In 1984, George Orwell wrote of a world where the only colour to be found was in the propaganda posters. Such is the case in North Korea. Images of Kim Il-sung are depicted in vivid colours. Rays of yellow and orange emanate from his face: he is the sun.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the use of propaganda in totalitarian regimes to create a glorified image of leadership.
Barbara Demick's quote draws a parallel between George Orwell's depiction of a colorless world dominated by propaganda and the reality of North Korea, where vivid imagery of its leader, Kim Il-sung, is used to reinforce his cult of personality. The use of bright colors symbolizes the distorted reality that governments can create to manipulate and control their citizens, illustrating how imagery can be employed as a powerful tool in political propaganda.
In practice
In a discussion about the role of propaganda in authoritarian regimes.
In 2012, a five-year-old girl in Shandong province described to me how ten officials had chased her six-months-pregnant mother through the fields to prevent the birth of the family's second child, a boy. She died during the procedure.
If you look at satellite photographs of the Far East by night, you'll see a large splotch curiously lacking in light. This area of darkness is the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
People in debt become hopeless and hopeless people don't vote. They always say that that everyone should vote but I think that if the poor in Britain or the United States turned out and voted for people that represented their interests there would be a real democratic revolution.
My greatest political asset, which professional politicians fear, is my mouth, out of which come all kinds of things one shouldn't always discuss for reasons of political expediency.
Democracy is not just a question of having a vote. It consists of strengthening each citizen's possibility and capacity to participate in the deliberations involved in life in society.
If you remove the English army to-morrow and hoist the green flag over Dublin Castle, unless you set about the organisation of the Socialist Republic your efforts would be in vain.
We vainly fancy ourselves above the ugly informing and paranoia of the right-wing McCarthy era, but in the 21st century, the Left has fashioned a mirror image.
When you restore democracy, you cannot say that only those who worked for the restoration of democracy will be allowed to use the privileges of a democracy.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.