Vigilant Melody: On DPRK Film Music

This chapter traces the evolution of film music composition in North Korea during the first four decades of the DPRK, and explores the relationship between song, film, and drama. Orchestral scores for several key films -- including My Hometown (1949), Young Partisans (1951), an episode of Unknown Heroes (1978) and Wolmi Island (1982) are analyzed. North Korean film composers’ interrelationship with art song and political mobilization is discussed alongside ideological imperatives. The chapter also endeavors to open up new pathways for writing about North Korean cultural production which encompass some limited use of composer biographies, as well as the harmonic and orchestration techniques that interweave with and undergird the dramatic and ideological content of the films.