Kim Jong-un unimpressed by latest ‘Mass Games’ as sister Yo‑jong reappears (2024)

Kim Jong-un has lambasted the producers of North Korea’s “Mass Games” of music and gymnastics in an unprecedented public criticism of one of the country’s most famous cultural extravaganzas.

According to the state media, the supreme leader attended the opening of the latest production of the games at the May Day stadium in Pyongyang this week.

Despite praising the tens of thousands of performers, many of them children, he was critical of the production as a whole, prompting speculation that he may have been embarrassed by the intensity of the adoration directed at him.

“After the performance he called creators of the performance and seriously criticised them for their wrong spirit of creation and irresponsible work attitude, pointing to the contents and forms of works,” the Korean Central News Agency reported.

“Noting that the creators and artistes in the literature and art sector have a very important duty in socialist cultural construction, he set forth important tasks for correctly implementing the revolutionary policy of our party on literature and art.”

According to foreign tour groups, the games have now been put on hold after Mr Kim expressed his dissatisfaction.

“The Mass Games may be temporarily halted from June 10th due to Kim Jong Un dissatisfaction with the opening performance,” Young Pioneer Tours wrote on Twitter.

The Mass Games, which were held last year after a five-year gap, are an extraordinary spectacle of dance, costume, music and song, dedicated to celebrating the greatness of North Korea and the benevolence and brilliance of the ruling Kim family.

The biggest productions have featured more than 100,000 participants, who perform musical scenes celebrating North Korean history and achievement against a background of students flashing coloured cards to form a giant changing screen in which they are the human pixels.

Last year’s show was put on during a time of warming relations with the outside world: among those who attended was the visiting South Korean president, Moon Jae-in. The performance included a sequence celebrating his previous summit meeting with Mr Kim at the border between the two countries earlier in the year.

After the failure of Mr Kim’s meeting with Donald Trump, the US president, in February, North Korea’s international diplomacy has become deadlocked. The section celebrating relations with the South Korean leader has been removed, but a finale lavishing praise on Mr Kim, and featuring a huge portrait of him, has been added.

In March Mr Kim issued official guidance on propaganda, emphasising the importance of “realism” in presenting the leader himself. Hysterical praise of Mr Kim’s late father and grandfather has always been a staple of North Korean culture, but today there was speculation among North Korea watchers that he regarded it as excessive.

“Radical working hypothesis — he objected to the personality cult stuff,” John Delury, a professor of history at Yonsei University in Seoul, wrote on Twitter. “[I] can sympathise with Mass Games producers, who evidently didn’t get the memo.”

Notable in the audience at the performance was Mr Kim’s younger sister, Kim Yo-jong, who runs the Korean Workers’ Party propaganda and agitation department.

In a report that was picked up around the world, the South Korean newspaper The Chosun Ilbo quoted an unnamed source saying that Ms Kim was “lying low” after a purge following the failure of the summit in Vietnam with Mr Trump.

One of those reportedly purged reappeared at the leader’s side two days later. Ms Kim’s presence at the May Day Stadium suggests that, despite being seen less in public in recent weeks, she has not suffered serious harm to her standing.

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