North Korea is reportedly tightening the noose on banned music by ordering house-to-house searches to find and confiscate cassettes and CDs. Permanently paranoid, the ruthless Kim Jong-Un regime is looking to keep his vice-like grip on the North Korean people and extending the ban on music (both foreign and local) will do just that in their minds.
The Korean Workers' Party Propaganda and Agitation Department has distributed a new list of banned songs that includes foreign and local songs. Any cassette or CD found containing those banned songs will be destroyed.
"The local propaganda departments are getting inminban [people's unit] heads to collect cassettes and CDs from people's homes and are combing through them," a Guardian source speaking from inside the country claimed. "If even one song from the banned list is discovered, they incinerate the whole thing."
The government appears to be concerned that lyrics could give people the wrong idea about potentially revolting against the government.
However, the new list of the songs contains some of people's all-time favorites according to the Daily NK, which has caused some individuals to complain to the authorities.
"Some women have gotten so angry that they've stormed into the local propaganda offices complaining that they [authorities] incinerated their goods without even telling them."
According to a Guardian source, the new ban on music has had a "boomerang effect," which is causing people to revisit old banned songs on CDs or cassettes they have stashed away somewhere in their homes. The songs had otherwise faded away from memory, but the new ban is stirring up thoughts of the past.
It is also a sad state of affairs that people are still listening to music on cassettes and in some cases, CDs, but when a nation can barely feed itself, the medium of music consumption is pretty insignificant.
They will be able to listen to some Laibach, who will be the the first Western rock band to perform in the dictatorship.
