Please watch this remarkable video of North Korean children and then I will have some questions.
Whoever posted this video in YouTube had the same reaction that i did. There is something creepy about this. Are all these little tikes musical prodigies? Have the North Koreans developed some incredible technique for teaching children to play guitar? Note how everything is choreographed right up to the timing of the children’s smiles. These children are very disciplined. I have to wonder what kind of discipline was used on them to get them to play so perfectly. I must admit that the smile of the littlest girl to the left appears genuine. Am I just being prejudice in thinking the worst of the North Korean regime?
Well, that’s what I’m thinking. What are your thoughts?
Asylum Watch 
I understand that they have already been signed to a long-term deal by NBC.
NBC? Is that the National Butthead Commission?
You’re not prejudiced. It is creepy.
It doesn’t seem natural, does it? I wonder what their punishment is if they make a mistake?
I have worked with Asian students, many of the South Koreans and Chinese — and Christians, too, for the most part. Very disciplined and compliant and perfectionist.
But there is something creepy about this video.
How much childhood do North Korean children really have under that oppressive government?
I wonder if the children are ever allowed to play what they want to play or to play in general?
Maybe they are not that young, just malnourished.
We had some elaborate pre-school presentations in the Soviet Union, involving poetry, dance and song, but we were never made play oversize guitars. That has to be bad for the joints.
Some of them do appear to be enjoying themselves but you have to wonder.
I don’t see how their fingers can create the chords, but it sure looks real. Creepy indeed.
The one little girl is so tiny I don’t see how it is pssible her to make the chords, as you say.
Very Creepy indeed…I wonder too just what kind of drills they had to endure…I would imagine that their fingers are pretty calloused [no guitar picks]. No prejudice, American children are pushed at young ages in sports, music, child beauty pageants…I wonder what happens to them if they turn in a less than perfect performance?
PLU from SSF
My baby fingers hurt just watching that. But we have lots of Suzuki violin studies for children here, so not sure this means brutality. Just weird.
Quite frankly, I don’t find it nearly as creepy as the 6-year old girl beauty contests pushed by tiara-chasing mothers here in this country… and those NK kids have talent!
I’ve become a close DPRK watcher. I follow them mostly to track their nuclear and missile programs.
Understanding North Korea (DPRK) is basically easy… just picture life in the old Soviet Union in the mid-1950s and you have what North Korea is like today.
DPRK is a throwback to old communism with a huge dose of ancestry worship thrown in.
Az, thank you for sharing a different perspective.
It is impressive they can play like that but it is creepy at the same time because they are probably forced into this from the moment they can hold a guitar and made to practice all day, every day.This profession was chosen for them by the government and they know nothing else. However azleader makes a great point about those beauty contest mothers, that is very creepy also.
I agree with you and AZ about the beauty contest moms; but at least it is the mothers and not the state.
Very true!
You can train a child to do just about anything if you don’t care about their humanity that goes for these kids and beauty contest kids. I read in Voice of the Martyrs once that a little girl in North Korea had just come back from an underground Christian meeting and had done well on a spelling test. The teacher asked how she did it and she said God helped her. She and her family went “missing” the next day. A very dark place where the State owns children and will allocate them where they want, to do what they want. These kids were chosen to show off to the world.
North Korea is a dark place both figuratively and literally.
I think Edge was onto something. The North Koreans don’t have any surplus food, and these kids are really thirty-two and an emerging group of musicians from the streets of Pyongyang. I think they call the group the PyongYang Five, with the lone female called, Momma Yang. They have been waiting for Kim Young Un for a long time so they can play the new music that sounds like a Spanish guitar lesson record. They don’t have CD’s in NK, yet, so it’s all in vinyl.
It is creepy. It seems that they are very good at regimentation.
Momma Yang? That’s good! I do wonder what kind of dicipline was used on these children.
” what kind of dicipline was used on these children.”
We might not like it.
As long as they’re not blowing bugles while wearing camo I’m fine with it. If they put out a video like that then it’s time to hit the sirens.