Canadian Peter Fairlie has a hobby like no other. From his back yard, he aims his satellite dish at a specific spot in space that broadcasts North Korean propaganda. His YouTube channel features lots of recordings that I was fascinated with. What do people in a closed off country watch? Then, I noticed that in one video there was a stop motion kids show. Who is behind it all I wondered?
Peter recently compiled all of those stop motion videos into one. In the description he says:
"What could be better then Saturday Cartoons? How about Cartoons pirated from Kim Jong Un's North Korea? Today we'll binge watch ten weird, strange, whacky, and even violent North Korean kids Cartoons! Ten episodes back-to-back! Enjoy the Weirdness!"
From the scant information I could find, the company behind it is SEK Studio. On Wikipedia they claim:
"SEK Studio was founded in 1957 as April 26 Children’s Animation Film Studio." "Much of the work produced by SEK Studio is considered to be propaganda for North Korean children, with SEK Studio being state-owned and creating animation intended for a young audience."
What is most interesting is that the films look to be from the early 70's to 1980's and made using perhaps 16mm cameras. Crazily enough, there is one episode I came across that had the old film look with a few CGI characters dancing along. So these films are in fact no old, but newer and using techniques from years back. It is as if the creators from the 70's took a time machine to today and have almost no cultural understanding of how technology has advanced! Crazy!
If you'd like to learn how to translate the entire video to your language (such as English) and don't know how, this YouTube tutorial shows you how.
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