Beginning of My Research

I was born in Seoul in the mid-1970s and belong to a generation that experienced the Cold War and anti-communist education, military dictatorship and democratization, periods of inter-Korean exchange and division, and the transition from analog to digital media. As a child, I first encountered North Korea through television news, anti-communist animated films, Korean War movies, and various anti-communist events. Yet, through the 1988 Seoul Olympics, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and the establishment of diplomatic relations between South Korea and China, both the world in which I lived and South Korean perceptions of inter-Korean relations changed rapidly.

Even after entering university, when I created my first stop-motion animation in a third-year course in Computer Graphics and Film Design, I was captivated by the particular power and appeal of animation: its ability to bring puppets to life. While studying in France, I earned a master’s degree through research on the aesthetics of puppet animation. During that time, I attended an animation festival organized by the French Animation Film Association (AFCA) and happened to meet Hoël Caouissin, who had supervised animation subcontracting work in Pyongyang. Through this encounter, I first learned that North Korea had undertaken a substantial portion of the production work for French television animation series.

After returning to South Korea and reflecting on my future, I began to feel drawn to pursue North Korean animation as a field of specialized research. This led me to enter the doctoral program in Animation Theory at the Graduate School of Advanced Imaging Science, Multimedia and Film at Chung-Ang University, and North Korean animation has remained at the center of my research ever since.

Research Journey

After entering the doctoral program in Animation Theory at the Graduate School of Advanced Imaging Science, Multimedia and Film at Chung-Ang University in 2009, I began my research by seeking out and examining materials and works related to North Korean animation. I reviewed all available books and scholarly articles on North Korean animation published in South Korea, and consulted North Korean animated works and documents at the Information Center on North Korea, operated by the Ministry of Unification. Through this process, I learned that, unlike in South Korea, puppet animation had been produced consistently in North Korea from its early years to the present.

As an undergraduate, I had become fascinated by animation while creating stop-motion works, and during my studies in France I wrote my master’s thesis on the aesthetics of puppet animation. These experiences led me to focus on changes in character design in North Korean puppet animation, resulting in my first journal article, which examined the circumstances and processes behind those changes. Later, I discovered inconsistencies among South Korean studies regarding the date and title of North Korea’s first animation. This prompted me to focus more closely on directly examining North Korean documents and newspaper sources.

The excitement I felt when I found a record of an animation experiment in the 1956 edition of the Korean Central Yearbook, and an article on the first officially recognized North Korean animation in the February 5, 1961 issue of Rodong Sinmun, remains vivid. Drawing on these materials, I organized and analyzed the history and works of North Korean animation from the 1960s to the 1970s, completing my doctoral dissertation.

My research interests later expanded to animation in the Kim Jong Un era and to digital transformation. I have studied the development of North Korean digital animation, 2D digital remakes, the gestures of female characters in 3D computer animation, and the Gojumong series, a historical animated work set in the Goguryeo period and produced during the Kim Jong Un era. I am currently writing a book on the history of North Korean digital animation and preparing a study on how international co-production with European countries during the 1980s and 1990s influenced the digitalization, direction, and aesthetics of North Korean animation.

Opening the Institute

North Korean animation remains a field with a relatively limited body of scholarship, even within the study of North Korean arts and culture. Although related research has gradually accumulated in South Korea and abroad, there has not been a sufficient space in which materials, works, and research achievements can be brought together and connected. Drawing on my background in design and animation production, I have studied North Korean animation while continually facing the solitary struggle of locating and verifying sources and refining the direction of my research.

The Institute for North Korean Animation Studies is an online research space created to share this process and its outcomes more widely. Here, I hope to introduce not only my own research but also relevant articles and books from South Korea and abroad, while organizing and sharing viewable North Korean animated works, domestic and international news articles, and information on works by year. I also intend to document as transparently as possible newly identified sources, as well as misreadings or points requiring revision in my previous publications.

North Korean animation is a form of cultural expression that reveals North Korea’s internal practices of propaganda and education, while also bearing traces of technology, aesthetics, industry, and international exchange. I hope that this institute will serve as a small stepping stone toward a more concrete and multidimensional understanding of North Korean animation, and as an open space where researchers, students, and interested readers in South Korea and abroad can share materials and questions.