North Korean Posters: The David Heather Collection [Anglais] [Relié]

To quote from Koen De Ceuster in the book's intro: 'Only if the poster appeals to the ideological and aesthetic sentiments of the people will it succeed in truly rousing the people'. The cynical might conclude because the people were not truly roused by these posters is a good enough reason to explain why the economy of the DPRK is in such a ramshackle state and not likely to improve in the coming years.

The 250 reproduced are pretty lackluster in their creativity. This becomes apparent when compared to Soviet Posters (published by Prestel in 2007 and the same size and format) though admittedly they developed over several decades and had the benefit of talent like Lissitzky, Govorkov and Rodchenko to create political masterpieces. With a closed society like North Korea where creativity emanated from the two Kims should anyone expect anything better.

Despite a sameness to many of the images some do stand out. A poster on page 233 is an interesting painting of four horsemen with flags, riding into the future (where else!). As with so many posters shown the groupings are the same: a soldier; woman farmer; steel worker; intellectual. The painting style looks quite contemporary though. On page 251 a diesel engine done in a very graphic style with the side of the unit incorporating bold type, the poster headline is in the same perspective as the engine. There are no dates or artists mentioned in any of the captions and looking through the pages I get the impression that maybe the bulk of the posters were created by a small group of artists and designers.

There is a chapter called Undeterred Defiance, with forty-five works hurling abuse and dire consequences at the US and some of these look several decades old. Covering the Korean war, the capture of the USS Pueblo in 1968 and a US helicopter incident in 1994. These last two events, very minor in the scheme of things but as they are the only two incidents where the US directly affected North Korea their importance is exaggerated enormously.

The book is identical to the Soviet Posters I've mentioned. The same 288 pages, color throughout, in 150 screen and also the same annoyance of having all the captions and page numbers sideways on each page (so four stars) but I thought the Soviet book's contents far more interesting. With two books covering the same subject I wonder if Prestel will extend the idea to Cuban, Polish and East German political posters?

***FOR AN INSIDE LOOK click 'customer images' under the cover.

I purchased this book for my husband for Christmas. He has a deep interest in propaganda as well as North Korea. This book is full of really neat and sometimes beautiful as well as disturbing pictures. The husband is concerned that something is lost in the translation of the posters as well as it seems the person who wrote the book is a bit of a sympathizer. That doesn't matter much to him because all he cares about is the artwork. Either way... a great book.

This is a great book filled with very vividly colorful and interesting propaganda posters from North Korea. I'm a high school history/geography teacher and plan to use some of these posters in future lessons. I have the Soviet, Chinese, and North Korean version of these propaganda poster books and I find this one to have the most interesting and thought provoking examples of posters.