Korea celebrated the 90th anniversary of the birth of the regime founder Kim Il-sung, the 60th birthday of then-leader Kim Jong-il and the 70th anniversary of the foundation of the Korean People’s Army. In that meaningful year, North Korea created and staged a monumental mass gymnastics and artistic performance, namely, Arirang. 

Arirang, also performed by some 100-thousand people, showcased a fabulous display of music, flip-card mosaic animations, group dance, gymnastics, theatrical performances and stage art. The extravaganza featured the theme of the people, who once sang the Arirang song sadly after losing their country to a colonizer, now march together powerfully in a new era of military-first revolution. 

The Arirang Mass Games began to be unveiled to the outside world in 2005 and were recognized by Guinness World Records in 2007 as the largest gymnastic display.  

Employing the theme of the Korean folk song with the same title, Arirang was a large performance that lasted for one hour and 20 minutes. It presented diverse Korean folk dances including the drum dance, the fan dance, spinning a folk arts hat called sangmo(상모) and the sword dance. The huge mosaic images created by tens of thousands of students, each holding up cards, were so elaborate that they looked like computer graphics. Schoolchildren built human towers reaching up to five stories, played triple-or quadruple-unders jump rope and performed tumbling. They did acrobatics even without a single safety net or gear. As a complete collection of North Korea’s mass game, music, dance and epic poems, the Arirang Games provided an important momentum in the country’s performing art scene, just like the Pibada revolutionary opera did in the 1970s. 

British ethnomusicologist Keith Howard, who is also a specialist in North Korean music, points out that the choreography of North Korea’s mass game is deliberately complicated. A single slip in the performers’ action may spoil the entire setup, so the performers have to concentrate extremely on their part. Noting this, Howard says the shows promote collectivism in unseen ways. 

North Korea’s mass games are regarded as a means of arming both participants and viewers with ideology and tightening internal solidarity. 

In North Korea, propaganda materials are created by experts designated by the authorities before being distributed to citizens. Mass games, in contrast, are joined directly by general citizens themselves. While watching their friends and neighbors taking part in such a large event, they are exposed to a new level of propaganda. Participants, on their part, learn that they comprise an important part of the massive show and feel a sense of belonging. Viewers, meanwhile, realize the superiority of socialism on the scene. In the process, performers and viewers alike feel their ideology is refined naturally. 

It seems the stunning mass gymnastics show performed by over 100-thousand people represents North Korea’s collectivism and the extraordinary nature of the communist regime.