The Socialist Modern at Rest and Play: Spaces of Leisure in North Korea

Abstract | Abstract

Conventionally conceived of as entirely lacking in frivolity or playfulness, its’ citizens time and energy and its’ geographic spaces harnessed only to the prerogatives of political and military production, North Korea is regarded as the ‘terra nullis’ of leisure activity. However in the light of the Korean peninsula’s forceful encounter with Japanese Imperialist modernity, this paper examines connections between the introduction of sporting, leisurely and non-productive modes of production and relation at the behest of colonialism and North Korea’s conception of a leisure fit for the socialist modern. Far from a blank leisure canvas, Pyongyang’s political and cultural repertoire of praxis has required and supported an extensive network of narrative, ideology, infrastructure and facilities focused on politically appropriate sport, and entertainment which embedded and enmeshed leisure and non-productive time at the heart of Pyongyang’s acutely charismatic and theatric political form.