A Workers’ Party official in North Hamgyong province was left red-faced after a middle-aged farmer openly rebuffed his call to emulate the heroes of a state propaganda drama, in a confrontation at a threshing ground in Hwadae county.
The official from the Hwadae County Party Committee used the farmers’ rest break to hold an on-site propaganda session, a Daily NK source in North Hamgyong province said on Monday. County party committees are the local arms of the ruling party and their officials oversee political education and enforce party policy in every county across North Korea.
During the session, the official cited the TV drama “A New Spring in the Field of Manchurian Cranes.” He loudly insisted that the farmers emulate the honest and diligent attitude of its characters. A middle-aged woman working on the farm then challenged him by pointing out how little the series resembled real life.
“A drama is fine for passing the time,” she said. “But that’s a different world, where the officials are different and I’m different too. If we really have to follow its example, the main character is a village party secretary, so shouldn’t officials be the ones to change first?”
North Koreans usually share remarks like hers only among close friends, yet she spoke freely in front of a county official. The other farmers at the threshing ground burst into laughter at once, as if to show they agreed with her, the source said.
Embarrassed and flushed, the official hurried to wrap up the session and left the farm. He later scolded the farm’s village party secretary for failing to keep a firm grip on the farmers’ ideological state. Village party secretaries head the party committee in each ri, the smallest rural administrative unit. In practice, they often hold more sway over farm life than farm managers do.
Propaganda drama clashes with life on North Korean farms
The 2025 series follows Hyong Sop, a newly appointed village party secretary sent to a struggling farm in Paekhak village. Through selfless dedication, he reforms and unites the farmers and leads them past one obstacle after another. Inspired by his example, the farmers come to trust him and pool their efforts until the backward farm is transformed. The show drew wide attention on Korean Central Television for openly depicting boastful, self-serving farm officials, a rare theme in North Korean state media.
Authorities lean on the drama every farming season to step up ideological education among farmers, according to the source. Farmers, however, have greeted these campaigns coldly and insist the drama has nothing to do with reality, saying the officials on screen think and behave nothing like the cadres they deal with every day. Their own living conditions, they add, are just as far removed from what the series shows. Critics have also noted that the show, for all its candor, never breaks free of socialist realism, and the state-mandated artistic style frames every hardship as a problem solved through loyalty and effort.
Farm officials still routinely divert harvested crops for personal gain, so lectures demanding integrity from farmers alone carry little weight. Cases such as an Onsong county farm accountant arrested for hoarding more than 10 tons of state grain have deepened that distrust. Amid ongoing food shortages, complaints keep surfacing that officials must change before making demands of farmers.
The drama’s picture of rural living conditions has also failed to win over farmers, many of whom live in harsh conditions. Pressing them to imitate the polished scenes on screen has fueled only cynicism and resentment, the source said. Kim Jong Un has made new rural housing a centerpiece of his regional development agenda since December 2021. Yet North Koreans have repeatedly filed complaints over shoddy construction and corruption in these projects.
“The farmhouses in the drama look grand and polished, but in reality even the new ones feel like old houses,” the source said. “In the new rural homes built in Chongam district of Chongjin, kitchens flooded during last summer’s rainy season. Families had to bail out the water with scoops, and the floor coverings came loose so badly they had to be relaid from the base paper up. When people are told to live like the characters in the drama, how can they take that seriously?”
Similar defects have surfaced elsewhere in the country, including new homes in flood-hit areas that began falling apart within a year of completion.
About This Translation
This article was originally written in Korean and translated with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.
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